Topic 1 What is language? 1. Language is a ‘socially shared code that uses a conventional system of arbitrary symbols to represent ideas about the world that are meaningful to others who know the same code.’ N.W. Nelson (1998) a. A single language probably emerged within a social community of about 100 hominids. b. Language emerged within this community as a type of grooming behavior, an efficient way to share socially useful info. Then the numerous languages of the whole world emerged from this single community of language users. c. Morphemes are the smallest units of language that carry meaning; they are combined to create words. For example, ‘school’ consists of a single morpheme; ‘school’ two morphemes (school + -s); ‘preschools’ three (pre- + school + -s) d. Any language ‘code’ in the world that bonds relationship between a word and its referent is arbitrary. e. Language has to be systematic and rule-governed to make it nonrandom. f. Language has to be representational, that is, not only as a social tool but as an inner representational tool, emerging as a specialized part of the human mind. Language increases in the complexity of social dynamics with time when the size of a human community increases. 2. Modularity (組成) is a cognitive science theory about how the human mind is organized within the brain structures. Specific regions of the brain are associated with specific language abilities. For instance, persons who sustain damage to certain areas of the left frontal lobe, such as during a stroke, often exhibit difficulty with grammaticality that is called agrammaticism. But this theory is not without critics. In Bickerton’s observation, persons with damage to a specific area of the brain purportedly linked to agrammaticism, noting that these individuals showed diverse patterns of syntactic impairment. Because the same module was likely damaged in these individuals, the expectation would be little variability in their impairment. Topic 2 Differences among speech, hearing, and communication Speech, hearing, and communication are interacted and applied onto the social grooming all on the basis of language.
The human brain uses language as a representational tool to store information and to carry out many cognitive processes such as reasoning, hypothesizing, memorizing, planning, and problem solving. Considering the functioning of a human brain absent of language is nearly impossible because cognition and language become heavily intertwined during development. Although some persons may contend that they think in images and not in words, certain thoughts such as ‘My trust in you has been shattered forever by your unfaithfulness.’ are impossible to view as images and require language to be invoked as a representational tool.
1. Speech describes the voluntary neuromuscular process by which humans turn language into a sound signal that is transmitted through the air or other medium such as a telephone line to a receiver.
a. Speech involves the precise activation of muscles in four systems: respiration (lungs), phonation (vocal cords), resonation (oral and nasal cavities), and articulation (tongue, teeth, and jaw).
b. Advantages of speeches: communication in the dark, around corners, from far distances, subjects busy with their hands, to a larger amount of people at a time
c. Model of speech production: a model (模式) is a way to represent an unknown event on the basis of the best current evidence governing the event. Models of speech production provide a theoretical description of how an individual can move from a cognitive representation to a clearly articulated spoken product.
d. Basic model of speech production:
(i) Perceptual Target (represented by the phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can signal a difference in meaning, and in the production of syllables and words, a series of phonemes are strung together.)
(ii) Motor Schema (a rough motor plan based on the abstract representation of the perceptual target, which organizes the phonemes into syllable chunks)
(iii) Speech Output (sending forward the motor schema stimulates the production of speech, the airflow, vocal fold vibration, and oral cavity movements finely manipulated to carry out the motor schema) Then the ongoing feedback relays the info from speech output back into the origination of the other two. The feedback monitors the flow of speech by relaying info about timing, delivery, and precision. Speakers are usually unaware of this ongoing feedback.
e. Language doesn’t depend on speech for it can be conducted by other means such as writing, reading, signing, or just keeping it in mind as a thinking tool. However, speech depends wholly on language because language gives speech the meaning. Language and speech have independent processes respectively. Some people who have speech disorders such as cerebral palsy, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, 肌萎縮性脊髓側索硬化症) like Steven Hawking can have excellent language skills.
2. Hearing is the sensory system that allows speech to enter into and be processed by the human brain, including general auditory perception and speech perception. It is essential to both reception and comprehension of spoken language.
a. The transmission and reception of speech involves four acoustic events:
(i) Creation of a sound source: Like your hands to clapping or mouth to speaking, sound sources create sound by vibrating the air particles.
(ii) Vibration of air particles: It decides the pitch (frequency) and loudness (intensity) of a sound.
(iii) Reception by the ear: Outer chamber captures sound; middle chamber channels it; inner chamber, which contains cochlea, transfer auditory info to the auditory regions of the brain via the auditory nerve.
(iv) Comprehension by the brain: The auditory centers in the left hemisphere translate the sound. If the sound involves speech sounds, the speech and language centers help in the comprehension process. So sound info is differentiated by the human brain and ears as speech versus non-speech.
b. Speech perception refers to how the brain processes speech and language. Speech perception is different from auditory perception. The brain differentiates these two genres, processing speech differently other general auditory stimuli. This capability of speech calibration is endowed by birth and is enhanced by a few specific behavior of young children as follows: auditory overshadowing (preference for auditory than visual), striking ability to process and analyze speech as a particular type of auditory stimuli. Speech perception contains the application of coarticulation, the ‘smearing’ or ‘overlapping’ of phonemes like [k] + [a] together as [ka].
3. Communication is the process of sharing information among individuals. A spoken conversation between two persons involves language, hearing, and speech; in contrast, that in an Internet chat room involves only language.
a. Four basic processes: formulation and transmission by the sender, and reception and comprehension by the receiver.
b. Symbolic communication (referential communication): the relationship of the entity and its referent is arbitrary, which knows no limitations of space and time.
c. Preintentional communication: It is constrained to a particular space and time. The referent or the intention of the speaker must be inferred by the receiver.
d. Intentional communication (iconic communication): It is also constrained to a particular space and time. It has transparent relationship between the message and its referent, which is not arbitrary.
e. Oral communication: A common code of combination of speaking and listening by ‘humans’.
f. Three purposes of sharing info: To request, to reject, and to comment.
g. Other than f., people practice communication for seven purposes: instrumental (asking for sth.), regulatory (giving directions), interactional (social grooming), personal (emotional expressions), heuristic (finding out answers or solutions), imaginative (telling stories or role-play), informative (organized description of an event)
h. Model of communication: Formulation (involves language) and transmission (involves speech) a message by a sender --- Reception (involves hearing) and comprehension (involves language) the message by a receiver --- both use a shared symbolic means for communication --- feedback of a receiver
i. Linguistic feedback: spoken response
j. Paralinguistic feedback: Superimposed over the linguistic feedback as the use of pitch, loudness, and pausing.
k. Nonlinguistic feedback (extralinguistic feedback): eye contact, facial expression, posture, and proximity.
l. Communication breakdown: Inadequacies to produce sufficiently explicit info of either the sender or the receiver. It can be repaired by a conversational repair to provide necessary ongoing feedback to continue the conversation.
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