Cognition - Lecture 13 (Language Comprehension)
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- Created on: 27-04-16 21:45
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- Lecture 13 - Language Comprehension
- The end product of text / discourse comprehension
- A "mental model" or "situational representation"
- A representationof the meaning conveyed, contracted in memory as we read: who is doing what, where, how, why
- The active "leading edge" of this representation is in working memory
- In the real of imaginary world described in the text
- Text/discourse is not only vehicle for creating a mental model. Direct experience does so as well
- The mental model is not represented in language, but in a propositional "language of thought" specifying the elements and their relationship
- Not just a pictorial "image" in the mind
- A representationof the meaning conveyed, contracted in memory as we read: who is doing what, where, how, why
- A "mental model" or "situational representation"
- Sentence meaning = the propositions stated + the "speech act"
- Sentences state (explicitly and implicitly) propositions, which we must extract and link:
- To understand connected discourse, we must link "given" and "new" propositions within and across sentences
- And pick up the "speech act": assertion of facts, questioning etc.
- To understand connected discourse, we must link "given" and "new" propositions within and across sentences
- Comprehension activates, and adds propositions to existing knowledge in memory
- Sentences state (explicitly and implicitly) propositions, which we must extract and link:
- How do we know what propositions to build?
- Syntax (sentence structure)
- Sentences have tree-like structure, an ordered hierarchy of constituents ("phrases") which occupy essential role in relation to a main verb
- Constituents replaceable by others of same type without changing structure: innumerable possible sentences, limited range of structures in each language
- Syntax (sentence structure)
- Sentence structure clues
- Word order
- Function words - small fixed set of grammatical words that do structure-signalling jobs
- Word-modifying "morphological inflections" - signalling number, case, tense
- Evidence for a specialised structure-computing module in our brains:
- Some of Broca's aphasia patients have trouble understanding...
- Syntactically complex sentences, simple reversible sentences, and sentences whose meaning depends critically on affixes and function words
- Some of Broca's aphasia patients have trouble understanding...
- Level of ambiguity in language
- Lexical ambiguity - words with several distinct senses
- Syntactic ambiguity - ambiguous sentence structures
- Ambiguity of reference + speech act ambiguity
- Interpreting the writer / speaker's intention
- Utterances have surface forms which directly indicate a speech act (declaration, question etc)
- But any form uttered in a suitable context can be used to perform an indirect speech act of a different kind
- We have to infer the speech act intended from extra-linguistic cues (body language) and general knowledge
- Some inferencing is automatic - we remember what we infer as if it were explicitly stated
- We have to infer the speech act intended from extra-linguistic cues (body language) and general knowledge
- But any form uttered in a suitable context can be used to perform an indirect speech act of a different kind
- Some social/legal speech acts are signalled directly by the use of particular words, but work only in a felicitous context ("I declare you man and wife")
- Utterances have surface forms which directly indicate a speech act (declaration, question etc)
- Local lexical and syntactic ambiguity
- Many words or structures are ambiguous until later info tells us how to interpret them
- We usually disambiguate the meaning without awareness of the ambiguity or noticeable perturbation
- Average fixation durations are longer on ambiguous words
- We sometimes have to backtrack to make sense of a lexical or syntactic ambiguity
- During reading such "garden path" sentences often result in regressive eye movements
- We sometimes have to backtrack to make sense of a lexical or syntactic ambiguity
- Average fixation durations are longer on ambiguous words
- We usually disambiguate the meaning without awareness of the ambiguity or noticeable perturbation
- Many words or structures are ambiguous until later info tells us how to interpret them
- The end product of text / discourse comprehension
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