The Study of Language and Speech Production

Study Notes

Meaning of Language: Language is a system of communication that uses sounds, signs, or symbols to convey meaning.
Psycholinguistics: The study of the mental processes involved in language comprehension and production.
Language and the Brain: Broca's area is responsible for language production, while Wernicke's area is responsible for language comprehension.
Describing Language: Language is described through various aspects, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

Speech is generated by the coordinated movement of the vocal tract, including the lips, teeth, tongue, mouth, and larynx.
The larynx produces a range of harmonics, which are modified by changing the shape of the vocal tract to create different sounds.
Consonants are produced by the closure or restriction of the vocal tract, and they are often produced in conjunction with vowels.
Vowels are produced without obstruction to the articulatory tract.
Distinctive Features: Contrasting characteristics used to describe sounds, focusing on the place of articulation and manner of articulation.
Vowel production is defined by tongue position: height, backness, and roundness.
Height: Determines the tongue's vertical position. (e.g., "ee" is high, "aa" is low).
Backness: Describes the horizontal position and shape of the tongue. (e.g., "ee" is front, "oo" is back).
Roundness: Refers to the lip position. (e.g., "oo" is rounded).

Syllables: Rhythmic units in words.
Monosyllabic: Words with one syllable.
Syllable Structure: Onset (initial consonant or cluster), Nucleus (central vowel), Coda (final consonants).
All syllables must have a nucleus, while onset and coda are optional.

Features that span multiple phonemes, such as pitch, stress, and speech rate.
Pitch Patterns: Convey meaning and differentiate between statements, questions, and emphasis.
Stress Variations: Influence the rhythm and prominence of words and syllables.
Speech Rate: Affects the overall rhythm and flow of speech.
Stressed-Timed Language: English, where stressed syllables are produced at equivalent time intervals.
Syllable-Timed Language: French, with a more continuous flow of syllables.

Chomsky argued that language is innate, species-specific, and biologically pre-programmed.
The goal of studying syntax is to describe the rules of grammar that enable us to produce and understand language.
Distinguished between linguistic competence (idealized knowledge) and linguistic performance (actual language use).
Later distinguished between E-language (externalized language) and I-language (internalized language).

Phrase-Structure Rules: Describe how words can be combined, providing a method of describing sentence structure.
Sentences are built up hierarchically from smaller units using rewrite rules.
Rewrite Rules: Rules that translate symbols.
Terminal Elements: Words
Non-terminal Elements: Symbols representing grammatical categories (e.g., NP, VP).

Chomsky distinguished between surface structure (the actual form of the sentence) and deep structure (the underlying meaning or semantic representation).
This theory suggests that sentences with the same meaning can have different surface structures, while sentences with different surface structures can have the same deep structure.