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COGS 200: FOUNDATIONAL CONCEPTS NOTEPAD
John Alderete, Cognitive Science, Simon Fraser University
Preamble
The entries below provide a little background on some foundational concepts that cut
across several discussions in the readings. They are arranged alphabetically, and an entry
may have a ‘Connection’ statement that explains how this concept provides some
necessary background for one or more readings.
N.b.: the entries are updated regularly, so check the author’s webpage for the latest
version. It’s also not really necessary to print this document (save a tree!), because it is
always changing and materials relevant for specific classes will be handed out in class.
Aphasia
The inability to perceive, process, or produce language because of physical brain damage.
Broca’s aphasia (damage to the Broca’s area): an expressive disorder characterized by
inability to plan motor sequences that produce speech and sign; speech is halting, hard to
complete words, telegraphic, without inflection and function words
Wernike’s aphasia (damage to Wernicke’s area): receptive disorder characterized by
difficulty undering speech; misinterpretation of a talker’s speech common, often semantic
incoherent responses
Brain: physical features and specialized areas
Features
left and right hemispheres: two nearly symmetrical halves connected by a bundle of nerve
fibres call the corpus callosum
cortex: 1 quarter inch thick membrane exterior of brain, thought to subserve higher
cognitive capacities like language and math
gyri: bumps in the cortex
fissure:, depressed areas in the cortex, e.g., Sylvian fissue that separates the temporal and
frontal lobe
Specializations
auditory cortex: receiving/identifying auditory signals
visual cortex: processing visual stimuli
mortor cortex: responsible for sending signals to muscles
Language centers (usually left hemisphere)
Broca’s area: thought to be responsible for organizing articulation patterns, directing the
mortor cortex; also control of inflectional morphemes, function words
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Wernicke’s area: comprehension of words, selection of words when producing sentences
Competence vs. performance
Unconscious knowledge of a cognitive capacity vs. the productive use of said capacity;
cognitive science is generally interested in analyzing competence, but a fundamental
obstacle to this analysis is that competence can only be observed through performance,
where production is typically the interaction of several distinct cognitive mechanisms
Example: linguistic competence (as introduced by Chomsky)
Unconscious knowledge of language that enables language users to classify linguistic
forms in various ways.
Illustration: grammatical vs. ungrammatical (= *)
1. We have finished the reading.
2. * We finished have the reading.
3. The soldiers abandoned the city to the enemy.
4. * The soldiers abandoned to the enemy.
5. The soldiers surrendered (the city) to the enemy.
Analysis: English language speakers have these intuitions (among many others) because
they have an internally represented system of generative rules and representations of
language that predicts certain forms and not others.
Visualization: Rules of English Syntax and Representations of English Words
Parsing rules (fill in from class)
Mental dictionary
Word
Category
Combinatorial Potential
the,
Determiner
soldiers,
Noun
abandon
Verb
[ ___ NP (PP)]
(X) = X is optional
surrender
Verb
[ ___ (NP) (PP)]
Task: illustrate how linguistic competence correctly classifies above examples 1-6.
Question: how does one study linguistic competence
Assumption: not directly, because pure linguistic intuitions are not available; in language
performance, other cognitive capacities interact with linguistic competence in language
use, so need to factor them out to study linguistic competence
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Other capacities: attention, short term memory, motivation, many others
Example: Adam told Mary that Sheila’s sister’s mother’s preamble about the president of
the United States’s vision of her mother’s proposition to investigate CIA dealings with
the …
Claim: classification of this as ungrammatical could simply be due to limits on short term
memory.
Observation: some intuitions couldn’t be due to performance factors, so must reflect
competence. The difference between 1 and 2 couldn’t be due, e.g., to limits on attention
or short term memory.
Connection: competence, and the confound of performance, was originally introduced in
linguistics, but it relates to other cognitive capacities as well. In the Samuels et al. article,
for example, they show how researchers have proposed a competence for human
reasoning.
Innateness
An ability is innate if it is biologically controlled and genetically triggered. The
biological and genetic science of innateness is a separate entry, but the concept of
innateness can be considered at an abstract level as a predisposition for a behavior
possessed by all individuals of a species. Based on the work of Lenneberg, the following
criteria are used to identify innate abilities.
1. Behavior is present in all normal individuals of a species.
2. Behavior emerges before it is necessary.
3. Its appearance is not the result of a conscience decision.
4. Its emergence is not triggered by external events (though exposure to certain
normal conditions may be necessary).
5. Direct teaching and intensive practice has relative little effect.
6. There are regular milestones and approximately the same age in all normal
individuals.
7. There is likely to be a critical period for the emergence of the behavior.
Reference: Lenneberg, Eric. 1967. Biological foundations of language. New York: John
Wiley and Sons.
Modules
Special purpose information-processing organs
Two dimensions
• Theoretical: formal system that takes a certain class of information as input, and
returns outputs that characterize the cognitive capacity of some domain
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• Biological/physical: region of brain responsible for cognitive capacity, neural
infrastructure for implementing module (not necessary located in specific region)
Two types of modules:
• Chomskian: innate (i.e., biological program all humans born with) and
unconscious (restricted information flow)
• Computational modules: a computational devise that takes as input symbolic
representations and generates an output that is a manipulation of these
representations; not necessarily an entire system of representations
Examples
• Chomskian module: above syntax parser under Competence vs. Performance
• Computational module: ‘syntax label stripper’ that takes all the syntax
representations from the syntax parser and removes all the part of speech labels.
Object concept, knowledge of
Apart from the problem of learning the specific meanings of things, humans enjoy a
richness of knowledge about how objects behave in the physical word and relate to each
other. It’s typical to divide them into different classes of laws or principles.
Contact mechanics
Object solidity: principle by which two objects cannot occupy the same place at the same
time; e.g., one object can’t pass through another
Spatiotemporal constraints
Object existence: conditions under which the existence of an object representation is
apprehended
Object persistence: conditions under which representations of objects persist, even under
occlusion
Object numerosity: conditions under which object representations are enumerated
Visuospatial attention constraints
Object tracking limit: a limit on the ability to tract multiple objects in a visual field,
typically up to five objects presented simultaneously
Pidgins and Creoles
The context for pidgins: pidgins, and later creole languages, typically emerge in
situations of massive demographic shift. In the not too recent past, the forced slavery of
people in plantations created such conditions. Slaves kidnapped from diverse
communities, with different linguistic backgrounds, corralled together on plantation;
often separated if they speak the same language. Pidgin languages emerge as a
nonsystematic linguistic system that meets the communication needs of these people with
no common language.
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Degrees of nativization: creole languages develop from pidgin languages through a
process of nativization, the adoption of some of the lexical items and linguistic structures
of the pidgin in a more systematic rule-governed language. An important difference
exists, however, between the traditional creoles, like Hawai’ian Creole English and many
of the Caribbean Creoles, and other creoles that stems from the stability of the precursor
language. In Tok Pisin (New Guinea), for example, there are several documented steps of
nativization, and the creole language today developed from a relatively stable pidgin
language with a large number of linguistic constructions. Hawai’ian Creole English, on
the other hand, developed from what we might call a pre-pidgin jargon that lacked the
same systematicity as the precursor language for Tok Pisin.
Uniformity of traditional creoles: The surprising fact about traditional creoles, which
developed from pre-pidgin jargons, is that despite the lack of systematicity of linguistic
of the ‘ancestor language’, there are remarkable similarities in their linguistic structure.
Example: creoles from different that drew their lexical items and linguistic structures
from very different languages have a very similar tense-aspect-mood (TAM) system;
TAM is marked by three categories, anteriors (similar to English past), irreal (cover for
future/conditional/subjunctive), and nonpunctual (ongoing action); and the markers of
these categories appear in a particular order: anterior is always before irreal/nonpunctual,
and irreal before nonpunctual.
Reference: Bickerton, Derek. 1983. Creole Languages. Scientific American 249: 116-
122.