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Related Concept Videos

Language and Cognition01:27

Language and Cognition

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Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
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Language is a unique communication system that uses words and systematic rules to organize and transmit information. Unlike other forms of communication, which may involve postures, movements, odors, or vocalizations, language relies on symbols and grammar. This makes human communication distinct from that of other species, who also communicate but do not use language in the same way humans do.
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Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs.
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Language is a system of communication that allows the expression of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The brain processes language in both hemispheres.
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A communication barrier is any distortion or interruption during a conversation, resulting in miscommunication of the message. A good communicator should know these barriers and continuously check for the listener's understanding by obtaining feedback.
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Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
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On language 'utility': processing complexity and communicative efficiency.

T Florian Jaeger1, Harry Tily2

  • 1Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Computer Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.

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|August 25, 2015
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Language usage influences grammar. Psycholinguistic processing preferences, reflecting complexity and utility, can empirically explain cross-linguistic grammatical patterns and typological distributions.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Functionalist typology posits that language usage shapes grammatical properties.
  • Existing theories often rely on intuitive notions of utility and complexity.
  • Empirical grounding is needed to link usage pressures with typological patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review psycholinguistic research on processing complexity.
  • To explore how processing preferences relate to production and comprehension.
  • To connect psycholinguistic findings with typological patterns and communicative efficiency.

Main Methods:

  • Summarizing fifty years of psycholinguistic studies on processing complexity.
  • Examining factors influencing comprehension difficulty and speaker production preferences.
  • Discussing emerging approaches linking production preferences to communicative efficiency.

Main Results:

  • Psycholinguistic measures of processing complexity can serve as an empirical foundation for typology.
  • Understanding processing preferences offers insights into language utility and complexity.
  • Communicative efficiency provides well-defined measures for utility.

Conclusions:

  • Psycholinguistic findings provide a framework for empirically studying the link between language usage and typology.
  • Grammatical patterns across languages can be explained by processing preferences and communicative efficiency.
  • This approach offers a more robust, evidence-based understanding of linguistic typology.