The Language Instinct Talking Heads. Construing the Meaning Comprehension involves a process of...

The Language Instinct

Talking Heads

Construing the Meaning

Comprehension involves a process of finding subjects, verbs, objects and so on, that it takes place unconsciously

• A dog bites a man.

• A man bites a dog.

• A man is bitten by a dog.

A definition of parser

• Parser - the mental programme that

analyses sentence structure during language

comprehension

Components of a Simple Sentence

• S NP VP

• NP det N

• VP V NP

• N boy, girl, dog, cat, ice cream, candy,

hot dogs, etc.

• V eats, likes, bites, etc.

The dog likes ice cream

det |the...

NP

det N

the...

The dog likes ice cream

S

NP VP

det N

the...

Difficulties with understading long, complicated phrases

• Memory - one has to keep track of phrases that need particular words to complete them

• Decision-making - when a word or phrase belongs to two different cagetories (eg. VP, NP), one has to decide which to use to build the next branch of the tree

Memory

• Short term memory is the key tool in human information processing

• Only a few items - plus or minus seven can be held in mind at once

• The items are immediately subject to fading or being overwritten

Memory

• Memory-stretching sentences

• Onion sentences

The Memory-Stretching Sentence

He gave the girl that he met in New York

while visiting his parents for ten days

around Christmas and New Year´s the

candy.

He gave the candy to the girl that he met in

New York while visiting his parents for ten

days around Christmas and New Year´s.

Onion Sentences

• The dog the stick the fire burned beat bit the

cat.

• The malt that the rat that the cat killed ate

lay in the house.

• If if if it rains it pours I get depressed I

should get help.

Onion Sentences

• Onion sentences show that a grammar and a

parser are different things

• A person can recognise constructions that

he or she can never understand.

“Can you do addition?” the White

Queen asked. “What´s one and one and one

and one and one and one and one and one

and one and one?

“I don´t know,” said Alice. “I lost count.”

“She can´t do Addition,” the Red Queen

interrupted.

• The human sentence parser keeps track of where it is in a sentence by writing a number in a slot next to each phrase type on a master checklist.

• When a type of a sentence has to be remembered more than once - so that both it and the identical type of phrase it is inside of can be completed in order - there is not enough room on the checklist for both numbers to fit, and the phrases cannot be completed properly.

• The cheese that some rats that were chased

by the cats that I feed ate turned out to be

rancid.

Decision Making

• Many words have more than one lexical entry (e.g. one can be either a determiner or a noun) thus a parser has to decide which option fits a sentence the best

• Phrases can also go inside either a NP or a VP - so that it also may lead to ambiguities

• The plastic pencil marks...

• The plastic pencil marks were ugly.

• The plastic pencil marks easily.

• Ingres enjoyed painting his models nude.

• Visiting relatives can be boring.

• Vegetarians don´t know how good meat

tastes.

• I saw the man with the binoculars.

The Two Ways of Decision Making

• Breadth-first search

• Depth-first search

Garden Path Sentences

• Sentences are not laid out with clear markers allowing the reader to stride confidently through to the end

• Delays Dog Deaf-Mute Murder Trial

• British Banks Soldier On

• Family Leave Law a Landmark Not Only for Newborn´s Parents

Background Knowledge

• Understanding is not possible unless interlocutors share the same background assumptions.

• This involves, for instance, cultural background, knowledge of recent facts, etc.

• Woman: I´m leaving you.

• Man: Who is he?

Thank you for your attention