Psycholinguistics #1 (LING 640)

syllabus etc.‘official’ materials coming by mid-week … web server problem

Course format: case studies, discussion, “moderated debate”; projects; mix of written assignments

Readings: all primary literature, all available online

Projects: lab #1a coming very soon; approx. 1 per month, some multi-part

Grades: A = 80% … and it’s not your target

Silence is not golden

Collaboration: yes, yes, yes!

Dates: no class on 9/23, 11/4 (and 9/7 – Labor Day)

today … this yearWhat a good psycholinguist needs:

a. Understanding of the problem space, how pieces connectb. Practical, analytical, computational skillsc. Zoom in/out: connect details to broader issuesd. Taste/nose for a good probleme. Lots of knowledge, about language(s), about learner groups, etc.

This is different than standard linguistic analysis/theory

scopelearning

understanding

speaking

brain stuff

sounds, words, sentences, meanings, …

… stuff that you do with experiments

From Cellsto Structure

Levels of Analysis

≠

Architectural Components

≠

Tasks

how many dots?

how many dots?

Number Cognition• Multiple systems for encoding quantity:

Approximate number systemExact number system

• Task-specific routines for specific numerical problems can be distinguished from deeper understanding of number

e.g., 423 x 56 = ___

e.g., early counting: “one, two, three, four … two dogs!”

Chomsky 1965

• “We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations). Only under the idealization set forth in the preceding paragraph is performance a direct reflection of competence. […] Observed use of language […] may provide evidence as to the nature of this mental reality, but surely cannot constitute the actual subject matter of linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline.” (p. 4)

• “To avoid what has been a continuing misunderstanding, […] a generative grammar is not a model for a speaker or a hearer. […] When we say that a sentence has a certain derivation with respect to a particular generative grammar, we say nothing about how the speaker or hearer might proceed, in some practical or efficient way, to construct such a derivation. These questions belong to the theory of language use - the theory of performance. (p. 9)

claim #1cognitive system vs. behavior

(necessary)

claim #2different cognitive systems

(empirical hypothesis)

Lewis & Phillips 2015

Levels of Analysis

≠

Architectural Components

≠

Tasks

Standard Grammatical Analysis

(a.k.a. ‘syntactic theory’)

Hierarchical groupings of terminals

All elements are discrete symbolic representations

No time dimension

Derivations generally not taken as claims about actual time steps (Phillips & Lewis 2013)

Default questions:How acceptable is this sentence?Why is it so (un)acceptable? Does it violate combinatorial rules? Is it just hard?

… This is a narrow set of questions to ask.

Cognitive Models of Sentence Structure Building

(a.k.a. ‘processing theories’)

Same questions + many more

Order always mattersTime sometimes matters

representation = memory encoding

dependencies =memory access

nodes may have varyingactivation levels

computations may depend on indep. cogn. abilities

comprehension, production work w/ limited information

Lewis, Vasishth & Van Dyke 2006

Dillon, Sloggett, Mishler, & Phillips 2013

Neural Models of Sentence Structure BuildingDifferent vocabulary / toolkitConstraints from connectivity & anatomyNodes correspond to complex activity pattern

Van der Velde & de Kamps 2006

One Language SystemMultiple Levels of Analysis

“linguistic”

“cognitive”

“neural”

“computational?”

“algorithmic?”

“implementational”

Marr 1982

Marr-levels don’t really fit language research.

And there aren’t really 3 discrete levels.

Marr 1982, p. 25

“Suppose […] that one actually found the apocryphal grandmother cell.* Would that really tell us anything much at all? It would tell us that it existed – Gross’s hand-detectors tell us almost that – but not why or even how such a thing may be constructed from the outputs of previously discovered cells.”

(Marr 1982, p. 15)

* A cell that fires only when one’s grandmother comes into view.

Many Levels of Analysis

structural constraints

(left-right) order

resource limitations

time

memory architectureand access

non-discrete units

etc.

Multiple Language SystemsMultiple Levels of Analysis

GrammarParser Producer

some readings

Lewis, S. & Phillips, C. (2015). Aligning grammatical theories and language processing models. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 44, 27-46.

Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of language. Oxford UP. [ch 1-4]

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. MIT Press. [ch 1]

abstraction is a double-edged sword

Sensory MapsInternal representations of the outside world. Cellular neuroscience has discovered a great deal in this area.

The mind/brain’sview of the body

body parts scaledto area in brain:

somatosensoryhomunculus

Explicit models quickly reveal surprising complexity

Simple(-ish) Example I

• Vowel pronunciation (Canada, some midwest US, Maryland, …)– light l^jt– lied lajd– bright br^jt– bride brajd

• aj --> ^j / ___ [-voice]

• ‘Derived’ word forms– bitter, sitter, grater– lighter, brighter, writer

• Abstract solution: rule ordering

Simple(-ish) Example II

• Distribution of pronouns/reflexives– John likes him/himself.– John thinks that Mary likes him/himself.

• Infinitival clauses– John appeared to Bill to like himself.– John appeared to Bill to like him.

• But…– John appealed to Bill to like himself.– John appealed to Bill to like him.

• Abstract solution…– Johni appealed to Billj [PROj to like himselfj ]

‘the dog was big and hairy’

Abstraction

• Abstraction is valuable

– Provides representational power– Provides representational freedom– Provides an efficient code

• Abstraction is costly

– Linguistic representations are more distant from experience– This places a burden on the learner - motivation for innate knowledge– This places a burden on comprehension/production systems– … and it makes it harder to know what to look for in the brain

Abstraction and Learning

Abstraction and Learning

• Must ensure easy learning of any human language• Learner must project from finite input to a system with infinite

expressive power

typology problem =learning problem

Principles & Parameters program (1980s)

N. Chomsky

Who do you think John likes __?Who do you think that John likes __?

Who do you think __ likes John?Who do you think that __ likes John?

English *French *

Spanish okItalian ok

Levantine Ar. *Beni-Hassan Ar. ok

that-trace effect

‘Telephoned John.’

Who do you think that likes John __?

Post-verbal subject position

typology problem =learning problem

Principles & Parameters program (1980s)

Challenges…

1. Link all hard-to-observe facts to easy-to-observe phenomena2. Find reliable parameters of variation in the face of microvariation3. Find a reliable learning procedure4. Show evidence of abstract inference in learning

Language Diversity

langscape.umd.edu

statistical learning!

Elissa Newport(Georgetown)

Challenges…

1. Learning is closely tied to experience2. Robust learning procedures available, noise sensitive3. Evidence of learning available4. Almost nothing to say about hard-to-observe phenomena5. Little to say about typological consistency

“It has sometimes been argued that linguistic theory must meet the empirical condition that it account for the ease and rapidity of parsing. But parsing does not, in fact, have these properties. […] In general, it is not the case that language is readily usable or ‘designed for use.’” (Chomsky & Lasnik, 1993, p. 18)

Translating Representations

• We can show that comprehension and production are, in fact, rapid and (mostly) accurate

• Entails a need to quickly translate between codes

– Sounds abstract stuff Concepts

• Similar arguments apply as in learning: abstraction carries a cost

today … this year

What a good psycholinguist needs:

a. Understanding of the problem space, how pieces connect

b. Practical, analytical, computational skills

c. Zoom in/out: connect details to broader issues

d. Taste/nose for a good problem

e. Lots of knowledge, about language(s), about learner groups, etc.

This is different than standard linguistic analysis/theory

And: success = research x communication

practical experience is useful because …

You are a better consumer of experiments if you’re a producer of experiments

You get a feel for likely outcomes

It can be surprising what is easy and what is difficult to master

You pay more attention to things like good materials

taste / nose for a problem

we rarely learn much when we are right

a good problem is tractable

a good problem is related to a good hypothesis (at least one)

conflicts between well-established generalizations are often revealing

some areas are too messy or crowded (or fast-moving) to be fruitful

if a project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well (H. Gleitman)

simple is good

Abstraction and Encoding

From Cellsto Syntax

Linguistic Theories

• Classify (im)possible expressions• Emphasize complex hierarchical structures• Representations are symbolic and abstract• Rich cross-language variation• Typically disavow claims about real-time

operations

Linguistics: What speakers know about their native language

Psycholinguistics:Deploying language knowledge in real-time tasks

Cognitive Neuroscience:Using real-time brain recordings to understand linguistic processes

Computational Neuroscience:Neural modeling of linguistic computation