Illustrating the Production and Comprehension of Language

Two of my favorite language-related illustrations.

From the book Shapes for sounds by Timothy Donaldson, via brain pickings.

From an article in The Economist, illustration by W. Vasconcelos.

I think the illustrations complement each other quite nicely. My compliments to the artists.

complement

n.

1.

a. Something that completes, makes up a whole, or brings to perfection.
b. The quantity or number needed to make up a whole: shelves with a full complement of books.
c. Either of two parts that complete the whole or mutually complete each other.

compliment

n.

1. An expression of praise, admiration, or congratulation.

Update on Contraction Retraction

Back in January, I posted about a linguistic phenomenon that I observed and was unable to label. The original post titled "Contraction Retraction - A Phono-Morpho-Syntactic Phenomenon" can be found here.

Following are some relevant excerpts from the post:

What happens when a person starts to utter a contraction and then for some unknown reason decides to utter the two word phrase instead of the contraction?

If I start to say "don't" and change midway to "do not" what comes out of my mouth sounds an awful lot like "dough not".

Transcribed phonetically below.

don't = /dont/
do not = /du nat/
dough not = /do nat/

I decided to update the post because of a recently received reader comment:

It's called allomorphy (according to my linguistics professor). And it's not limited to contractions. It happens with a lot of words. What you're witnessing is the minor change in a word [do] as its instance is changed from "don't" to "do not".

Think about "photograph" versus "photography". [fo-tow-graph] versus [fo-tau-graf-ie]. The morpheme "photograph" has the same meaning, even in "photography", but because the pronunciation is different, it is a separate allomorph.

Here is my response:

Not to argue with your professor (and I am certainly no expert), but during my MA program in linguistics I never heard an analysis of contractions that presented the phonetic changes as allomorphy.

SIL International’s Glossary of Linguistic Terms defines an allomorph as one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme in its different phonological or morphological environments.

With allomorphy, I have always understood the phonological and morphological environments to be limited to the words in which they appear.

To me, the phrase “do not” contains two separate free lexical morphemes and when they are contracted it is like combining the two lexical morphemes into one phonetic form.

Based on the broad phonetic transcriptions I presented, I would say there is deletion and assimilation through contraction but not a different form of one morpheme that would be considered allomorphy.

The most common type of allomorphy in English involves plural and past tense suffixes, for example; the past tense “–ed” suffix can be phonetically realized as /t/, /d/ or / əd/.

The example you have given comparing “photograph” /fotogræf/ to “photography” /fotɑgrɑfi/ is an example of root allomorphy (or stem allomorphy, depending on whom you ask) that is similar to “hymn” /him/ versus “hymnal” /himnəl/.

Regardless of whether or not the act of contracting is considered a form of allomorphy, I would still regard the phenomenon I have described as a different matter. As a matter of fact, upon further thought, I believe it involves more than just phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax; it also involves psycholinguistics. The phenomenon involves the process the brain is undergoing as it chooses initially to verbalize the contraction but switches midstream to an altered, un-contracted form of the initial phrase.

I now welcome more input and data from anyone who has experienced or witnessed this "contraction retraction" or has other thoughts about the processes involved.

The Opposite of the Tip of the Tongue

And, no, I am not talking about the root of the tongue. I am referring to the linguistic phenomenon called "tip of the tongue syndrome" or TOT.

TOT is the name that is used to describe the phenomenon of knowing that you know something, whether it be word, phrase or name, but not being able to immediately retrieve that something from your memory.

What this boils down to linguistically is that a person knows the semantic identity of the lexical item which they are trying to recall, but they are unable to bring forth the phonetic representation of said (tee hee) item, even though they feel like it is right on the tip of their tongue.

A phenomenon that is quite the opposite of TOT occurs when the phonetic representation of a lexical item is repeated to the extent that the semantic identity is lost.

For those who watch Grey's Anatomy, recall the episode when Meredeth said the word spoon had lost all meaning to her.

And for those who don't watch Grey's Anatomy, this might help -

spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon.

Okay, I think that should give you the idea.

There have been many names proposed for this reversal of the TOT phenomenon over the years including the following:

Semantic Satiation

Verbal Satiation

Word Weirding

Inhibition

Refractory phase and mental fatigue

Lapse of meaning

Word decrement

Cortical inhibition

Adaptation

Extinction

Satiation

Reactive inhibition

Stimulus satiation

Verbal transformation

Inky Fool posted about this phenomenon and the names associated with it last fall, and Language Log posted about some of the research that has been done over the years regarding the phenomenon in December.

I would be interested to know if there has been any research directly comparing and contrasting TOT to semantic satiation (occurrences by age, gender, etc.). I can't seem to locate any. And how about EKGs and MRIs of brain activity during experiences of these phenomena.

Also, I will add one more potential name to the list - the phonetic repetition effect.

An Excellent Introduction to Steven Pinker

For those who may not have heard of Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist and linguist who currently teaches at Harvard, and for those who may not have seen this lecture based on his outstanding book The Stuff of Thought, here is the video from YouTube.

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It is well worth the watch.

Blossoms Crash on Garden Path Resulting in Conflicting Trees

Garden path sentences are those that lead a reader down a path to an incorrect semantic and/or syntactic interpretation of the sentence during the initial analysis or parsing of the sentence. The field of psycholinguistics has shown that these incorrect interpretations occur because readers process sentences one word at a time.



A simple yet cogent example of a garden path sentence is:

The old man the boat.

When reading this sentence the most likely initial interpretation (illustrated by the syntactic tree below) is that "old" is an adjective describing "man". But what happens when you get to "the boat"? This can't be a sentence without a verb.
By backtracking and reading the sentence again the proper interpretation with "old" being a collective noun and "man" being a verb can be reached. In other words, "the boat is manned by the old (people)."
Similar to garden path sentences are newspaper headlines that are written in such a way as to lead a reader to an incorrect interpretation (often by omission of words). These headlines have been dubbed "crash blossoms" based on the following headline:





Here is a diagram of the likely initial interpretation followed by a diagram of the intended interpretation (with words added for clarification).



Parse 1:

Parse 2:Language Log posted more about the evolution of the name "crash blossoms" here.

And here are two additional crash blossoms that I find particularly amusing followed by their respective conflicting syntactic trees.



Parse 1: Parse 2:




Parse 1:

Parse 2:

Cognitive Linguistics Fun

Read the text inside the triangle out loud.

More than likely you said, 'A bird in the bush,'! and. ........
if this IS what YOU said, then you failed to see
that the word THE is repeated twice!
Sorry, look again.

###


Count every ' F ' in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...

How many?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*


Wrong, there are 6 -- no joke.
Read it again.
Really, go back and try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.
The reasoning behind is further down.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

The brain cannot process 'OF'.

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!
Anyone who counts all 6 'F's' on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.



###

NCIS - Ziva's Linguistic Error

Another observation from last week's NCIS - I am pretty sure that I heard the actress who plays Ziva make a phonological error that is common to native speakers of English but would not be common to an Israeli (like the character of Ziva) that struggles with the syntax of English.

Often times I will start to use the contraction don't but for some reason my brain switches mid- contraction to do not. The phonological result of this psycholinguistic phenomenon is that the normal /o/ or "o-sound" found in the contraction don't cancels the normal /u/ or "u-sound" found in the do of do not.

Do /du/ not you agree?

Here are some additional linguistic traits of Ziva's.