Language psc 100

Front

Language Is

Back

Communicative

Front

Mental lexicon

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"library” of words we use and their links to real-world representations

Front

What is lexical decision task?

Back

You will be faster to say that a letter string is
a word than to say it is not a word. Why? Because for
nonwords you must do an exhaustive search.

Front

The lexicon

Back

is a big multi-dimensional web of information about words.

Front

Words get meaning

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from their
context of use

Front

Notice that the link between what a word means and how it’s said is

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arbitrary

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Words that occur together tend to have

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related meanings

Front

Zipf’s Law

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Words that are used often tend to be of shorter length

Front

Word frequency effect
Options:
people are faster to respond to high-
frequency words than to low-frequency words,
people are slower to respond to high-
frequency words than to low-frequency words,
people do not respond to respond to high-
frequency words than to low-frequency words,
people are faster to respond to low-
frequency words than to high-frequency words

Back

people are faster to respond to high-
frequency words than to low-frequency words

Front

Productivity in language

Back

we have the ability to produce and understand
completely novel sentences.