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Language Processing and
Comprehension
Revised for Syllabus of 2014
Consider the following:
What is more complicated –
Language or Mathematics?
Consider this:
• School children differ in their ability to
master math and yet…
• At an even earlier age (as toddlers and
preschoolers), almost all children learn to
speak!
• Does that mean Math is more complicated?
Now, consider this:
• An average computer today can perform the
most complicated mathematical calculations
with ease and yet…
• Despite years of research, no computer has
as yet learnt to “speak”! (i.e., use language
in the same way that humans use it)!
• Does this mean language is more
complicated?
And this:
• To use math, you need to learn rules to solve a
set of problems
• To use language, you need –
• …not to recognize a set of sentences, but
rather
• …to learn a set of rules for constructing and
understanding novel sentences.
• Can you understand this:
Subhash Chandra Bose invaded India with an
army of purple gorillas in 2007, by flying over
the Alps when the black mountains rose and
broke their wings, and Bose and his army were
forced to land in the snow, nursing their wings.
But they were up in a thrice and once they
crossed the green desert, they fought the pink
elephants that were guarding the borders and
took everyone captive till the Pakistani
government paid a ransom of rotten tomatoes to
set India free!
Welcome to a world where a
word is worth a thousand
pictures…
Welcome to the world
of language!
Topics Covered
• Part 1: Nature and Structure
– Nature of human language
– Structure of human language – theory of
constituent processing, Chomsky’s
transformational grammar, word
organization, factors affecting
comprehension
• Part 2:Language Comprehension
– Understanding spoken language – processes
involved in speech perception
– Reading – Process, theories of word recognition,
factors affecting reading comprehension
Topics Covered
Spoken
language
Structure
Nature
Language
Reading
Background
• The area of cognitive science that examines
how people learn and use language to
communicate ideas is called
psycholinguists.
• Cognitive science itself is an
interdisciplinary field that draws on
research from psychology, computer
science, neuroscience, philosophy,
linguistics… to name a few.
Background
• Psycholinguistics is also interdisciplinary and
draws from research in many areas but
primarily in psychology and linguistics.
• Within Psychology, it draws from research in
attention, perception, memory, thinking, etc…
• In linguistics, it draws from research in
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,
etc…
• It also draws from computer science and
neuroscience.
DEFINITION
Psycholinguistics is an area that
studies the psychological
processes involved in the use of
language - both production and
comprehension
Activity
• Repeat after me “Heads, shoulders, knees
and toes”!
• Tell me your mother’s name!
• Who is sitting next to you?
• What colour is your footwear?
• Notice how easily you were able to
understand my instructions and say what is
in your mind !
Background
• Language is used with little difficulty by
everyone who learns it at an early age.
• Thus, language processing, comprehension,
and production seem extremely simple.
• People are remarkably efficient in
understanding and producing language
• However, though we use language with ease, it
is one of the most complicated of cognitive
phenomena! 
Background
• At the heart of psycholinguistics are two
questions:
– What knowledge of language is needed for us to
use language (tactic – i.e. knowing how to speak or
explicit – i.e., knowing what processes are involved
in speech?) and
– What cognitive processes are involved in the
everyday use of language
• We shall try to answer these questions in the
next two units!
Background
• Language appears to be universal across all
human societies.
• In the 1970s, a stone age tribe, the Tasaday,
was found in a remote part of the Philippines.
The tribe had been removed from any contact
with the rest of the world.
• Yet they spoke a language
• Moreover, others could learn their language,
and they could learn other languages.
Background
• So, it seems that despite the apparent
diversity of human languages, all societies
use language in similar ways, and any
language can be learned by anybody.
• Therefore, there must be certain underlying
similarities across all languages ever
invented or yet to be invented!
• “Deep freeze, Blazing, blue star – for way out!
Language and Communication
Nature of Human Language:
Language and Communication
• Language is not communication
• Language is a tool
• Other modes of communication …
• All species have forms of communicating
• Many systems are very elaborate…
Language and Communication…
• Wolves - emotions - position of ears, lips, and
tail
• Primates and cats -facial expressions - fear,
aggressiveness
• Birds - songs - sexual readiness, possession of
territory
• Honeybees - dance - direction, distance and
quality of honey
Language and
Communication…
• So what is language?
• Hockett (1960, 1961) - differences between
language and communication.
Language and
Communication…
• Use of speech
• Arbitrary association
• Naming
• Semanticity
• Structure dependence
• Displacement
• Generativeness
• Expressive power
Use of Speech…
• Not vocalizations, but speech
• Do species other than humans use speech?
• Does language really need speech?
• What about…
– Braille
– Sign language
• So not a critical feature
Arbitrary Association
• Human language involves arbitrary relations
between words and what the words refer to
• Buffalo, Bu-fe-low
– Why not big-fellow, or marshmallow or
owaka?
• “A rose by any other name …”
• Some animal systems involve similar
arbitrariness – e.g., bird songs
• So, not a critical feature
Naming
• Think of a friend …
• Humans depend heavily on naming
• Almost as if to say if we can name something,
we have understood it, as if a name conveys all
there is to know about the object!
• Monkey’s warning signs use similar naming,
but range is limited
• Whether naming is critical or not is debated
Semanticity
• Use of symbols (words) to identify everything
• Language depends heavily on this
• Semanticity is a critical feature of human
language
Structure Dependence…
• “ships works he with” v/s “he works with
ships”
• Some forms of animal communication follow
sequence but it is merely that – a sequence
• Human language depends highly on structure;
parts of speech
• Structure dependence is a critical feature
Displacement…
• Communicate events from the past as well
as about the future
• “when I grow big like you, you will become
small like me and I will give you a bath”
• Intentions and imaginations - Cheshire cats,
walking and talking playing cards, a flood
of tears…
• Displacement is a critical feature
Generativeness
• By reconstructing a finite set of basic units,
new messages can be regularly and
frequently constructed
• Generativeness is a definite critical feature
I LOVE ONLY YOU
See how this can change:
• I love only you
• (and none other)
• Only I love you
• (and no one else does)
• I only love you
• (and nothing more, so don’t expect ever lasting
commitment, love is not worth the bondage)
• I love you only
• (…I will have to leave you anyway because I
have to marry this other person, but don’t
worry, I will always love you)
Expressive Power…
• Communicate an amazing range of thoughts
• “When I grow up, I will be a monster!”
• Monkey: “rraup”,  “I see an eagle”; “hey,
there is danger about – in the form of an
eagle”.
• But that is the limit of the communiqué.
• The monkey’s communication system does not
extend to other associations such as – “I don’t see
an eagle”, or “Thank heavens it wasn’t an eagle”
or “Good gracious, was that an eagle, it looked
more like a pterodactyl”, or “are you afraid of
eagles?”, or “That was some huge eagle that we
saw yesterday wasn’t it”, or even “I hope the
eagle doesn’t come this way tomorrow”!
Expressive Power
Language and
Communication…
• Nor can the bee dance to talk about the lovely
sights he saw in his search for nectar!
• Expressive power is a critical feature
• But EP is highly dependent on generativeness,
thus in itself, so may not be such a critical
feature - debated
Language Acquisition Device…
• Why cannot parrots, dolphins, etc use
language?
• Chomsky and others: language is species-
specific
• Chomsky: humans have an LAD which is
lacking in other species; other species can
not be taught language
Language Acquisition Device
• Keith and Cathy Hayes attempted to train a
chimp name Vicki to pronounce English words
in the 1940s
• In the 1960s, David Premack developed and
tried to teach Sarah (a chimp) an artificial
language where coloured plastic shapes stood
for words fixed on a magnetic board
Language Acquisition Device
• Around the same time (1960s), Terrace used a
chimp called Nim Chimpsky to learn
American Sign Language (ASL)
• Beatrice and Allen Gardner tried to teach a
chimp named Washoe to use ASL, also in the
1960s
• Savage-Rumbaugh (1994) taught a bonobo
called Matata language using a lexigram, her
son Kanzi actually learnt it.
Language Acquisition Device…
• But while the chimpanzees’ learning was
certainly impressive, it in no way apes the
speed or flexibility that human children
exhibit while learning language.
• Moreover, there is no evidence that these
chimps used anything like “sentences”.
• Thus, only humans are capable of language
Summary
Nature
Language
Language
And
Communi-
cation
Compare other
human forms of
communication
Compare other
non-human
forms of
communication
Hockett’s
features
Arbitrary association
Naming
Semanticity
Structure dependence
Displacement
Generativeness
Use of speech
Expressive power
LAD and
research with
chimps
Functions of Language
Nature of Human of Language:
Functions of language
• Imagine a situation when language in any form
was forbidden!
• Language is virtually an essential part of every
social interaction.
• And since social interaction is the most
common action in life, language is an essential
part of life.
Functions of language…
• Usually, when we speak, we are also doing
something.
• For e.g.,
– “I bet India will come back with at least two
golds this Olympics”
– “I will return that book tomorrow”
Functions of language…
• Speech acts (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969).
• Three most common types of speech acts
correspond to the three types of sentences:
– declarative,
– question,
– Imperative
Functions of language…
• Helsinki is the capital of Sweden.
• Do you think it will rain today?
• Give me that carton of grape juice!
• Sometimes, the boundaries are blurred and
intended or required action determines the
speech act (or type of sentence)
• Can you shut the door?
Functions of language…
• Whatever the purpose, speech acts almost
always require that information be conveyed to
the listener.
– good heavens, that is such a dusty table…,
– oh dear, its time to feed the baby…)
• So the essential function of language is that it
be able to convey information
DEFINITION
Speech acts communicate the
required or intended action to
the listener
Summary
Nature
Language
Functions
Conveys information
Through
Speech Acts
declarative
question
imperative
Language Processing Revised.pptx
Structure of Human Language
Language:
The Structure of Language
• Phonemes
• Phonology
• Morphemes
• Morphology
• Words
• Phrases
• Sentences
• Syntax or Constituent
Structure – rules that
govern organization of
all the above!
The Structure of Language…
the stranger talked to the players
the stranger talked to the players
the stranger players
the
to
talked
the strang er talk ed to the play er s
ð Ə s t r e y n j Ə r t Ə k t t u w ð Ə p l e y Ə r z
The Structure of Language…
• But a sentence that is syntactically correct is
not enough to make good conversation
• “mangoes wishing tape”
• It should be semantic – convey meaning
The Structure of Language…
• Finally, a conversation is not merely an
exchange of meaningful information.
• In fact, social rules dictate the type of
conversations that may or may not take place.
• These are called pragmatics – the social
aspects of language that govern most social
interactions!
• For e.g., you may not say “will you shut up” to
your teacher, no matter how tired or bored you
are!
DEFINITION
The study of how language
sounds are produced and
comprehended is Phonology
The study of how syllables are
created and comprehended is
Morphology
DEFINITION
The study of how words are
organized is Syntax
The study of meaning of
language is Semantics
The study of the social rules that
govern language is Pragmatics
Summary
Structure
Language
phonemes
morphemes
words
Units
phrases
sentences
Rules
for
combos
Syntax
Seman
tics
Prag
matics
Constituent Structure
Structure of Human Language:
Constituent Structure
• As you read this sentence you must
combine the various phonemes,
morphemes, words, and phrases together,
decode the meanings of each individual
constituent, and the combinations, to
understand what the sentence means.
Constituent Structure...
• Understands sounds like m – e – t – y – o – r –
• Meaning of words like your, met, mother,
mall, yesterday
• Meaning of the phrases and the meaning of
the whole sentence.
• A lot of cognitive work?
• Yes, but your brain manages to decode in
milliseconds!
Constituent Structure…
• A constituent is a phrase or basic unit of the
sentence, usually containing more than one
word, but less than an entire sentence.
• “As a rough guide, a constituent is a group of
words that can be replaced by a single word
without a change in function and without
doing violence to (without violating) the rest of
the sentence” (Clark & Clark, 1977)
Nature of Constituents
1. The young woman carried the heavy painting
2. The kind-hearted boy helped his new friend
across the pond
3. Students who remember well will be more
active in class
Look at the following sentences and arrange
them into natural groups – i.e., group together
words that seem to belong together:
Nature of Constituents…
• Now the sentence “the young woman carried
the heavy painting” could be broken down into
two major parts” “young woman” and “carried
the painting”.
• We could easily replace the constituent “young
woman” with a single word and not change the
meaning of the sentence: replace with
Mruganayani, teenager, student… and the
meaning would not change!
Nature of Constituents…
the young woman carried the heavy painting
the young woman carried the heavy painting
the young woman the heavy painting
carried
young woman the heavy painting
heavy painting
Nature of Constituents…
• But “woman carried the” is not a constituent
• Why do listeners or readers look at
constituents?
• Meaning of the word depends on its position in
the phrase!
Nature of Constituents…
• ‘painting’ is both a noun and a verb – “Nina
was painting the cow”
• ‘block’”
“We are one block away from our destination”
“Anita stacked the last block in the tower”
“It was the block in the road that made us use the goat
path”
• The location of the word determines its
meaning! – at least in Formal ENGLISH!
DEFINITION
A constituent is a group of
words, like phrases, that can be
combined meaningfully and that
convey a single idea in a
sentence!
Activity, Read the paragraph
and recite it to me
Winnie the pooh was sitting on the branch of an
oak tree one morning when he heard a rumbling
noise, and felt the branch go up and down.
Really, it was distant thunder and a gust of wind,
but Winnie the pooh thought it was something
else. “Help! Help!” he cried, “A hungry
Heffalump’s trying to rob my honey. Quick,
somebody! Help me!”
Constituents and
Understanding…
Hearing speech sounds
Storing a representation in STWM
Locating meaning from semantic memory
Organizing representations into constituents
Determining meaning of constituents
Combining constituents to determine overall meaning
Forgetting exact words and retaining gist
Summary
Structure
Language
words
Consti-
tuent
structure
phrases
Nature
Under-
standing
Locating mng
Organizing into const
Mng of const
Mng of sentc
forgetting
hearing
Storing rep
Structure of Human Language:
Strategies for Identifying
Constituents
Strategies for identifying
constituents
• Kimball (1973) proposed that listeners have
developed a variety of strategies for
dividing sentences into constituents.
• One strategy concerns function words.
• Function words are words that are very
important for the structure of a grammatical
sentence
(for example – prepositions and
conjunctions)
Strategies for identifying
constituents…
• Kimball suggested that whenever listeners
find a function word, they begin a new
constituent:
“Pushpa said that Amit went to the store”
• Listeners would begin a new constituent
when they hear the words ‘that’ and ‘to’.
• Now, try with this sentence
“The dog and the cat slept on the sofa in the
living room”
Strategies for identifying
constituents…
• Kimball proposed that listeners develop a
second strategy to accompany the first:
• As soon as a function word indicates the
beginning of a constituent, the listeners
search for content words.
• Content words are words that refer to
persons, objects, and actions
(for example – nouns and verbs)
Strategies for identifying
constituents…
• A function word such as ‘in’ alerts the
listener to search for a noun.
• The listener knows that a noun must come,
no matter how many other words intervene:
“In the deep, dark, long-forgotten,
spooky…”
• You know that a noun must come
eventually!
Strategies for identifying
constituents…
• Clark and Clark (1977) point out other strategies
such as the use of affixes.
• Affixes are word parts that indicate the part of
speech of the word.
(for example – -er, -y, -ly, etc)
• -er are typically nouns (painter, writer)
• -y words are typically adjectives (pretty, nasty)
• -ly are typically adverbs (finally, quickly)
DEFINITION
Function words are words that
determine the structure of
language, they have to do with
the surface structure or syntax
Content words are words that
convey the idea through
language, they have to do with
semantics or deep structure
Strategies for identifying
constituents…
• Thus, Clark and Clark suggest that listeners
use these word parts to identify parts of
speech.
• Thus by knowing the parts of speech, listeners
can identify constituents – in terms of nouns,
verbs and therefore noun phrases and verb
phrases.
Strategies for identifying
constituents…
• But these strategies are not fool proof; they
do not guarantee a solution and may also be
misleading (clever, lonely, lily).
• But they usually allow us to understand a
sentence correctly.
• That is why these strategies are called
heuristics (rules of thumb used in solving
problems).
Summary
Structure
Language
Consti-
tuent
structure
Nature
Under-
standing
Strat to
Identify
const
Kimball (1973) –
function and
content words
Clark & Clark
(1977) affixes
Structure of Human Language:
Transformational Grammar
Transformational Grammar
• People usually think of a sentence as an
orderly sequence of words.
• Noam Chomsky (1957, 1965) proposed that
there is more to a sentence that meets the eye
• Chomsky argued that human language abilities
could only be explained in terms of a complex
system of rules and principles represented in
the minds of the speakers.
Transformational
Grammar…
• Chomsky devised a model of
transformational grammar to convert
underlying deep structure to surface
structure of a sentence.
• Surface structure is represented by the
words that are actually spoken or written.
• Deep structure is the underlying meaning of
the sentence, something more abstract than
the words themselves.
Transformational
Grammar…
• Chomsky pointed out that two sentences may
have very different surface structure, but very
similar deep structure:
“Trisha threw the ball”
“The ball was thrown by Trisha”
• In the example, the surface structure is very
different in both sentences – none of the words
occupy the same position and some words that
appear in one sentence do not appear in the
other one at all!
Transformational
Grammar…
• And yet, the meaning of both sentences are
identical – the deep structure is the same.
• In contrast, two sentences may share the same
surface structure, but very different deep
structure:
“Prabha is easy to please”
“Prabha is eager to please”
• The sentences differ by a single word and yet
mean two different things entirely!
Transformational
Grammar…
• Further, sentences can have identical
surface structures but very different deep
structures:
“The shooting of the hunters was terrible”
“The lamb was too hot to eat”
“They are cooking apples”
• One way of analysing the deep structure is
to rewrite the sentence differently using
rewrite rules
Transformational
Grammar…
• For example “they are cooking apples” can be
written in two ways:
they are cooking apples
NP VP
Det Aux V
N
NP
S
Transformational
Grammar…
they are cooking apples
NP VP
Det Aux
N
NP
S
Adj
Transformational
Grammar…
• Chomsky proposed that people understand
sentences by transforming the surface into a
basic deep structure or kernel form.
• They use transformational rules to convert
surface structure to deep structure while
understanding language.
• And they use transformational rules to convert
deep structure to surface structure while
producing language
Transformational
Grammar…
• Chomsky’s ideas inspired many studies
during the 60s and 70s.
• Mehler (1963) found that people recalled
kernel sentences such as
“the biologist has made the discovery”
better than one such as
“hasn’t the discovery been made by the
biologist?”
Transformational
Grammar…
• The reason for this is that the first sentence
does not require many transformations to be
understood – it is an active statement.
• However, the second statement is a
negative, passive question and requires
many transformations to be understood –
i.e., brought to the active statement form
Transformational
Grammar…
• However some research has not been in
favour of Chomsky’s theory.
• For e.g., a sentence such as
“the cookies were smelled by John” should
be easier to understand (take lesser time to
process and verify) than
“the cookies were smelled” because the
second sentence requires an additional
transformation to drop the by John
Transformational
Grammar…
• However, Slobin (1966) demonstrated that
the second sentence took less time to verify!
• So, there are exceptions
• In general, psychologists support
Chomsky’s notion of a distinction between
surface and deep structure
Transformational
Grammar…
• But the notion of a close correspondence
between the number of transformations and
psychological complexity has been met with
scepticism (Prideaux, 1985; Tartter, 1986).
• In other words, just because a sentence
requires more transformations does not
mean it is more difficult to understand.
Transformational
Grammar…
• Chomsky’s more recent theories place less
emphasis on transformations and more on
grammatical information contained in the
individual words (Chomsky, 1973, 1981;
Wasow, 1989).
• For example, the word ‘greet’ not only
conveys information about the word but
also specifies that the word must be
followed by a noun.
Transformational
Grammar…
• Defining the grammatical information is
more useful in determining how the
meaning is conveyed rather than by just
determining the number of transformations
that need to be made.
• In fact, various factors affect the
understanding of a sentence and some of
these are dealt with in the next session.
DEFINITION
Transformational grammar is the
process through which surface
structure can be transformed to
(or broken down into) deep
structure and deep structure can
be transformed to (or used to
create) surface structure
Summary
Structure
Language
Consti-
tuent
structure
Chomsky’s
Transfor-
mational
grammar
Surface Structure
Deep Structure (Kernel)
Rewrite rules
Transformations and
complexity
Study by Mehler (’63)
Study by Slobin (’66)
Language Comprehension:
Factors Affecting
Comprehension
Factors Affecting Comprehension
• Research on transformational grammar also
sparked an interest in the factors that influence
understanding of sentences.
• In general, certain types of sentences are more
difficult to understand than others – these
include:
– Sentences with negative
– Sentences that have a passive voice
– Sentences that are ambiguous
• We shall consider each of these in turn:
Factors Affecting Comprehension -
Negatives…
• Sentences that have negatives tend to be more
difficult to comprehend.
• For instance, this sentence that appeared in a
newspaper article would be very difficult to
comprehend:
“ALBANY – The Assembly yesterday
overwhelmingly approved a state Equal Rights
Amendment free of revisions intended to
restrict its influence on a woman’s right to an
abortion”
…negatives…
• The sentence contains many implied
negatives.
• Sentences that have negative words (no,
not) or has implied negative, always take
more time to process than sentences that
have affirmatives (Taylor & Taylor, 1990)
• A classic study by Clark and Chase (1972)
studied this phenomenon.
…negatives…
• Participants were asked to verify sentences
such as this”
Star is above plus. OR
Plus is not above star.
• In both cases, the statement is true, but
participants responded more quickly and made
fewer errors if the sentence was affirmative.
…negatives…
• If a sentence with one negative can cause
misinterpretation, what of sentences with
two or three negatives such as this:
Few people strongly deny that the world is
not flat (Sherman, 1976)
• The sentence has three negatives and is
almost incomprehensible.
• Understanding decreases as the number of
negatives increase
…negatives…
• Sherman (1976) presented participants with
affirmative sentences and sentences with
one, two, three, or four negatives.
• He found that people understood every one
of the affirmative sentences (100%
accuracy) while people understood only
51% of sentences with four negatives
(slightly better than guessing – 50%)
Factors Affecting Comprehension –
the passive voice…
• Chomsky pointed out that active and passive
voice forms may differ in surface structure but
have the same deep structure
• Active form is more basic and has very few
words, but the passive form requires additional
words.
• Moreover, the active form is used seven times
more often than the passive form in English
…the passive voice…
• Further, some passive forms sound
awkward
“the movie was watched by us”
• And there are no passive forms for certain
words
“Ishanvi is sleeping” - convert that!
• Verbs such as sleep, resemble, be, and cost
do not have passive forms
…the passive voice…
• Hornby (1974) asked people to judge whether
a picture correctly represented a sentence.
• People responded faster if the sentence was
active
“the girl is petting the cat”
than if it was passive
“the cat is being petted by the girl”
…the passive voice…
• The active voice is definitely easier to
understand
• Earlier, the passive voice was highly
recommended for scientific writing.
Fortunately now, the current style manuals
of many publications (such as APA)
recommend using the active voice
Factors Affecting Comprehension –
ambiguity…
• As we discussed earlier, ambiguous
sentences are more difficult to understand
• There are three kinds of ambiguity and each
has a different effect on understanding
• The first is lexical ambiguity – a word has
two meanings:
time flies like an arrow,
but fruit flies like a banana.
…ambiguity…
• The sentence is difficult to understand
because the word ‘flies’ has two meanings.
• Many puns and riddles are based on lexical
ambiguity
• A second type of ambiguity is surface
structure ambiguity in which words can be
grouped together in more than one way:
…ambiguity…
• “The only ones who volunteered are a few
incompetent people like Nitin and you”
• In this sentence ‘you’ can be competent or
incompetent
• A third type is deep structure ambiguity in
which the essential logical relations
between phrases can be interpreted in two
ways:
• “senator found drunk on Capitol steps”
…ambiguity…
• An ambiguous sentence is one with a single
surface structure but two or more different
deep structures.
• Foss (1970) asked people to listen to
ambiguous and unambiguous sentences. At
the same time, they performed an additional
task – pressing a button every time they
heard the sound b in a sentence.
…ambiguity…
• RTs were longer when the participants were
listening to an ambiguous sentence than an
unambiguous one.
• Foss reasoned that ambiguous sentences
need more processing time and thus the
capacity for other tasks is lesser
• Theorists disagree about how listeners
process ambiguous material:
…ambiguity…
• Some theorists favour the PDP and argue
that when people encounter potential
ambiguity, the activation builds up for all
meanings of the ambiguous items
• The degree of activation depends on the
frequency of the meanings and the context
(Simpson, 1984; Simpson & Burgess, 1985)
…ambiguity…
• So in the example,
– Pat took the money to the bank
• All the different meanings of the word bank
will be activated such as
• But “financial institution” will be more
highly activated than the other meanings of
bank such as “blood bank”, “river bank”,
etc
…ambiguity…
• However, other theorists argue that context
constrains the meaning activation at the
very beginning itself
• These theorists believe that only a single
interpretation of the sentence that is most
appropriate in the context will be activated
(Glucksberg, 1986).
…ambiguity…
• For instance, if the sentence
– Pat received his monthly salary and he wanted
to keep it safe
• Preceded the sentence
– Pat took the money to the bank
• Then it is unlikely that the brain will waste
time and energy in activating all the other
meanings of the bank, when the meaning
“financial institution” is obvious from the
…ambiguity…
• However, if the passage read:
– Pat took the money to the bank. He believed in
the fable and wanted to make his wish come
true. He wanted to drop the three coins in the
river, repeating Anne’s name each time. Then
she would consent to marry him.
• The meaning of the word bank will remain
ambiguous till the reader/ listener comes to
the word “river”. In this event, obviously
the PDP approach makes more sense.
…ambiguity…
• So, much more research is required to
determine which approach is more accurate.
Summary
Structu
re
Langu
age
Factors
affecting
Comprehens
ion
Negatives
Ambiguity
Passive voice
 That is all!
Language Processing Revised.pptx

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Language Processing Revised.pptx

  • 2. Consider the following: What is more complicated – Language or Mathematics?
  • 3. Consider this: • School children differ in their ability to master math and yet… • At an even earlier age (as toddlers and preschoolers), almost all children learn to speak! • Does that mean Math is more complicated?
  • 4. Now, consider this: • An average computer today can perform the most complicated mathematical calculations with ease and yet… • Despite years of research, no computer has as yet learnt to “speak”! (i.e., use language in the same way that humans use it)! • Does this mean language is more complicated?
  • 5. And this: • To use math, you need to learn rules to solve a set of problems • To use language, you need – • …not to recognize a set of sentences, but rather • …to learn a set of rules for constructing and understanding novel sentences. • Can you understand this:
  • 6. Subhash Chandra Bose invaded India with an army of purple gorillas in 2007, by flying over the Alps when the black mountains rose and broke their wings, and Bose and his army were forced to land in the snow, nursing their wings. But they were up in a thrice and once they crossed the green desert, they fought the pink elephants that were guarding the borders and took everyone captive till the Pakistani government paid a ransom of rotten tomatoes to set India free!
  • 7. Welcome to a world where a word is worth a thousand pictures… Welcome to the world of language!
  • 8. Topics Covered • Part 1: Nature and Structure – Nature of human language – Structure of human language – theory of constituent processing, Chomsky’s transformational grammar, word organization, factors affecting comprehension • Part 2:Language Comprehension – Understanding spoken language – processes involved in speech perception – Reading – Process, theories of word recognition, factors affecting reading comprehension
  • 10. Background • The area of cognitive science that examines how people learn and use language to communicate ideas is called psycholinguists. • Cognitive science itself is an interdisciplinary field that draws on research from psychology, computer science, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics… to name a few.
  • 11. Background • Psycholinguistics is also interdisciplinary and draws from research in many areas but primarily in psychology and linguistics. • Within Psychology, it draws from research in attention, perception, memory, thinking, etc… • In linguistics, it draws from research in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc… • It also draws from computer science and neuroscience.
  • 12. DEFINITION Psycholinguistics is an area that studies the psychological processes involved in the use of language - both production and comprehension
  • 13. Activity • Repeat after me “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes”! • Tell me your mother’s name! • Who is sitting next to you? • What colour is your footwear? • Notice how easily you were able to understand my instructions and say what is in your mind !
  • 14. Background • Language is used with little difficulty by everyone who learns it at an early age. • Thus, language processing, comprehension, and production seem extremely simple. • People are remarkably efficient in understanding and producing language • However, though we use language with ease, it is one of the most complicated of cognitive phenomena! 
  • 15. Background • At the heart of psycholinguistics are two questions: – What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language (tactic – i.e. knowing how to speak or explicit – i.e., knowing what processes are involved in speech?) and – What cognitive processes are involved in the everyday use of language • We shall try to answer these questions in the next two units!
  • 16. Background • Language appears to be universal across all human societies. • In the 1970s, a stone age tribe, the Tasaday, was found in a remote part of the Philippines. The tribe had been removed from any contact with the rest of the world. • Yet they spoke a language • Moreover, others could learn their language, and they could learn other languages.
  • 17. Background • So, it seems that despite the apparent diversity of human languages, all societies use language in similar ways, and any language can be learned by anybody. • Therefore, there must be certain underlying similarities across all languages ever invented or yet to be invented! • “Deep freeze, Blazing, blue star – for way out!
  • 18. Language and Communication Nature of Human Language:
  • 19. Language and Communication • Language is not communication • Language is a tool • Other modes of communication … • All species have forms of communicating • Many systems are very elaborate…
  • 20. Language and Communication… • Wolves - emotions - position of ears, lips, and tail • Primates and cats -facial expressions - fear, aggressiveness • Birds - songs - sexual readiness, possession of territory • Honeybees - dance - direction, distance and quality of honey
  • 21. Language and Communication… • So what is language? • Hockett (1960, 1961) - differences between language and communication.
  • 22. Language and Communication… • Use of speech • Arbitrary association • Naming • Semanticity • Structure dependence • Displacement • Generativeness • Expressive power
  • 23. Use of Speech… • Not vocalizations, but speech • Do species other than humans use speech? • Does language really need speech? • What about… – Braille – Sign language • So not a critical feature
  • 24. Arbitrary Association • Human language involves arbitrary relations between words and what the words refer to • Buffalo, Bu-fe-low – Why not big-fellow, or marshmallow or owaka? • “A rose by any other name …” • Some animal systems involve similar arbitrariness – e.g., bird songs • So, not a critical feature
  • 25. Naming • Think of a friend … • Humans depend heavily on naming • Almost as if to say if we can name something, we have understood it, as if a name conveys all there is to know about the object! • Monkey’s warning signs use similar naming, but range is limited • Whether naming is critical or not is debated
  • 26. Semanticity • Use of symbols (words) to identify everything • Language depends heavily on this • Semanticity is a critical feature of human language
  • 27. Structure Dependence… • “ships works he with” v/s “he works with ships” • Some forms of animal communication follow sequence but it is merely that – a sequence • Human language depends highly on structure; parts of speech • Structure dependence is a critical feature
  • 28. Displacement… • Communicate events from the past as well as about the future • “when I grow big like you, you will become small like me and I will give you a bath” • Intentions and imaginations - Cheshire cats, walking and talking playing cards, a flood of tears… • Displacement is a critical feature
  • 29. Generativeness • By reconstructing a finite set of basic units, new messages can be regularly and frequently constructed • Generativeness is a definite critical feature I LOVE ONLY YOU See how this can change:
  • 30. • I love only you • (and none other) • Only I love you • (and no one else does) • I only love you • (and nothing more, so don’t expect ever lasting commitment, love is not worth the bondage) • I love you only • (…I will have to leave you anyway because I have to marry this other person, but don’t worry, I will always love you)
  • 31. Expressive Power… • Communicate an amazing range of thoughts • “When I grow up, I will be a monster!” • Monkey: “rraup”,  “I see an eagle”; “hey, there is danger about – in the form of an eagle”. • But that is the limit of the communiqué.
  • 32. • The monkey’s communication system does not extend to other associations such as – “I don’t see an eagle”, or “Thank heavens it wasn’t an eagle” or “Good gracious, was that an eagle, it looked more like a pterodactyl”, or “are you afraid of eagles?”, or “That was some huge eagle that we saw yesterday wasn’t it”, or even “I hope the eagle doesn’t come this way tomorrow”! Expressive Power
  • 33. Language and Communication… • Nor can the bee dance to talk about the lovely sights he saw in his search for nectar! • Expressive power is a critical feature • But EP is highly dependent on generativeness, thus in itself, so may not be such a critical feature - debated
  • 34. Language Acquisition Device… • Why cannot parrots, dolphins, etc use language? • Chomsky and others: language is species- specific • Chomsky: humans have an LAD which is lacking in other species; other species can not be taught language
  • 35. Language Acquisition Device • Keith and Cathy Hayes attempted to train a chimp name Vicki to pronounce English words in the 1940s • In the 1960s, David Premack developed and tried to teach Sarah (a chimp) an artificial language where coloured plastic shapes stood for words fixed on a magnetic board
  • 36. Language Acquisition Device • Around the same time (1960s), Terrace used a chimp called Nim Chimpsky to learn American Sign Language (ASL) • Beatrice and Allen Gardner tried to teach a chimp named Washoe to use ASL, also in the 1960s • Savage-Rumbaugh (1994) taught a bonobo called Matata language using a lexigram, her son Kanzi actually learnt it.
  • 37. Language Acquisition Device… • But while the chimpanzees’ learning was certainly impressive, it in no way apes the speed or flexibility that human children exhibit while learning language. • Moreover, there is no evidence that these chimps used anything like “sentences”. • Thus, only humans are capable of language
  • 38. Summary Nature Language Language And Communi- cation Compare other human forms of communication Compare other non-human forms of communication Hockett’s features Arbitrary association Naming Semanticity Structure dependence Displacement Generativeness Use of speech Expressive power LAD and research with chimps
  • 39. Functions of Language Nature of Human of Language:
  • 40. Functions of language • Imagine a situation when language in any form was forbidden! • Language is virtually an essential part of every social interaction. • And since social interaction is the most common action in life, language is an essential part of life.
  • 41. Functions of language… • Usually, when we speak, we are also doing something. • For e.g., – “I bet India will come back with at least two golds this Olympics” – “I will return that book tomorrow”
  • 42. Functions of language… • Speech acts (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). • Three most common types of speech acts correspond to the three types of sentences: – declarative, – question, – Imperative
  • 43. Functions of language… • Helsinki is the capital of Sweden. • Do you think it will rain today? • Give me that carton of grape juice! • Sometimes, the boundaries are blurred and intended or required action determines the speech act (or type of sentence) • Can you shut the door?
  • 44. Functions of language… • Whatever the purpose, speech acts almost always require that information be conveyed to the listener. – good heavens, that is such a dusty table…, – oh dear, its time to feed the baby…) • So the essential function of language is that it be able to convey information
  • 45. DEFINITION Speech acts communicate the required or intended action to the listener
  • 48. Structure of Human Language Language:
  • 49. The Structure of Language • Phonemes • Phonology • Morphemes • Morphology • Words • Phrases • Sentences • Syntax or Constituent Structure – rules that govern organization of all the above!
  • 50. The Structure of Language… the stranger talked to the players the stranger talked to the players the stranger players the to talked the strang er talk ed to the play er s ð Ə s t r e y n j Ə r t Ə k t t u w ð Ə p l e y Ə r z
  • 51. The Structure of Language… • But a sentence that is syntactically correct is not enough to make good conversation • “mangoes wishing tape” • It should be semantic – convey meaning
  • 52. The Structure of Language… • Finally, a conversation is not merely an exchange of meaningful information. • In fact, social rules dictate the type of conversations that may or may not take place. • These are called pragmatics – the social aspects of language that govern most social interactions! • For e.g., you may not say “will you shut up” to your teacher, no matter how tired or bored you are!
  • 53. DEFINITION The study of how language sounds are produced and comprehended is Phonology The study of how syllables are created and comprehended is Morphology
  • 54. DEFINITION The study of how words are organized is Syntax The study of meaning of language is Semantics The study of the social rules that govern language is Pragmatics
  • 57. Constituent Structure • As you read this sentence you must combine the various phonemes, morphemes, words, and phrases together, decode the meanings of each individual constituent, and the combinations, to understand what the sentence means.
  • 58. Constituent Structure... • Understands sounds like m – e – t – y – o – r – • Meaning of words like your, met, mother, mall, yesterday • Meaning of the phrases and the meaning of the whole sentence. • A lot of cognitive work? • Yes, but your brain manages to decode in milliseconds!
  • 59. Constituent Structure… • A constituent is a phrase or basic unit of the sentence, usually containing more than one word, but less than an entire sentence. • “As a rough guide, a constituent is a group of words that can be replaced by a single word without a change in function and without doing violence to (without violating) the rest of the sentence” (Clark & Clark, 1977)
  • 60. Nature of Constituents 1. The young woman carried the heavy painting 2. The kind-hearted boy helped his new friend across the pond 3. Students who remember well will be more active in class Look at the following sentences and arrange them into natural groups – i.e., group together words that seem to belong together:
  • 61. Nature of Constituents… • Now the sentence “the young woman carried the heavy painting” could be broken down into two major parts” “young woman” and “carried the painting”. • We could easily replace the constituent “young woman” with a single word and not change the meaning of the sentence: replace with Mruganayani, teenager, student… and the meaning would not change!
  • 62. Nature of Constituents… the young woman carried the heavy painting the young woman carried the heavy painting the young woman the heavy painting carried young woman the heavy painting heavy painting
  • 63. Nature of Constituents… • But “woman carried the” is not a constituent • Why do listeners or readers look at constituents? • Meaning of the word depends on its position in the phrase!
  • 64. Nature of Constituents… • ‘painting’ is both a noun and a verb – “Nina was painting the cow” • ‘block’” “We are one block away from our destination” “Anita stacked the last block in the tower” “It was the block in the road that made us use the goat path” • The location of the word determines its meaning! – at least in Formal ENGLISH!
  • 65. DEFINITION A constituent is a group of words, like phrases, that can be combined meaningfully and that convey a single idea in a sentence!
  • 66. Activity, Read the paragraph and recite it to me Winnie the pooh was sitting on the branch of an oak tree one morning when he heard a rumbling noise, and felt the branch go up and down. Really, it was distant thunder and a gust of wind, but Winnie the pooh thought it was something else. “Help! Help!” he cried, “A hungry Heffalump’s trying to rob my honey. Quick, somebody! Help me!”
  • 67. Constituents and Understanding… Hearing speech sounds Storing a representation in STWM Locating meaning from semantic memory Organizing representations into constituents Determining meaning of constituents Combining constituents to determine overall meaning Forgetting exact words and retaining gist
  • 69. Structure of Human Language: Strategies for Identifying Constituents
  • 70. Strategies for identifying constituents • Kimball (1973) proposed that listeners have developed a variety of strategies for dividing sentences into constituents. • One strategy concerns function words. • Function words are words that are very important for the structure of a grammatical sentence (for example – prepositions and conjunctions)
  • 71. Strategies for identifying constituents… • Kimball suggested that whenever listeners find a function word, they begin a new constituent: “Pushpa said that Amit went to the store” • Listeners would begin a new constituent when they hear the words ‘that’ and ‘to’. • Now, try with this sentence “The dog and the cat slept on the sofa in the living room”
  • 72. Strategies for identifying constituents… • Kimball proposed that listeners develop a second strategy to accompany the first: • As soon as a function word indicates the beginning of a constituent, the listeners search for content words. • Content words are words that refer to persons, objects, and actions (for example – nouns and verbs)
  • 73. Strategies for identifying constituents… • A function word such as ‘in’ alerts the listener to search for a noun. • The listener knows that a noun must come, no matter how many other words intervene: “In the deep, dark, long-forgotten, spooky…” • You know that a noun must come eventually!
  • 74. Strategies for identifying constituents… • Clark and Clark (1977) point out other strategies such as the use of affixes. • Affixes are word parts that indicate the part of speech of the word. (for example – -er, -y, -ly, etc) • -er are typically nouns (painter, writer) • -y words are typically adjectives (pretty, nasty) • -ly are typically adverbs (finally, quickly)
  • 75. DEFINITION Function words are words that determine the structure of language, they have to do with the surface structure or syntax Content words are words that convey the idea through language, they have to do with semantics or deep structure
  • 76. Strategies for identifying constituents… • Thus, Clark and Clark suggest that listeners use these word parts to identify parts of speech. • Thus by knowing the parts of speech, listeners can identify constituents – in terms of nouns, verbs and therefore noun phrases and verb phrases.
  • 77. Strategies for identifying constituents… • But these strategies are not fool proof; they do not guarantee a solution and may also be misleading (clever, lonely, lily). • But they usually allow us to understand a sentence correctly. • That is why these strategies are called heuristics (rules of thumb used in solving problems).
  • 79. Structure of Human Language: Transformational Grammar
  • 80. Transformational Grammar • People usually think of a sentence as an orderly sequence of words. • Noam Chomsky (1957, 1965) proposed that there is more to a sentence that meets the eye • Chomsky argued that human language abilities could only be explained in terms of a complex system of rules and principles represented in the minds of the speakers.
  • 81. Transformational Grammar… • Chomsky devised a model of transformational grammar to convert underlying deep structure to surface structure of a sentence. • Surface structure is represented by the words that are actually spoken or written. • Deep structure is the underlying meaning of the sentence, something more abstract than the words themselves.
  • 82. Transformational Grammar… • Chomsky pointed out that two sentences may have very different surface structure, but very similar deep structure: “Trisha threw the ball” “The ball was thrown by Trisha” • In the example, the surface structure is very different in both sentences – none of the words occupy the same position and some words that appear in one sentence do not appear in the other one at all!
  • 83. Transformational Grammar… • And yet, the meaning of both sentences are identical – the deep structure is the same. • In contrast, two sentences may share the same surface structure, but very different deep structure: “Prabha is easy to please” “Prabha is eager to please” • The sentences differ by a single word and yet mean two different things entirely!
  • 84. Transformational Grammar… • Further, sentences can have identical surface structures but very different deep structures: “The shooting of the hunters was terrible” “The lamb was too hot to eat” “They are cooking apples” • One way of analysing the deep structure is to rewrite the sentence differently using rewrite rules
  • 85. Transformational Grammar… • For example “they are cooking apples” can be written in two ways: they are cooking apples NP VP Det Aux V N NP S
  • 86. Transformational Grammar… they are cooking apples NP VP Det Aux N NP S Adj
  • 87. Transformational Grammar… • Chomsky proposed that people understand sentences by transforming the surface into a basic deep structure or kernel form. • They use transformational rules to convert surface structure to deep structure while understanding language. • And they use transformational rules to convert deep structure to surface structure while producing language
  • 88. Transformational Grammar… • Chomsky’s ideas inspired many studies during the 60s and 70s. • Mehler (1963) found that people recalled kernel sentences such as “the biologist has made the discovery” better than one such as “hasn’t the discovery been made by the biologist?”
  • 89. Transformational Grammar… • The reason for this is that the first sentence does not require many transformations to be understood – it is an active statement. • However, the second statement is a negative, passive question and requires many transformations to be understood – i.e., brought to the active statement form
  • 90. Transformational Grammar… • However some research has not been in favour of Chomsky’s theory. • For e.g., a sentence such as “the cookies were smelled by John” should be easier to understand (take lesser time to process and verify) than “the cookies were smelled” because the second sentence requires an additional transformation to drop the by John
  • 91. Transformational Grammar… • However, Slobin (1966) demonstrated that the second sentence took less time to verify! • So, there are exceptions • In general, psychologists support Chomsky’s notion of a distinction between surface and deep structure
  • 92. Transformational Grammar… • But the notion of a close correspondence between the number of transformations and psychological complexity has been met with scepticism (Prideaux, 1985; Tartter, 1986). • In other words, just because a sentence requires more transformations does not mean it is more difficult to understand.
  • 93. Transformational Grammar… • Chomsky’s more recent theories place less emphasis on transformations and more on grammatical information contained in the individual words (Chomsky, 1973, 1981; Wasow, 1989). • For example, the word ‘greet’ not only conveys information about the word but also specifies that the word must be followed by a noun.
  • 94. Transformational Grammar… • Defining the grammatical information is more useful in determining how the meaning is conveyed rather than by just determining the number of transformations that need to be made. • In fact, various factors affect the understanding of a sentence and some of these are dealt with in the next session.
  • 95. DEFINITION Transformational grammar is the process through which surface structure can be transformed to (or broken down into) deep structure and deep structure can be transformed to (or used to create) surface structure
  • 96. Summary Structure Language Consti- tuent structure Chomsky’s Transfor- mational grammar Surface Structure Deep Structure (Kernel) Rewrite rules Transformations and complexity Study by Mehler (’63) Study by Slobin (’66)
  • 98. Factors Affecting Comprehension • Research on transformational grammar also sparked an interest in the factors that influence understanding of sentences. • In general, certain types of sentences are more difficult to understand than others – these include: – Sentences with negative – Sentences that have a passive voice – Sentences that are ambiguous • We shall consider each of these in turn:
  • 99. Factors Affecting Comprehension - Negatives… • Sentences that have negatives tend to be more difficult to comprehend. • For instance, this sentence that appeared in a newspaper article would be very difficult to comprehend: “ALBANY – The Assembly yesterday overwhelmingly approved a state Equal Rights Amendment free of revisions intended to restrict its influence on a woman’s right to an abortion”
  • 100. …negatives… • The sentence contains many implied negatives. • Sentences that have negative words (no, not) or has implied negative, always take more time to process than sentences that have affirmatives (Taylor & Taylor, 1990) • A classic study by Clark and Chase (1972) studied this phenomenon.
  • 101. …negatives… • Participants were asked to verify sentences such as this” Star is above plus. OR Plus is not above star. • In both cases, the statement is true, but participants responded more quickly and made fewer errors if the sentence was affirmative.
  • 102. …negatives… • If a sentence with one negative can cause misinterpretation, what of sentences with two or three negatives such as this: Few people strongly deny that the world is not flat (Sherman, 1976) • The sentence has three negatives and is almost incomprehensible. • Understanding decreases as the number of negatives increase
  • 103. …negatives… • Sherman (1976) presented participants with affirmative sentences and sentences with one, two, three, or four negatives. • He found that people understood every one of the affirmative sentences (100% accuracy) while people understood only 51% of sentences with four negatives (slightly better than guessing – 50%)
  • 104. Factors Affecting Comprehension – the passive voice… • Chomsky pointed out that active and passive voice forms may differ in surface structure but have the same deep structure • Active form is more basic and has very few words, but the passive form requires additional words. • Moreover, the active form is used seven times more often than the passive form in English
  • 105. …the passive voice… • Further, some passive forms sound awkward “the movie was watched by us” • And there are no passive forms for certain words “Ishanvi is sleeping” - convert that! • Verbs such as sleep, resemble, be, and cost do not have passive forms
  • 106. …the passive voice… • Hornby (1974) asked people to judge whether a picture correctly represented a sentence. • People responded faster if the sentence was active “the girl is petting the cat” than if it was passive “the cat is being petted by the girl”
  • 107. …the passive voice… • The active voice is definitely easier to understand • Earlier, the passive voice was highly recommended for scientific writing. Fortunately now, the current style manuals of many publications (such as APA) recommend using the active voice
  • 108. Factors Affecting Comprehension – ambiguity… • As we discussed earlier, ambiguous sentences are more difficult to understand • There are three kinds of ambiguity and each has a different effect on understanding • The first is lexical ambiguity – a word has two meanings: time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
  • 109. …ambiguity… • The sentence is difficult to understand because the word ‘flies’ has two meanings. • Many puns and riddles are based on lexical ambiguity • A second type of ambiguity is surface structure ambiguity in which words can be grouped together in more than one way:
  • 110. …ambiguity… • “The only ones who volunteered are a few incompetent people like Nitin and you” • In this sentence ‘you’ can be competent or incompetent • A third type is deep structure ambiguity in which the essential logical relations between phrases can be interpreted in two ways: • “senator found drunk on Capitol steps”
  • 111. …ambiguity… • An ambiguous sentence is one with a single surface structure but two or more different deep structures. • Foss (1970) asked people to listen to ambiguous and unambiguous sentences. At the same time, they performed an additional task – pressing a button every time they heard the sound b in a sentence.
  • 112. …ambiguity… • RTs were longer when the participants were listening to an ambiguous sentence than an unambiguous one. • Foss reasoned that ambiguous sentences need more processing time and thus the capacity for other tasks is lesser • Theorists disagree about how listeners process ambiguous material:
  • 113. …ambiguity… • Some theorists favour the PDP and argue that when people encounter potential ambiguity, the activation builds up for all meanings of the ambiguous items • The degree of activation depends on the frequency of the meanings and the context (Simpson, 1984; Simpson & Burgess, 1985)
  • 114. …ambiguity… • So in the example, – Pat took the money to the bank • All the different meanings of the word bank will be activated such as • But “financial institution” will be more highly activated than the other meanings of bank such as “blood bank”, “river bank”, etc
  • 115. …ambiguity… • However, other theorists argue that context constrains the meaning activation at the very beginning itself • These theorists believe that only a single interpretation of the sentence that is most appropriate in the context will be activated (Glucksberg, 1986).
  • 116. …ambiguity… • For instance, if the sentence – Pat received his monthly salary and he wanted to keep it safe • Preceded the sentence – Pat took the money to the bank • Then it is unlikely that the brain will waste time and energy in activating all the other meanings of the bank, when the meaning “financial institution” is obvious from the
  • 117. …ambiguity… • However, if the passage read: – Pat took the money to the bank. He believed in the fable and wanted to make his wish come true. He wanted to drop the three coins in the river, repeating Anne’s name each time. Then she would consent to marry him. • The meaning of the word bank will remain ambiguous till the reader/ listener comes to the word “river”. In this event, obviously the PDP approach makes more sense.
  • 118. …ambiguity… • So, much more research is required to determine which approach is more accurate.
  • 120.  That is all!