Lecture 8: Language

Wednesday, January 11, 2023 12:43 PM

Lecture Objectives
• To articulate and describe the four (4) general features in language;
• To identify and explain the core elements of the five (5) components present in all human
languages;
• To describe how the Dual Route model addresses how word reading occurs;
• To define developmental dyslexia and to address (and at times, debunk) several basics
(and myths) associated with it;
• To compare and contrast phonological theory and magnocellular theory in developmental
dyslexia, and to articulate evidence consistent with each;
• To understand why there may be prominent cross-cultural differences in the prevalence of
dyslexia, and to conceptually reconcile these differences;
• To learn how to approach the RESULTS section in a manner that maximizes your ability to
improve your quantitative reasoning and ability to think critically, and to apply it with the
Loftus and Palmer article.

A Few Key Aspects of All Languages

• Displacement: The idea that we can represent ideas even if they are not immediately in
front of us to communicate information. We can talk about something in its physical
absence
• Arbitrariness: The sounds in a language and what they mean is inherently arbitrary. In a
language and a culture, we agree that a sound or word means a certain thing. When you
say 'yes' out loud, there is no inherent reason or aspect of that word that leads it to
meaning an affirmation/confirmation etc.
• Productivity: We can create new language/words to convey new ideas
• Learnability: When we are born, we are equipped with the mechanisms that allow us to
learn any language provided we are exposed to it. It is easier to learn languages earlier in
life than later, but you can learn any language at any point in time provide you donate
enough time and attention to it.

Can Non-Humans Learn Language?

• Nim Chimpsky (after Noam Chomsky)
• Is a chimp.
• It can: learn words and meanings, and under certain circumstances can construct simple
sentences
• Limited evidence for complex, generative sentences

Core Components of Language

Phonology
• Study of sound as it relates to language
• A phoneme is the smallest sound in a language
• There is cross-language variability in how many phonemes exist
• There can be as little as 12, and as many as 85
• English and Bantu sound extremely different
• The Bantu click sounds have no meaning to English speakers, but they do to Bantu
speakers
• There are phonological rules in each language
• Some sounds cannot be put together

Morphology
• Smallest unit of sound that has meaning
• There are bound vs free morpheme
• A free morpheme can stand on its own and has meaning by itself
• A bound morpheme must be placed next to another morpheme to have meaning
• The word 'unbreakable'
○ 'break' is a morpheme and can stand on its own because 'break' is a word with a
meaning (free)
○ 'un' cannot stand on its own, needs to be attached to break (in this case) to have
meaning (bound)
○ 'able' is a word on its own, but within the word 'unbreakable' it is pronounced as
'uhbl', which is not a word with a meaning. This is because morphemes are to do
with SOUND rather than spelling. Therefore able is also a bound morpheme.
• The word 'college'
○ It cannot be broken down, therefore 'college' is just one big free morpheme
• 'panthers'
○ 'panther' is a morpheme (free)
○ The 's' at the end is a morpheme because it does not have meaning in and of itself,
but attached to another morpheme it usually converts it into plural form (bound)

• Content vs Functional morphemes

○ 'shoes' is a content morpheme as it conveys an idea (footwear)
○ 'and' is a functional morpheme as it helps connect ideas (shoes and bags)
○ 'human' is a content morpheme as it represents a noun

Semantics
• The study of meaning as it relates to language
• When someone communicates an idea to you, your ability to understand it is dependent
on your understanding of the semantics of the language
• Context effects semantic understanding

Syntax
• Grammar, rules for how to put words together in a language
• Syntactical rules: range of acceptable ways we might communicate an idea
• Grammar and syntax don't necessarily go hand in hand.
• A sentence can have perfect grammar, but does not have any meaningful context
○ "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously"
○ Follows all the rules (order of adjectives, adjectives before noun, then verb, then
adverb)
○ However, there is no meaning
• Surface vs Deep structure
○ "Mike ate the burrito"
○ "The burrito was eaten by Mike"
○ Surface level differences, but the deep meaning is the same
○ This is not ALWAYS true with active vs passive voice, but it is true here. Often
differences between active and passive voice can shift agency (often used in news
media)
• Garden path sentences
○ The prime number few: Not an understandable sentences at first glance, you thing
"prime number" is the noun, but later you are forced to read it differently. The prime
(noun) number (verb) few.
○ Fat people eat accumulates: "People" is the noun at first, however when read as "fat"
(noun) people eat (verb) accumulates. As in, the fat content that is consumed by
people accumulates.
○ These are called garden path sentences as they force you to walk back and reread
sentences in a way you typically wouldn't
○ This is called the pitfall of prediction, where we rely heavily on what we predict a
sentence is going to say, but that is not what the sentence actually say.
Pragmatics
• The deeper, underlying meaning
• Indirect speech, metaphors, sarcasm
• "The grass is always greener on the other side"
○ Proverb that means that things seem better when they're not the situation you're in
○ But literally, it just means the grass is more green over there
○ The proverbial meaning of the phrase is pragmatics

Hearing and Seeing Language

• Auditory (listening)
○ Parsing, auditory-semantic process
• Visual (Reading)
○ Dual Route Model (Castle and Coltheart 1993)

Developmental Dyslexia
• A specific brain-based learning disability characterised by difficulties with accurate and/or
fluent word recognition, poor spelling, and decoding abilities
• 3-7% of the population
• Not just about simply mixing up letters/words
• Poor schooling does not cause dyslexia
• It is NOT a phase (some people might improve with age and experience)
• Neurobiological origin and heredity
○ It's a language issue, not a visual processing issue
○ Co-occurs with other neurodevelopmental disorders often (such as ADD/ADHD)
○ Higher incidence in males than females

Phonological Theory
• Dyslexia as an impairment of speech sounds
• Issues with pitch discrimination
○ In a task, listen to tones that are mostly 200 ms, but are sometimes shorter
○ When there are small differences in duration, both controls and dyslexia had strong
mismatch negativity
○ Even with higher differences, the mismatch negativity between controls and
dyslexics was comparable
○ Then, listen to tones that are mostly 1000 Hz, but sometimes off by 15-90 Hz
○ When the difference between the two sounds was high, i.e. ~90 Hz, there was strong
mismatch negativity in both controls and dyslexics
○ However, when the differnece was smaller, i.e. ~15 Hz, there was strong mismatch
negativity in neurotypical controls, however it was not present in dyslexic people
○ Individuals with dyslexia might require a bigger different between two sounds to be
able to tell that they are different
• Issues with attention to the order/sequence of fast noises
○ Researchers manipulated Stimulus Onset Asynchrocy (time between the first and
second sound)
○ Both control and dyslexic people take time to answer at first
○ However, after a point, controls are able to tell apart sounds faster than dyslexic
people
○ This means that dyslexic people may take more time between two sounds to
recognise that the two sounds are distinct and that they occur one after the other
○ There is no distinction between the coherence boundary and how quickly they can
name something in controls
○ Dyslexic people with a high coherence boundary need even more time to indicate
what they heard correctly

• Phonological Theory and the Brain

○ A meta-analysis of 45 studies found activation near the Sylvian Fissure
○ In individuals with dyslexia, the areas around the Sylvian fissure are all less active
than in neurotypical counterparts

• Phonological Training Helps Dyslexia

○ A study was run wherein children with dyslexia were given phonological training. It
showed improvement in brain activation, and similar activation to neurotypical
counterparts post-training
○ Pre-training, dyslexic children's brains indicated they were utilising non-language
parts of the brain more than was necessary/more than neurotypical counterparts
○ Children's ability to read fluently did improve post-training, so it was behaviourally
effective as well

• Lingering Questions
○ Phonology is not the only type of auditory/visual deficit seen in dyslexia? How do
those issues fit in?
○ What are the neural origins of these phonological processing impairments, and when
do they arise?
Magnocellular Theory
• Galaburda (1985) found neuronal anomalies in the cortical tissue of post-mortem dyslexic
patients, primarily in audiovisual areas.
• Magnocellular theory is now the primary neurobiological explanation for dyslexia
• Ectopias: Pathological collection of neurons that have pushed up from lower cortical layers
into the outermost layer (happens before birth)

• Ectopias and the Dyslexic Rat:

○ Induction of artificial ectopias in rats impairs development of core brain structures,
primarily A/V portions of the thalamus
○ These inductions were associated with poorer auditory discrimination and were more
likely in males than females
○ Accounts for the A/V issues often seen in dyslexic children, as well as the greater
incidence of dyslexia in males

• Lingering Questions
○ Does not specifically account for the glaring issue of phonological processing
deficits
○ Grounded in biology, but the effects are too broad to apply specifically to dyslexia,
could be other learning disorders as well

Integrated Theory

• These overlaps are too strong to dismiss

• The integration of these two theories due to this evidence provides a stronger argument
into the origins of dyslexia than either of them alone

Dyslexia Across Cultures

• Does dyslexia exist in the Italian language? Paulesu and colleagues discovered that
dyslexia was far less common in Italians than in English speakers
• Can be accounted for through orthographic differences
○ The Italian word "combaterre" is pronounced exactly as it looks (this is called a
shallow language)
○ In English, "fight" is not pronounced the way it looks (deep language)
○ Shallow orthographies yield fewer symptoms of dyslexia
○ This is likely because they have far less phonological demand as they facilitate the
grapheme to phoneme conversion much easily
• However, this might just mean that dyslexia is simply harder to spot in Italian speakers, not
that it simply is less prevalent
• Therefore, perhaps brain scans and comparisons with ENG/FR activity might help us
understand better

○ Tasks in red are focused on due to their phonological demand

○ The similar performance shows that there still is dyslexia in those cultures
• Through brain scans, it was also found that the left temporal region was not engaged at all
in people with dyslexia, while it was strongly engaged in neurotypical individuals
• This was consistent all cultures
• This suggests that dyslexia does exist in shallower orthographies, it is just harder to spot
because they demand less of phonological processing compared to deeper
orthographies
• The key is to look at those with dyslexia and those without dyslexia within the same
language