Psy1306 Language and Thought
description
Transcript of Psy1306 Language and Thought
Lectures 6Path and Manner
ThemesKey Ideas Discussed:
Language is sketchy/selective
Use-it-or-loose-it/Functional reorganizing
Thinking for SpeakingThinking for Later
Speaking
ExperimentsPopulation:
Prelinguistic Infants vs. Adults
Adults with different language background
Methodology: Categorization via
habituation or preferential looking
Triads Similarity Judgment Recognition Memory Eye-tracking as a window
into thought Labeling vs. No Labeling
Prior to doing the above 3 tasks
(Slides with white background are from A. Papafragou)
Path and Manner Components of Motion
figureSNOOPY BALL HOLE
ground ground
FROM...TO... path
ROLLING
manner
English Predominantly Manner VerbsThe bottle floated out of the cave.
Spanish (or Greek) Predominantly Path VerbsLa botella salió flotando de la cueva.(The bottle exited floating from the cave.)
Crosslinguistic Differences:Path and Manner Verb Preferences
Example from Talmy 1985…children’s attention is heavily channeled in the direction of those semantic distinctions that are grammatically marked in the language. (Berman and Slobin, 1994)
Framing motion events cross-linguistically
Greek Mia petaluda‘a butterfly
petai. is flying’ MANNER V
English A butterfly is flying.MANNER V
Framing motion events cross-linguistically
English A butterflyis flyingMANNER V
to a flower.PATH PP
Greek Mia petaluda‘a butterfly
pai is goingPATH V
s’ena luludi.to a flower’PATH PP
BoundedPathconstraint
Natural Divison
Using gestures, describe an event in which:A cat, having swallowed a bowling ball,
proceeds rapidly down a steep street in a wobbling, rolling manner.
Spanish speaker vs. NSL speaker
Videos available fromScience.
Prelinguistic InfantsPulverman & Golinkoff (2004): 7-months-
olds*Casasola, Hohenstein, & Naigles (2003): 10-
months-oldsPulverman et al. (2007): 14-, 17-months-olds,
Spanish vs. English learners*Havasi & Snedeker (2004a, 2004b): Adults
and children
* Same problem of variance in objects used (as mentioned in last class)
Learning Path-Manner distinctionsChildren converge rapidly on language-specific
syntactic and semantic properties of motion Vs (Bowerman 1996, Choi & Bowerman 1991, Slobin 1996).
Adults are sensitive to the statistical regularities of linguistic packaging of motion eventsin guessing meaning of novel motion Vs, Spanish
speakers make more path conjectures than English speakers (Naigles & Terrazas 1998)
Path vs. Manner salience in motion cognition?
Do speakers of English and Greek become differentially sensitive to Manner & Path of motion?
Do linguistic categories affect non-linguistic categorization? (Papafragou, Massey & Gleitman, Cognition 2002)
Subjects:Monolingual native speakers of English and
Greek.
Two Age Groups: 8-year-olds (14 English speakers and 22 Greek
speakers); Adults (20 English speakers and 21 Greek
speakers).
Sample event: man running up stairs
Same-manner foil: man running down hallway
Same-path foil: man walking up stairs
Linguistic descriptions differ
M a n n e r : 6 9%P a th : 2 5 .5%
E n g lis h
M a n n e r : 2 2 .5%P a th : 6 4 .1%
G re ek
M a in V e rb
…across age groups
Distribution of Verbs: English
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Distribution of Verbs: Greek
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Path V Manner VPr
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Categorization does not differ!
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English Greek
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Children vs. adults
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Do linguistic categories affect memory? (Papafragou et al, Cognition 2002)
Subjects:Monolingual native speakers of English and
Greek. Three Age Groups: 38 5/6-year-olds; 38 11/12-year-olds;21 Adults.
Two Sessions: (1) inspect and describe 6 pictures (2) new set of pictures: ‘Same or different?’
Session 1 boy jumping over log
Session 2: Manner changeboy tripping over log
Session 1 frog jumping into bathroom
Session 2: Path change frog jumping out of bathroom
Memory is not affected!
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MannerChange
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• RecognitionParticipant sees events. Decide later (varied delays) whether they saw the events earlier.Question: Are manner language speakers better at noticing
manner changes and vice versa?• Similarity Judgment (Triad Task) Which one is like the target? Question: Do manner language speakers prefer same manner
and vice versa?
3 crosslinguistic studies on Manner vs. PathKrych (2001). Doctoral dissertation, Stanford (English vs. Spanish)Gennari et al. (2002). Cognition (English vs. Spanish)Papafragou et al. (2002). Cognition (English vs. Greek)
TargetM: carry, P: exit
Same MannerM: carry, P: enter
Same PathM: drag, P: exit
RESULTS: Crosslinguistic Difference?
Recognition Similarity
Participant asked to label aloud event No Yesprior to task
Participant not asked to label No No
3 crosslinguistic studies on Manner vs. PathKrych (2001). Doctoral dissertation, Stanford (English vs. Spanish)Gennari et al. (2002). Cognition (English vs. Spanish)Papafragou et al. (2002). Cognition (English vs. Greek)
Different ResultsNo language effect unless labeling occurs beforehand
Language effect w/o labeling
Any thoughts on why?
Language is sketchy
Language is not logically explicit, thought is:John and Mary bought a nice house [TOGETHER].
John and Mary got a good grade [EACH].
Language is selectiveNot everything that is represented in mentalese is
expressed when we speak:
Mary: Let’s go out.John: It’s snowing. [and so we can’t go out].
Because communication takes time and effort, only a fraction of the thought (in mentalese) is encoded in language. Speakers trust hearers to fill in the rest.
When is Manner of motion included?Hypothesis: Manner information is included when
manner of motion not predictable (esp. in Greek).
Manner in Greek!
‘Inferable manner’ scenes: Man walking up stairs.
‘Opaque manner’ scenes: Man running up stairs.
Inferability affects Manner encoding in Greek (Papafragou, Massey & Gleitman, Cognition 2006)
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'Inferable manner' scenes 'Opaque manner' scenes
% of all descriptions which includes Manner
Linguistic descriptions are flexible
Linguistic encoding of motion is selective.
Formulation of event descriptions flexibly adjusts to changing conversational pressures on-linein speech of both young and more experienced
speakers
Gap between linguistic descriptions and rich conceptual representations.
Can language affect motion event perception?
‘(Speakers) code spatial perceptions at the time of experience in whatever output frameworks the speaker’s dominant language offers’.
(Levinson 1996, p. 156)
An online study (Papafragou, Hulbert & Trueswell, 2008, Cognition)
Eye-movements as window onto what sorts of information humans use to build event representations, and when.We compare how English and Greek speakers
interrogate motion scenes while preparing linguistic descriptions vs. encoding information in memory
English vs. Greek speakers…
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Linguistic Condition: Ss had to describe what happened. Nonlinguistic Condition: Ss had to remember what they saw. At the end of the experiment they were shown a still image and were asked if it belonged to any of the clips.
A sample trial
Eye movements were recorded throughout.
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animation unfolds (3 sec) animation freezes
L group: Ss inspect scenes…
NL group: Ss inspect scenes…Ss study scenes more
Ss describe scenes
BEEP
Two types of events
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BoundedPath
UnboundedPath
Linguistic task: Bounded events
English: 78% manner Vs “A boy is driving his bike to a tent.”
Greek: 36% manner Vs“A boy is going to a tent, on a bike.”
…
BoundedPath
Linguistic task: Unbounded events
English: 74% manner Vs “A boy is driving his bike.”
Greek: 56% manner Vs“A boy is driving his bike.”
…
UnboundedPath
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Eye movementdata: Bounded events
Time in 1/30th of Second Units
Animation (3 Seconds) Linguistic Description / Study Phase
clip freezes
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Animation (3 Seconds) Linguistic Description
Bounded events: In Linguistic Task, the 2 populations differ: Ss look for what their language needsPr
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Nonlinguistic Task: Event perception the same! But differences in Study Phase: Ss study what their language doesn’t routinely encode
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ConclusionsHow we inspect a scene depends on task/
goals
Same is true if the task is linguistic: Speakers focus on aspects of scenes which are
routinely encoded by their language Cf. eye-movement production studies within a given
language by Levelt, Bock, Griffin, a.o.
For the first time we show here that these looking patterns differ cross-linguistically: Where languages differ from each other in how they
encode event structure, this difference shows up in how scenes are interrogated during speech planning
Conclusions (cont.)
But when inspecting the world freely, all humans are alike, regardless of the language they speakInterrogation of an unfolding event (cf. our
nonling task) generates nearly identical sequences of shifts in attention
Conclusions (cont.)
Nevertheless, important cross-linguistic differences in how perceptions are encoded in memoryDifferences in nonling task when video
freezes: Ss presumably encode events rapidly in declarative
memoryTruly contra-Whorfian result:
People then proceed to interrogate those aspects of the scene that they couldn't map onto an accessible precompiled linguistic-semantic form (e.g., the lexical semantics of verbs and their argument structures).
Language effects on thought?
Test case: space and motionSalience effects not found
Path/Manner asymmetries in language are not reflected in categorization, memory or apprehension of motion
Linguistic effects emerge when language is implicated in task.
Discussion QsTest case generalizability?Differences between the test case of this
class and last class?
Language affects category salience…learning a language can affect nonlinguistic cognition by selectively maintaining or discouraging sensitivity to (…) distinctions that are, or are not, relevant to that language.
Bowerman & Choi (2003)
Testing the ‘boundary’ and ‘salience’ hypothesesWhat is a non-linguistic task?
Most tasks (memory, categorization) involve the use of language in the instructions.
People may be covertly using linguistic labels to remember or categorize ambiguous stimuli. Does this count as a ‘Whorfian’ effect or as a
‘language on language’ effect?
Testing the ‘boundary’ and ‘salience’ hypothesesWhat counts as a cross-linguistic difference?
Whether a category is grammatical or lexicalWhether a category is obligatory or notWhether a category is frequently or
infrequently used in ordinary communicationHow different ARE languages?