Language II: Language Production and Bilingualism

Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8eOutlineChapter 10Page 1 of 12

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER Introduction

There are many forms of language production

Language production is social.

More research has been conducted on comprehension than production.

Speaking

Producing a Word

three words a second
speaking vocabulary of 75,000 words
word selection
grammatical, semantic, and phonological accuracy

Are all three kinds of information retrieved simultaneously or independently?

van Turennout and colleagues (1998)

Dutch speakers
pictures of objects and animals
ERP technique
grammatical gender accessed about 40 milliseconds before phonological properties
not all information accessed at once; split-second timing

Speech Errors

Speech is generally accurate and well-formed.

slips-of-the-tongue—errors in which sounds or entire words are rearranged between two or more different words

Types of Slip-of-the-Tongue Errors

Sound errors
Morpheme errors
Word errors

Characteristics

Errors create a word, rather than a non-word.
Errors reveal our extensive language knowledge.
Errors tend to occur across items from the same category.
Words we are currently pronouncing are influenced by both the words we have already spoken and the words we are planning to speak.

Explanations for Speech Errors

Dell and colleagues

comprehensive theory for speech errors
similar to connectionist approach
spreading activation
Planning activates sound elements.
Each sound can be activated by several different words.
High activation can cause the incorrect sound to be produced.

Using Gestures: Embodied Cognition

gestures

cultural differences

Gestures can influence how you think.

Frick-Horbury & Guttentag (1998)

identifying target word from definition
hand movements restricted or unrestricted
Participants with unrestricted hand movements identified more words than those with restricted hand movements.
When our verbal system cannot retrieve a word, a gesture can sometimes activate the relevant information.

Demonstration 10.2: Using Gestures to Communicate Information

Some concepts are easier to describe with body movements than with words.
People are more likely to produce a gesture when they have had previous experience with the relevant physical activity.

Embodied cognition

People use their bodies to express their knowledge.
ongoing connection between motor system and processing spoken language
importance of concrete physical actions, rather than abstract meaning

Hostetter (2011)—meta-analysis

Do gestures actually help us in communicating a message?
Gestures actually do increase the listener’s understanding, especially when the speaker is describing concrete actions.

Producing a Sentence

Limits of attention and memory

Plan the gist
Devise general structure of sentence
Choose specific words and grammatical form
Convert these intentions into speech

Stages of sentence production overlap in time.

linearization problem—transforming general thought or mental image into an ordered, linear sequence of words

prosody—"melody,"intonation, rhythm, emphasis

Producing Discourse

discourse—language units larger than a sentence

narrative—type of discourse in which someone describes a series of actual or fictional events

Characteristics of narrative

time-related sequence
emotionally involving
goal to convey
words chosen carefully
entertaining

Narrative structure

1.Brief overview

2.Summary of characters and setting

3.Complicating action

4.Point

5.Resolution

6.Final signal that the narrative is complete

In Depth: The Social Context of Language Production

Language as a social instrument

Speakers must

consider their conversation partners
coordinating turn-taking
agreed meanings
intentions

pragmatics—social rules and world knowledge that allow speakers successfully communicate messages to other people

In Depth: The Social Context of Language Production (continued)

Common Ground

common ground—occurs when conversationalists share similar background knowledge, schemas, and perspectives necessary for mutual understanding

collaborate
pay attention
assess background knowledge
clarify misunderstandings

Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs (1986)—Demonstration 10.4

pairs of participants arranging figures in order
mutual shorthand and shared vocabulary developed
number of required turns decreased rapidly over trials
conversational partners become more skilled in communicating efficiently

physicians and patients

Speakers often overestimate their listeners' ability to understand a message.

Directives

directive—a sentence that requests someone to do something

direct request

indirect request

Framing

George Lakoff

Language can structure thinking.
frame—mental structures that simplify reality
example: individual vs. social responsibility
When people have different frames, it may be difficult to talk with others about many important contemporary issues.

Writing

Writing requires virtually every cognitive process.

One of the least-researched linguistic tasks

Frequency of writing activities

Similarities and differences between writing and speaking

Writing:

is done in isolation
takes more time
uses more complex syntax
is revised more

Social factors are more central in speaking than in writing.

Three phases

planning
sentence generation
revising

Strains on attention

Role of practice

Importance of drafts

The Cognitive Components of Writing

Working Memory

Kellogg and colleagues (2007)

Students wrote definitions for words while working on a secondary task at the same time.

Researchers examined possible interference from phonological, visual, and spatial tasks.

phonological loop task (remember a spoken syllable)

When the students were writing, they required significantly longer to remember the syllables.
The phonological loop seems to be an important factor when we write.

visuospatial sketchpadtasks

visual information (remember the visual shape of an item): When students were writing about concrete nouns, they required significantly longer to remember the item's visual shape. When writing about abstract nouns, no delay in remembering the item's visual shape.
spatial information (remember a particular location): Students' reaction times not affected by the writing task. Writing does not require us to emphasize locations (spatial information).

central executive

active in virtually every phase of the writing process
coordinates planning
involved in sentence generation
oversees revision
limited capacity can make writing a stressful task

Long-Term Memory

semantic memory
expertise
schemas
knowledge about writing style required

Planning a Formal Writing Assignment

prewriting

generating a list of ideas
difficult and strategic
large individual differences
Good writers are more likely than poor writers to spend high-quality time planning.

outlining

avoids overloaded attention
resolving linearization problem

Sentence Generation During Writing

translate the general ideas (developed during planning) into actual sentences of the text
hesitant phases and fluent phases
longer vs. shorter words
Writing errors are most likely to be spelling errors within a single word rather than between-word errors.

The Revision Phase of Writing

Emphasize the importance of organization and coherence.
Reconsider whether the writing accomplishes the goals of the assignment.
Revision should be time consuming.
Effective writers use flexible revision strategies, and they make substantial changes.
College students typically devote little time to revising.
Metacognitions about the writing process seem to be inaccurate.

The Revision Phase of Writing (continued)

Hayes and colleagues (1987)—experts vs. novices

first-year college students vs. expert writers
revise a poorly written two-page letter
Novices revise sentence-by-sentence; focus on spelling and grammar.
Experts work more on organization, focus, and transition between ideas.
Novices judge defective sentences as appropriate.
Experts are better able to diagnose the source of a problem in a sentence.

Daneman & Stainton (1993)—proofreading

difficult to proofread your own writing
proofread for spelling separately from content
wait at least one day, after revising content, to proofread for spelling

Bilingualism and Second-Language Acquisition

Many people throughout the world have mastered two or more languages.

bilingual speaker—a person who is fluent in two different languages

multilingual speaker

simultaneous bilingualism

sequential bilingualism, first language, second language

Background on Bilingualism

More than half of the people in the world are at least somewhat bilingual.

People become bilingual for many reasons.

Tables 10.1 & 10.2: Languages Most Frequently Spoken at Home in the United States and Canada

For many people in North America, English is not the language most frequently spoken at home.

The Social Context of Bilingualism

Even though many children in the United States and Canada speak a language other than English in their homes, the educational system frequently does not value this other language.

If a school values a child's first language, he or she may actually become more fluent in English.

Success in acquiring a second language is related to

individual motivation
attitude toward people who speak that language

Language proficiency can also influence attitudes.

Danziger and Ward (2010)

Arab Israeli students fluent in both Arabic and Hebrew
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
The Arab students were more positive about Jewish individuals when the fluently bilingual researcher was speaking Hebrew, than when she was speaking Arabic.

Advantages (and Minor Disadvantages) of Bilingualism

Advantages

Bilinguals actually acquire more expertise in their native (first) language than do monolinguals.
Bilinguals are more aware that the names assigned to concepts are arbitrary. Also outperform monolinguals on many other measures of metalinguistics.
Bilinguals excel at paying selective attention to relatively subtle aspects of a language task, ignoring more obvious linguistic characteristics.
Bilingual children are better at following complicated instructions and performing tasks where the instructions change from one trial to the next.
Bilinguals perform better on concept-formation tasks and on tests of nonverbal intelligence that require reorganization of visual patterns. Bilinguals also score higher on problem-solving tasks that require them to ignore irrelevant information.
Bilingual children are more sensitive to some pragmatic aspects of language.
Bilingual adults who have dementia typically develop signs of dementia later than monolingual adults with dementia.

Advantages (and Minor Disadvantages) of Bilingualism (continued)

Disadvantages

People who use two languages extensively may subtly alter how they pronounce some speech sounds in both languages.
Bilingual individuals may also process language slightly more slowly, in comparison to monolinguals.
Bilingual children may have somewhat smaller vocabularies for words that are used in a home setting.

Disadvantages far outweighed by advantages of begin able to communicate effectively in two languages.

Second-Language Proficiency as a Function of Age of Acquisition

age of acquisition

critical period hypothesis

Vocabulary

When the measure of language proficiency is vocabulary, age of acquisition is not related to language skills.

Phonology

Age of acquisition does influence mastery of phonology (sounds of speech).

Flege and coauthors (1999)

Korean-Americans
Degree of accent related to age of arrival: Immigrants arriving as children had minimal accents; those who arrived as adolescents or adults had stronger accents.
fairly smooth change over age rather than abrupt drop

Grammar

Flege and coauthors (1999)

judging English sentences as grammatical
After controlling for years of education in the United States, age of acquisition was not related to an individual's mastery of English grammar.

Studies with other languages—no consistent relationship between age of arrival and mastery of English grammar

Individual Differences: Simultaneous Interpreters and Working Memory

translation—converting a text written in one language into a second written language

interpreting—converting a spoken message in one language into a second spoken language

Simultaneous interpretation involves three working-memory tasks at the same time (comprehension, transformation, speak out loud).

Christoffels, De Groot, and Kroll (2006)

Dutch/English speakers—students, teachers of English, simultaneous interpreters
reading-span test and speaking-span test
All groups recalled more words in their native language (Dutch) than in their second language (English).
Simultaneous interpreters remembered significantly more Dutch and English words than the other two groups, both in reading span and in speaking span.

Possible Explanations

The experience of managing simultaneous tasks actually increased the working-memory skills for the simultaneous interpreters.
Only people with superb working-memory skills can manage to survive in a profession that requires an extremely high level of proficiency in working memory.
Both of these explanations may be correct.