# Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience/Comprehension

:   \"Language is the way we interact and communicate, so, naturally,
    the means of communication and the conceptual background that's
    behind it, which is more important, are used to try to shape
    attitudes and opinions and induce conformity and subordination. Not
    surprisingly, it was created in the more democratic societies.\" -
    Noam Chomsky

Language is a central part of everyday life and communication a natural
human necessity. For those reasons, there has been a high interest in
their properties. However, describing the processes of language turns
out to be quite hard.

We can define language as a system of communication through which we
code and express our feelings, thoughts, ideas and experiences.

Already Plato was concerned with the nature of language in his dialogue
"Cratylus", where he discussed first ideas about nowadays important
principles of linguistics namely morphology and phonology. Gradually
philosophers, natural scientists and psychologists became interested in
features of language.

Since the emergence of the cognitive science in the 1950\'s and
Chomsky´s criticism on the behaviourist view, language is seen as a
cognitive ability of humans, thus incorporating linguistics in other
major fields like computer science and psychology. Today,
psycho-linguistics is a discipline on its own and its most important
topics are acquisition, production and comprehension of language.

Especially in the 20th century, many studies concerning communication
have been conducted, evoking new views on old facts. New techniques,
like CT, MRI and fMRI or EEG, as described in Methods of Behavioural and
Neuroscience Methods, made it possible to observe brain during
communication processes in detail.

Later on, an overview of the most popular experiments and observed
effects is presented. But in order to understand those, one needs to
have a basic idea of semantics and syntax as well as of linguistic
principles for processing words, sentences and full texts.

Finally, some questions will arise: How is language affected by culture?
Or in philosophical terms, the discussion about the relationship between
language and thoughts has to be developed.

## Historical review on Psycholinguistics & Neurolinguistics

Starting with philosophical approaches, the nature of the human language
had ever been a topic of interest. Galileo in the 16th century saw the
human language as the most important invention of humans. Later on in
the 18th century the scientific study of language began by
psychologists. Wilhelm Wundt (founder of the first laboratory of
psychology) saw language as the mechanism by which thoughts are
transformed into sentences. The observations of Wernike and Broca (see
chapter 9) were milestones in the studies of language as a cognitive
ability. In the early 1900s the behaviouristic view influenced the study
of language very much. In 1957 B.F.Skiner published his book \"Verbal
Behaviour\", in which he proposed that learning of language can be seen
as a mechanism of reinforcement. Noam Chomsky (quoted at the beginning
of this chapter) published in the same year \"Syntactic Structures\". He
proposed that the ability to invent language is somehow coded in the
genes. That led him to the idea that the underlying basis of language is
similar across cultures. There might be some kind of universal grammar
as a base, independent of what kind of language (including sign
language) might be used by humans. Further on Chomsky published a review
of Skinner´s \"Verbal Behaviour\" in which he presented arguments
against the behaviouristic view. There are still some scientists who are
convinced that it does not need a mentalist approach like Chomsky
proposed, but in the meantime most agree that human language has to be
seen as a cognitive ability. \[edit\] Current goals of Psycholinguistics

A natural language can be analysed at a number of different levels. In
linguistics we differ between phonology (sounds), morphology (words),
syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), and pragmatics (use).
Linguists try to find systematic descriptions capturing the regularities
inherent in the language itself. But a description of natural language
just as a abstract structured system, can not be enough. Psycholinguists
rather ask, how the knowledge of language is represented in the brain,
and how it is used. Today\'s most important research topics are:

1.  comprehension: How humans understand spoken as well as written
    language, how language is processed and what interactions with
    memory are involved.
2.  speech production: Both the physical aspect of speech production,
    and the mental process that stands behind the uttering of a
    sentence.
3.  acquisition: How people learn to speak and understand a language.

## Characteristic features

What is a language? What kinds of languages do exist? Are there
characteristic features that are unique in human language?

There are plenty of approaches how to describe languages. Especially in
computational linguistics, researchers try to find formal definitions
for different kinds of languages. But for psychology other aspects of
language than its function as pure system of communication are of
central interest. Language is also a tool we use for social interactions
starting with the exchange of news up to the identification of social
groups by their dialect. We use it for expressing our feelings,
thoughts, ideas etc.

Although there are plenty ways to communicate (consider
Non-Human-Language) humans expect their system of communication - the
human language to be unique. But what is it that makes the human
language so special and unique?

Four major criteria have been proposed by Professor Franz Schmalhofer
from the University of Osnabrück as explained below:

-   semanticity
-   displacement
-   creativity
-   structure dependency

Semanticity means the usage of symbols. Symbols can either refer to
objects or to relations between objects. In the human language words are
the basic form of symbols. For example the word \"book\" refers to an
object made of paper on which something might be written. A relation
symbol is the verb \"to like\" which refers to the sympathy of somebody
to something or someone.

The criterion of displacement means that not only objects or relations
at presence can be described but there are also symbols which refer to
objects in another time or place. The word \"yesterday\" refers to day
before and objects mentioned in a sentence with \"yesterday\" refer to
objects from another time than the present one. Displacement is about
the communication of events which had happened or will happen and the
objects belonging to that event.

Having a range of symbols to communicate these symbols can be newly
combined. Creativity is the probable most important feature. Our
communication is not restricted to a fixed set of topics or
predetermined messages. The combination of a finite set of symbols to an
infinite number of sentences and meaning. With the infinite number of
sentences the creation of novel messages is possible. How creative the
human language is can be illustrated by some simple examples like the
process that creates verbs from nouns. New words can be created, which
do not exist so far, but we are able to understand them.

Examples:

leave the boat on the beach -\> beach the boat

keep the aeroplane on the ground -\> ground the aeroplane

write somebody an e-mail -\> e-mail somebody

Creative systems are also found in other aspects of language, like the
way sounds are combined to form new words. i.e. prab, orgu, zabi could
be imagined as names for new products.

To avoid an arbitrary combination of symbols without any regular
arrangement \"true\" languages need structure dependency. Combining
symbols the syntax is relevant. A change in the symbol order might have
an impact on the meaning of the sentence. For example "The dog bites the
cat" has obviously a different meaning than "The cat bites the dog"
based on the different word arrangement of the two sentences. \[edit\]
Non-Human Language - Animal Communication \[edit\] Forms of
Communication

As mentioned before human language is just one of quite a number of
communication forms. Different forms of communication can be found in
the world of animals. From a little moth to a giant whale, all animals
appear to have the use of communication.

Not only humans use facial expression for stressing utterances or
feeling, facial expressions can be found among apes. The expression, for
example \"smiling\" indicates cooperativeness and friendliness in both
the human and the ape world. On the other hand an ape showing teeth
indicates the willingness to fight.

Posture is a very common communicative tool among animals. Lowering the
front part of the body and extending the front legs is a sign of dogs
that they are playful whereas lowering the full body is a dog's postural
way to show its submissiveness. Postural communication is known in both
human and non-human primates.

Besides facial expression, gesture and posture that are found in human
communication, there are other communicative devices which are either
just noticeable by the sub-consciousness of humans like scent or cannot
be found amongst humans like light, colour and electricity. The
chemicals which are used for a communicative function are called
pheremones. Those pheremones are used to mark territorial or to signal
its reproductive readiness. For animals scent is a very important tool
which predominates their mating behaviour. Humans are influenced in
their mating behaviour by scent as well but there are more factors to
that behaviour so that scent is not predominating.

The insects use species-dependent light patterns to signal identity, sex
and location. For example the octopus changes colour for signalling
territorial defence and mating readiness. In the world of birds colour
is wide spread, too. The male peacock has colourful feathering to
impress female peahens as a part of mating behaviour. These ways of
communication help to live in a community and survive in certain
environment. \[edit\] Characteristic Language Features in Animal
Communication

As mentioned above it is possible to describe the uniqueness of human
language by four criteria (semanticity, displacement, creativity and
structural dependency) which are important devices in the human language
to form a clear communication between humans. To see if these criteria
exist in animal communication - i.e. if animals possess a \"true\"
language - several experiments with non-human primates were performed.
Non-human primates were taught American Sign Language (ASL) and a
specially developed token language to detect in how far they are capable
of linguistic behaviour. Can semanticity, displacement, creativity and
structure dependency be found in non-human language?

Experiments

1.  In 1931, comparative psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his
    wife started an experiment with a chimpanzee, which he raised
    alongside his own child. The purpose was of course to see how
    environment influenced development, could chimpanzee be more like
    human? Eventually the experiment failed, the factors are: the
    behavior of their son started to become more and more
    chimpanzee-like and also the tiredness of having to do both
    experiment and raising two babies at the same time.
2.  Human language In 1948, in Orange Park, Florida, Keith and Cathy
    Hayes tried to teach English words to a chimpanzee named Viki. She
    was raised as if she were a human child. The chimpanzee was taught
    to \"speak\" easy English words like \"cup\". The experiment failed
    since with the supralanyngal anatomy and the vocal fold structure
    that chimpanzees have it is impossible for them to produce human
    speech sounds. The failure of the Viki experiment made scientists
    wonder how far are non-human primates able to communicate
    linguistically.
3.  Sign language From 1965 to 1972 the first important evidence showing
    rudiments of linguistic behaviour was \"Washoe\", a young female
    chimpanzee. The experimenters Allen and Beatrice Gardner conducted
    an experiment where Washoe learned 130 signs of the American Sign
    Language within three years. Showing pictures of a duck to Washoe
    and asking WHAT THAT? she combined the symbols of WATER and BIRD to
    create WATER BIRD as she had not learned the word DUCK (the words in
    capital letters refer to the signs the apes use to communicate with
    the experimenter).

It was claimed that Washoe was able to arbitrarily combine signs
spontaneously and creatively. Some scientists criticised the ASL
experiment of Washoe because they claimed that ASL is a loose
communicative system and strict syntactic rules are not required.
Because of this criticism different experiments were developed and
performed which focus on syntactic rules and structure dependency as
well as on creative symbol combination.

A non-human primate named \"Kanzi\" was trained by Savage-Rumbaugh in
1990. Kanzi was able to deal with 256 geometric symbols and understood
complex instructions like GET THE ORANGE THAT IS IN THE COLONY ROOM. The
experimenter worked with rewards.

A question which arose was whether these non-human primates were able to
deal with human-like linguistic capacities or if they were just trained
to perform a certain action to get the reward.

For more detailed explanations of the experiments see The Mind of an
Ape.

Can the characteristic language features be found in non-human
communication?

Creativity seems to be present in animal communication as amongst others
Washoe showed with the creation of WATER BIRD for DUCK. Although some
critics claimed that creativity is often accidental or like in the case
of Washoe's WATER BIRD the creation relays on the fact that water and
bird were present. Just because of this presence Washoe invented the
word WATER BIRD.

In the case of Kanzi a certain form of syntactic rules was observed. In
90% of Kanzi's sentences there was first the invitation to play and then
the type of game which Kanzi wanted to play like CHASE HIDE, TICKLE SLAP
and GRAB SLAP. The problem which was observed was that it is not always
easy to recognise the order of signs. Often facial expression and hand
signs are performed at the same time. One ape signed the sentence I LIKE
COKE by hugging itself for "like" and forming the sign for "coke" with
its hands at the same time. Noticing an order in this sign sentence was
not possible.

A certain structural dependency could be observed at Kanzi's active and
passive sentences. When Matata, a fellow chimpanzee was grabbed Kanzi
signed GRAB MATATA and when Matata was performing an action such as
biting Kanzi produced MATATA BITE. It has not yet been proved that
symbolic behaviour is occurring. Although there are plenty evidences
that creativity and displacement occur in animal communication some
critics claim that these evidences can be led back to dressage and
training. It was claimed that linguistic behaviour cannot be proved as
it is more likely to be a training to correctly use linguistic devices.
Apes show just to a little degree syntactic behaviour and they are not
able to produce sentences containing embedded structures. Some linguists
claim that because of such a lack of linguistic features non-human
communication cannot be a "true" language. Although we do not know the
capacity of an ape\'s mind it does not seem that the range of meanings
observed in ape\'s wild life approach the capaciousness of semanticity
of human communication. Furthermore apes seem not to care to much about
displacement as it appears that they do not communicate about imaginary
pasts or futures.

All in all non-human primate communication consisting of graded series
of communication shows little arbitrariness. The results with non-human
primates led to a controversial discussion about linguistic behaviour.
Many researchers claimed that the results were influenced by dressage.

For humans language is a communication form suited to the patterns of
human life. Other communication systems are better suited for fellow
creatures and their mode of existence.

Now that we know that there is a difference between animal communication
and human language we will see detailed features of the human language.
\[edit\] Language Comprehension & Production \[edit\] Language features
-- Syntax and Semantics

In this chapter the main question will be "how do we understand
sentences?". To find an answer to that problem it is necessary to have a
closer look at the structure of languages. The most important properties
every human language provides are rules which determine the permissible
sentences and a hierarchical structure (phonemes as basic sounds, which
constitute words, which in turn constitute phrases, which constitute
sentences, which constitute texts). These feature of a language enable
humans to create new unique sentences. The fact that all human languages
have a common ground even if they developed completely independent from
one another may lead to the conclusion that the ability to process
language must be innate. Another evidence of a inborn universal grammar
is that there were observations of deaf children who were not taught a
language and developed their own form of communication which provided
the same basic constituents. Two basic abilities human beings have to
communicate is to interpret the syntax of a sentence and the knowledge
of the meaning of single words, which in combination enables them to
understand the semantic of whole sentences. Many experiments have been
done to find out how the syntactical and semantical interpretation is
done by human beings and how syntax and semantics works together to
construct the right meaning of a sentence. Physiological experiments had
been done in which for example the event-related potential (ERP) in the
brain was measured as well as behavioristic experiments in which mental
chronometry, the measurement of the time-course of cognitive processes,
was used. Physiological experiments showed that the syntactical and the
semantical interpretation of a sentence takes place separately from each
other. These results will be presented below in more detail.

## Physiological Approach

Semantical incorrectness in a sentence evokes an N400 in the ERP The
exploration of the semantic sentence processing can be done by the
measurement of the event-related potential (ERP) when hearing a
semantical correct sentence in comparison to a semantical incorrect
sentence. For example in one experiment three reactions to sentences
were compared:

Semantically correct: "The pizza was too hot to eat." Semantically
wrong: "The pizza was too hot to drink." Semantically wrong: "The pizza
was too hot to cry."

In such experiments the ERP evoked by the correct sentence is considered
to show the ordinary sentence processing. The variations in the ERP in
case of the incorrect sentences in contrast to the ERP of the correct
sentence show at what time the mistake is recognized. In case of
semantic incorrectness there was observed a strong negative signal about
400ms after perceiving the critical word which did not occure, if the
sentence was semantically correct. These effects were observed mainly in
the partial and central area. There was also found evidence that the
N400 is the stronger the less the word fits semantically. The word
"drink" which fits a little bit more in the context caused a weaker N400
than the word "cry". That means the intensity of the N400 correlates
with the degree of the semantic mistake. The more difficult it is to
search for a semantic interpretation of a sentence the higher is the
N400 response.

To examine the syntactical aspects of the sentence processing a quite
similar experiment as in the case of the semantic processing was done.
There were used syntactical correct sentences and incorrect sentences,
such as (correct:)"The cats won´t eat..." and (incorrect:)"The cats
won´t eating...". When hearing or reading a syntactical incorrect
sentence in contrast to a syntactical correct sentence the ERP changes
significantly on two different points of time. First of all there a very
early increased response to syntactical incorrectness after 120ms. This
signal is called the 'early left anterior negativity' because it occurs
mainly in the left frontal lobe. This advises that the syntactical
processing is located amongst others in Broca\'s area which is located
in the left frontal lobe. The early response to syntactical mistakes
also indicates that the syntactical mistakes are detected earlier than
semantic mistakes.

The other change in the ERP when perceiving a syntactical wrong sentence
occurs after 600ms in the partial lobe. The signal is increasing
positively and is therefore called P600. Possibly the late positive
signal is reflecting the attempt to reconstruct the grammatical
problematic sentence to find a possible interpretation.
<File:Cpnp3001.jpg> Syntactical incorrectness in a sentence evokes after
600ms a P600 in the electrodes above the partial lobe.

To summarize the three important ERP-components: First of all there
occurs the ELAN at the left frontal lobe which shows a violation of
syntactical rules. After it follows the N400 in central and partial
areas as a reaction to a semantical incorrectness and finally there
occurs a P600 in the partial area which probably means a reanalysis of
the wrong sentence.

## Behavioristic Approach -- Parsing a Sentence

Behavioristic experiments about how human beings parse a sentence often
use syntactically ambiguous sentences. Because it is easier to realize
that sentence-analysing mechanisms called parsing take place when using
sentences in which we cannot automatically constitute the meaning of the
sentence. There are two different theories about how humans parse
sentences. The syntax-first approach claims that syntax plays the main
part whereas semantics has only a supporting role, whereas the
interactionist approach states that both syntax and semantics work
together to determine the meaning of a sentence. Both theories will be
explained below in more detail.

The Syntax-First Approach of Parsing The syntax-first approach
concentrates on the role of syntax when parsing a sentence. That humans
infer the meaning of a sentence with help of its syntactical structure
(Kako and Wagner 2001) can easily be seen when considering Lewis
Carroll´s poem 'Jabberwocky':

\"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.\"

Although most of the words in the poems have no meaning one may ascribe
at least some sense to the poem because of its syntactical structure.

There are many different syntactic rules that are used when parsing a
sentence. One important rule is the principle of late closure which
means that a person assumes that a new word he perceives is part of the
current phrase. That this principle is used for parsing sentences can be
seen very good with help of a so called garden-path sentence.
Experiments with garden-path sentences have been done by Frazier and
Fayner 1982. One example of a garden-path sentence is: "Because he
always jogs a mile seems a short distance to him." When reading this
sentence one first wants to continue the phrase "Because he always jogs"
by adding "a mile" to the phrase, but when reading further one realizes
that the words "a mile" are the beginning of a new phrase. This shows
that we parse a sentence by trying to add new words to a phrase as long
as possible. Garden-path sentences show that we use the principle of
late closure as long it makes syntactically sense to add a word to the
current phrase but when the sentence starts to get incorrect semantics
are often used to rearrange the sentence. The syntax-first approach does
not disregard semantics. According to this approach we use syntax first
to parse a sentence and semantics is later on used to make sense of the
sentence.

Apart from experiments which show how syntax is used for parsing
sentences there were also experimens on how semantics can influence the
sentence processing. One important experiment about that issue has been
done by Daniel Slobin in 1966. He showed that passive sentences are
understood faster if the semantics of the words allow only one subject
to be the actor. Sentences like "The horse was kicked by the cow." and
"The fence was kicked by the cow." are grammatically equal and in both
cases only one syntactical parsing is possible. Nevertheless the first
sentence semantically provides two subjects as possible actors and
therefore it needs longer to parse this sentence. By measuring this
significant difference Daniel Slobin showed that semantics play an
important role in parsing a sentence, too.

## The Interactionist Approach of Parsing

The interactionist approach ascribes a more central role to semantics in
parsing a sentence. In contrast to the syntax-first approach, the
interactionist theory claims that syntax is not used first but that
semantics and syntax are used simultaneously to parse the sentence and
that they work together in clarifying the meaning. There have been
several experiments which provide evidence that semantics are taken into
account from the very beginning reading a sentence. Most of these
experiments are working with the eye-tracking techniques and compare the
time needed to read syntactical equal sentences in which critical words
cause or prohibit ambiguity by semantics. One of these experiments was
done by John Trueswell and coworkers in 1994. He measured the eye
movement of persons when reading the following two sentences:

The defendant examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. The
evidence examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable.

He observed that the time needed to read the words "by the lawyer" took
longer in case of the first sentence because in the first sentence the
semantics first allow an interpretation in which the defendant is the
one who examines, while the evidence only can be examined. This
experiment shows that the semantics also play a role while reading the
sentence which supports the interactionist approach and argues against
the theory that semantics are only used after a sentence has been parsed
syntactically. \[edit\] Inferences Creates Coherence

Coherence is the semantic relation of information in different parts of
a text to each other. In most cases coherence is achieved by inference;
that means that a reader draws information out of a text that is not
explicitly stated in this text. For further information the chapter
\[Neuroscience of Text Comprehension\] should be considered.

## Situation Model

A situation model is a mental representation of what a text is about.
This approach proposes that the mental representation people form as
they read a story does not indicate information about phrases,
sentences, paragraphs, but a representation in terms of the people,
objects, locations, events described in the story (Goldstein 2005,
p. 374)

For a more detailed description of situation models, see Situation
Models

## Using Language

Conversations are dynamic interactions between two or more people
(Garrod &Pickering, 2004 as cited in Goldstein 2005). The important
thing to mention is that conversation is more than the act of speaking.
Each person brings in his or her knowledge and conversations are much
easier to process if participants bring in shared knowledge. In this
way, participants are responsible of how they bring in new knowledge.
H.P. Grice proposed in 1975 a basic principle of conversation and four
"conversational maxims." His cooperative principle states that "the
speaker and listener agree that the person speaking should strive to
make statements that further the agreed goals of conversation." The four
maxims state the way of how to achieve this principle.

1\. Quantity: The speaker should try to be informative, no
over-/underinformation.

2\. Quality: Do not say things which you believe to be false or lack
evidence of.

3\. Manner: Avoiding being obscure or ambiguous.

4\. Relevance: Stay on topic of the exchange.

An example of a rule of conversation incorporating three of those maxims
is the given-new-contract. It states that the speaker should construct
sentences so that they include given and new information. (Haviland &
Clark, 1974 as cited in Goldstein, 2005). Consequences of not following
this rule were demonstrated by Susan Haviland and Herbert Clark by
presenting pairs of sentences (either following or ignoring the
given-new-contract) and measuring the time participants needed until
they fully understood the sentence. They found that participants needed
longer in pairs of the type:

`   We checked the picnic supplies. `\
`   The beer was warm.`\
\
`   Rather than:`\
`   We got some beer out of the trunk. `\
`   The beer was warm.`

The reason that it took longer to comprehend the second sentence of the
first pair is that inferencing has to be done (beer has not been
mentioned as being part of the picnic supplies). (Goldstein, 2005,
p. 377-378)

## Language, Culture and Cognition

In the parts above we saw that there has been a lot of research of
language, from letters through words and sentences to whole
conversations. Most of the research described in the parts above was
processed by English speaking researchers and the participants were
English speaking as well. Can those results be generalised for all
languages and cultures or might there be a difference between English
speaking cultures and for example cultures with Asian or African origin?

Imagine our young man from the beginning again: Knut! Now he has to
prepare a presentation with his friend Chang for the next psychology
seminar. Knut arrives at his friend's flat and enters his living-room,
glad that he made it there just in time. They have been working a few
minutes when Chang says: "It has become cold in here!" Knut remembers
that he did not close the door, stands up and\..."stop! What is
happening here?!"

This part is concerned with culture and its connection to language.
Culture, not necessarily in the sense of \"high culture\" like music,
literature and arts but culture is the \"know-how\" a person must have
to tackle his or her daily life. This know-how might include high
culture but it is not necessary.

## Culture and Language

Scientists wondered in how far culture affects the way people use
language. In 1991 Yum studied the indirectness of statements in Asian
and American conversations. The statement \"Please shut the door\" was
formulated by Americans in an indirect way. They might say something
like \"The door is open\" to signal that they want to door to be shut.
Even more indirect are Asian people. They often do not even mention the
door but they might say something like \"It is somewhat cold today\".
Another cultural difference affecting the use of language was observed
by Nisbett in 2003 in observation about the way people pose questions.
When American speaker ask someone if more tea is wanted they ask
something like \"More tea?\". Different to this Asian people would ask
if the other one would like more drinking as for Asians it seems obvious
that tea is involved and therefore mentioning the tea would be
redundant. For Americans it is the other way round. For them it seems
obvious that drinking is involved so they just mention the tea.

This experiment and similar ones indicate that people belonging to Asian
cultures are often relation orientated. Asians focus on relationships in
groups. Contrasting, the Americans concentrate on objects. The involved
object and its features are more important than the object\'s relation
to other objects. These two different ways of focusing shows that
language is affected by culture.

A experiment which clearly shows these results is the mother-child
interaction which was observed by Fernald and Morikawa in 1993. They
studied mother-child talk of Asian and American mothers. An American
mother trying to show and explain a car to her child often repeated the
object \"car\" and wants the child to repeat it as well. The mother
focuses on the features of the car and labels the importance of the
object itself. The Asian mother shows the toy car to her child, gives
the car to the child and wants it to give the car back. The mother
shortly mentions that the object is a car but concentrates on the
importance of the relation and the politeness of giving back the object.

Realising that there are plenty differences in how people of different
cultures use language the question arises if languages affects the way
people think and perceive the world.

## What is the connection between language and cognition?

### Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

In the 1950s Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed the hypothesis
that the language of a culture affects the way people think and
perceive. The controversial theory was question by Elenor Rosch who
studied colour perception of Americans and Danis who are members of an
stone-age agricultural culture in the Iran. Americans have several
different categories for colour as for example blue, red, yellow and so
on. Danis just have two main colour categories. The participants were
ask to recall colours which were shown to them before. That experiment
did not show significant differences in colour perception and memory as
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presumes. <File:Color-naming> exp.jpg
Color-naming experiment by Roberson et al. (2000)

### Categorical Perception

Nevertheless a support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was Debi
Roberson\'s demonstration for categorical perception based on the colour
perception experiment by Rosch. The participants, a group of
English-speaking British and another group of Berinmos from New Guinea
were ask to name colours of a board with colour chips. The Berinmos
distinguish between five different colour categories and the denotation
of the colour names is not equivalent to the British colour denotation.
Apart from these differences there are huge differences in the
organisation of the colour categories. The colours named green and blue
by British participants where categorised as nol which also covers
colours like light-green, yellow-green, and dark blue. Other colour
categories differ similarly.

The result of Roberson\'s experiment was that it is easier for British
people to discriminate between green and blue whereas Berinmos have less
difficulties distinguishing between Nol and Wap. The reaction to colour
is affected by language, by the vocabulary we have for denoting colours.
It is difficult for people to distinguish colours from the same colour
category but people have less trouble differentiating between colours
from different categories. Both groups have categorical colour
perception but the results for naming colours depends on how the colour
categories were named. All in all it was shown that categorical
perception is influenced by the language use of different cultures.

These experiments about perception and its relation to cultural language
usage leads to the question whether thought is related to language with
is cultural differences.

## Is thought dependent on, or even caused by language?

### Historical theories

An early approach was proposed by J.B. Watson's in 1913. His
peripheralist approach was that thought is a tiny not noticeable speech
movement. While thinking a person performs speech movements as he or she
would do while talking. A couple year later, in 1921 Wittgenstein poses
the theory that the limits of a person\'s language mean the limits of
that person\'s world. As soon as a person is not able to express a
certain content because of a lack of vocabulary that person is not able
to think about those contents as they are outside of his or her world.
Wittgenstein\'s theory was doubted by some experiments with babies and
deaf people.

### Present research

To find some evidence for the theory that language and culture is
affecting cognition Lian-hwang Chiu designed an experiment with American
and Asian children. The children were asked to group objects in pairs so
that these objects fit together. On picture that was shown to the
children there was a cow, a chicken and some grass. The children had to
decided which of the two objects fitted together. The American children
mostly grouped cow and chicken because of group of animals they belong
to. Asian children more often combined the cow with the grass as there
is the relation of the cow normally eating grass.

In 2000 Chui repeated the experiment with words instead of pictures. A
similar result was observed. The American children sorted their pairs
taxonomically. Given the words \"panda\", \"monkey\" and \"banana\"
American children paired \"panda\" and monkey\". Chinese children
grouped relationally. They put \"monkey\" with \"banana\". Another
variation of this experiment was done with bilingual children. When the
task was given in English to the children they grouped the objects
taxonomically. A Chinese task caused a relational grouping. The language
of the task clearly influenced on how to group the objects. That means
language may affects the way people think.

The results of plenty experiments regarding the relation between
language, culture and cognition let assume that culture affects language
and cognition is affected by language.Our way of thinking is influenced
by the way we talk and thought can occur without language but the exact
relation between language and thought remains to be determined.

## Introduction

*\"Language is the way we interact and communicate, so, naturally, the
means of communication and the conceptual background that's behind it,
which is more important, are used to try to shape attitudes and opinions
and induce conformity and subordination. Not surprisingly, it was
created in the more democratic societies.\"* - Chomsky

Language is a central part of everyday life and communication a natural
human necessity. For those reasons there has been a high interest in
their properties. However describing the processes of language turns out
to be quite hard.

We can define language as a system of communication through which we
code and express our feelings, thoughts, ideas and experiences.[^1]

Already Plato was concerned with the nature of language in his dialogue
"Cratylus", where he discussed first ideas about nowadays important
principles of linguistics namely morphology and phonology. Gradually
philosophers, natural scientists and psychologists became interested in
features of language.

Since the emergence of the cognitive science in the 50\'s and Chomsky´s
criticism on the behaviourist view, language is seen as a cognitive
ability of humans, thus incorporating linguistics in other major fields
like computer science and psychology. Today, psycho-linguistics is a
discipline on its own and its most important topics are acquisition,
production and comprehension of language.

Especially in the 20th century many studies concerning communication
have been conducted, evoking new views on old facts. New techniques,
like CT, MRI and fMRI or EEG, as described in Methods of Behavioural
and Neuroscience
Methods,
made it possible to observe brain during communication processes in
detail.

Later on an overview of the most popular experiments and observed
effects is presented. But in order to understand those one needs to have
a basic idea of semantics and syntax as well as of linguistic principles
for processing words, sentences and full texts.

Finally some questions will arise: How is language affected by culture?
Or in philosophical terms, the discussion about the relationship between
language and thoughts has to be developed.

## Language as a cognitive ability

### Historical review on Psycholinguistics & Neurolinguistics

Starting with philosophical approaches, the nature of the human language
had ever been a topic of interest. Galileo in the 16th century saw the
human language as the most important invention of humans. Later on in
the 18th century the **scientific** study of language began by
psychologists. Wilhelm Wundt (founder of the first laboratory of
psychology) saw language as the mechanism by which thoughts are
transformed into sentences. The observations of Wernike and Broca (see
chapter 9) were milestones in the studies of language as a cognitive
ability. In the early 1900s the behaviouristic view influenced the study
of language very much. In 1957 B.F.Skiner published his book \"Verbal
Behaviour\", in which he proposed that learning of language can be seen
as a mechanism of reinforcement. Noam Chomsky (quoted at the beginning
of this chapter) published in the same year \"Syntactic Structures\". He
proposed that the ability to invent language is somehow coded in the
genes. That led him to the idea that the underlying basis of language is
similar across cultures. There might be some kind of universal grammar
as a base, independent of what kind of language (including sign
language) might be used by humans. Further on Chomsky published a review
of Skinner´s \"Verbal Behaviour\" in which he presented arguments
against the behaviouristic view. There are still some scientists who are
convinced that it does not need a mentalist approach like Chomsky
proposed, but in the meantime most agree that human language has to be
seen as a cognitive ability.

### Current goals of Psycholinguistics

A natural language can be analysed at a number of different levels. In
linguistics we differ between phonology (sounds), morphology (words),
syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), and pragmatics (use).
Linguists try to find systematic descriptions capturing the regularities
inherent in the language itself. But a description of natural language
just as a abstract structured system, can not be enough. Psycholinguists
rather ask, how the knowledge of language is represented in the brain,
and how it is used. Today\'s most important research topics are:

1\) comprehension: How humans understand spoken as well as written
language, how language is processed and what interactions with memory
are involved.

2\) speech production: Both the physical aspect of speech production,
and the mental process that stands behind the uttering of a sentence.

3\) acquisition: How people learn to speak and understand a language.

### Characteristic features

What is a language? What kinds of languages do exist? Are there
characteristic features that are unique in human language?

There are plenty of approaches how to describe languages. Especially in
computational linguistics researchers try to find formal definitions for
different kinds of languages. But for psychology other aspects of
language than its function as pure system of communication are of
central interest. Language is also a tool we use for social interactions
starting with the exchange of news up to the identification of social
groups by their dialect. We use it for expressing our feelings,
thoughts, ideas etc.

Although there are plenty ways to communicate (consider
Non-Human-Language) humans expect their system of communication - the
human language to be unique. But what is it that makes the human
language so special and unique?

Four major criteria have been proposed by Professor Franz Schmalhofer
from the University of Osnabrück as explained below:

-semanticity

-displacement

-creativity

-structure dependency

**Semanticity** means the usage of symbols. Symbols can either refer to
objects or to relations between objects. In the human language words are
the basic form of symbols. For example the word \"book\" refers to an
object made of paper on which something might be written. A relation
symbol is the verb \"to like\" which refers to the sympathy of somebody
to something or someone.

The criterion of **displacement** means that not only objects or
relations at presence can be described but there are also symbols which
refer to objects in another time or place. The word \"yesterday\" refers
to day before and objects mentioned in a sentence with \"yesterday\"
refer to objects from another time than the present one. Displacement is
about the communication of events which had happened or will happen and
the objects belonging to that event.

Having a range of symbols to communicate these symbols can be newly
combined. **Creativity** is the probable most important feature. Our
communication is not restricted to a fixed set of topics or
predetermined messages. The combination of a finite set of symbols to an
infinite number of sentences and meaning. With the infinite number of
sentences the creation of novel messages is possible. How creative the
human language is can be illustrated by some simple examples like the
process that creates verbs from nouns. New words can be created, which
do not exist so far, but we are able to understand them.

Examples:

leave the boat on the beach -\> beach the boat

keep the aeroplane on the ground -\> ground the aeroplane

write somebody an e-mail -\> e-mail somebody

Creative systems are also found in other aspects of language, like the
way sounds are combined to form new words. i.e. prab, orgu, zabi could
be imagined as names for new products.

To avoid an arbitrary combination of symbols without any regular
arrangement \"true\" languages need **structure dependency**. Combining
symbols the syntax is relevant. A change in the symbol order might have
an impact on the meaning of the sentence. For example "The dog bites the
cat" has obviously a different meaning than "The cat bites the dog"
based on the different word arrangement of the two sentences.

## Non-Human Language - Animal Communication

### Forms of Communication

As mentioned before human language is just one of quite a number of
communication forms. Different forms of communication can be found in
the world of animals. From a little moth to a giant whale, all animals
appear to have the use of communication.

Not only humans use facial expression for stressing utterances or
feeling, facial expressions can be found among apes. The expression, for
example \"smiling\" indicates cooperativeness and friendliness in both
the human and the ape world. On the other hand an ape showing teeth
indicates the willingness to fight.

Posture is a very common communicative tool among animals. Lowering the
front part of the body and extending the front legs is a sign of dogs
that they are playful whereas lowering the full body is a dog's postural
way to show its submissiveness. Postural communication is known in both
human and non-human primates.

Besides facial expression, gesture and posture that are found in human
communication, there are other communicative devices which are either
just noticeable by the sub-consciousness of humans like scent or cannot
be found amongst humans like light, colour and electricity. The
chemicals which are used for a communicative function are called
pheremones. Those pheremones are used to mark territorial or to signal
its reproductive readiness. For animals scent is a very important tool
which predominates their mating behaviour. Humans are influenced in
their mating behaviour by scent as well but there are more factors to
that behaviour so that scent is not predominating.

The insects use species-dependent light patterns to signal identity, sex
and location. For example the octopus changes colour for signalling
territorial defence and mating readiness. In the world of birds colour
is wide spread, too. The male peacock has colourful feathering to
impress female peahens as a part of mating behaviour. These ways of
communication help to live in a community and survive in certain
environment.

### Characteristic Language Features in Animal Communication

As mentioned above it is possible to describe the uniqueness of human
language by four criteria (semanticity, displacement, creativity and
structural dependency) which are important devices in the human language
to form a clear communication between humans. To see if these criteria
exist in animal communication - i.e. if animals possess a \"true\"
language - several experiments with non-human primates were performed.
Non-human primates were taught American Sign Language (ASL) and a
specially developed token language to detect in how far they are capable
of linguistic behaviour. Can semanticity, displacement, creativity and
structure dependency be found in non-human language?

**Experiments**

**1. Human language** In 1948, in Orange Park, Florida, Keith and Cathy
Hayes tried to teach English words to a chimpanzee named Viki. She was
raised as if she were a human child. The chimpanzee was taught to
\"speak\" easy English words like \"cup\". The experiment failed since
with the supralanyngal anatomy and the vocal fold structure that
chimpanzees have it is impossible for them to produce human speech
sounds. The failure of the Viki experiment made scientists wonder how
far are non-human primates able to communicate linguistically.

**2. Sign language** From 1965 to 1972 the first important evidence
showing rudiments of linguistic behaviour was \"Washoe\", a young female
chimpanzee. The experimenters Allen and Beatrice Gardner conducted an
experiment where Washoe learned 130 signs of the American Sign Language
within three years. Showing pictures of a duck to Washoe and asking WHAT
THAT? she combined the symbols of WATER and BIRD to create WATER BIRD as
she had not learned the word DUCK (the words in capital letters refer to
the signs the apes use to communicate with the experimenter).

It was claimed that Washoe was able to arbitrarily combine signs
spontaneously and creatively. Some scientists criticised the ASL
experiment of Washoe because they claimed that ASL is a loose
communicative system and strict syntactic rules are not required.
Because of this criticism different experiments were developed and
performed which focus on syntactic rules and structure dependency as
well as on creative symbol combination.

A non-human primate named \"Kanzi\" was trained by Savage-Rumbaugh in
1990. Kanzi was able to deal with 256 geometric symbols and understood
complex instructions like GET THE ORANGE THAT IS IN THE COLONY ROOM. The
experimenter worked with rewards.

A question which arose was whether these non-human primates were able to
deal with human-like linguistic capacities or if they were just trained
to perform a certain action to get the reward.

For more detailed explanations of the experiments see The Mind of an
Ape.

**Can the characteristic language features be found in non-human
communication?**

Creativity seems to be present in animal communication as amongst others
Washoe showed with the creation of WATER BIRD for DUCK. Although some
critics claimed that creativity is often accidental or like in the case
of Washoe's WATER BIRD the creation relays on the fact that water and
bird were present. Just because of this presence Washoe invented the
word WATER BIRD.

In the case of Kanzi a certain form of syntactic rules was observed. In
90% of Kanzi's sentences there was first the invitation to play and then
the type of game which Kanzi wanted to play like CHASE HIDE, TICKLE SLAP
and GRAB SLAP. The problem which was observed was that it is not always
easy to recognise the order of signs. Often facial expression and hand
signs are performed at the same time. One ape signed the sentence I LIKE
COKE by hugging itself for "like" and forming the sign for "coke" with
its hands at the same time. Noticing an order in this sign sentence was
not possible.

A certain structural dependency could be observed at Kanzi's active and
passive sentences. When Matata, a fellow chimpanzee was grabbed Kanzi
signed GRAB MATATA and when Matata was performing an action such as
biting Kanzi produced MATATA BITE. It has not yet been proved that
symbolic behaviour is occurring. Although there are plenty evidences
that creativity and displacement occur in animal communication some
critics claim that these evidences can be led back to dressage and
training. It was claimed that linguistic behaviour cannot be proved as
it is more likely to be a training to correctly use linguistic devices.
Apes show just to a little degree syntactic behaviour and they are not
able to produce sentences containing embedded structures. Some linguists
claim that because of such a lack of linguistic features non-human
communication cannot be a "true" language. Although we do not know the
capacity of an ape\'s mind it does not seem that the range of meanings
observed in ape\'s wild life approach the capaciousness of semanticity
of human communication. Furthermore apes seem not to care to much about
displacement as it appears that they do not communicate about imaginary
pasts or futures.

All in all non-human primate communication consisting of graded series
of communication shows little arbitrariness. The results with non-human
primates led to a controversial discussion about linguistic behaviour.
Many researchers claimed that the results were influenced by dressage.

For humans language is a communication form suited to the patterns of
human life. Other communication systems are better suited for fellow
creatures and their mode of existence.

Now that we know that there is a difference between animal communication
and human language we will see detailed features of the human language.

## Language Comprehension & Production

### Language features -- Syntax and Semantics

In this chapter the main question will be "how do we understand
sentences?". To find an answer to that problem it is necessary to have a
closer look at the structure of languages. The most important properties
every human language provides are rules which determine the permissible
sentences and a hierarchical structure (phonemes as basic sounds, which
constitute words, which in turn constitute phrases, which constitute
sentences, which constitute texts). These feature of a language enable
humans to create new unique sentences. The fact that all human languages
have a common ground even if they developed completely independent from
one another may lead to the conclusion that the ability to process
language must be innate. Another evidence of a inborn universal grammar
is that there were observations of deaf children who were not taught a
language and developed their own form of communication which provided
the same basic constituents. Two basic abilities human beings have to
communicate is to interpret the syntax of a sentence and the knowledge
of the meaning of single words, which in combination enables them to
understand the semantic of whole sentences. Many experiments have been
done to find out how the syntactical and semantical interpretation is
done by human beings and how syntax and semantics works together to
construct the right meaning of a sentence. Physiological experiments had
been done in which for example the event-related potential (ERP) in the
brain was measured as well as behavioristic experiments in which mental
chronometry, the measurement of the time-course of cognitive processes,
was used. Physiological experiments showed that the syntactical and the
semantical interpretation of a sentence takes place separately from each
other. These results will be presented below in more detail.

**Physiological Approach**

**Semantics** !Semantical incorrectness in a sentence evokes a N400 in
the
ERP
Semantical incorrectness in a sentence evokes an N400 in the ERP The
exploration of the semantic sentence processing can be done by the
measurement of the event-related potential (ERP) when hearing a
semantical correct sentence in comparison to a semantical incorrect
sentence. For example in one experiment three reactions to sentences
were compared:

Semantically correct: "The pizza was too hot to eat." Semantically
wrong: "The pizza was too hot to drink." Semantically wrong: "The pizza
was too hot to cry."

In such experiments the ERP evoked by the correct sentence is considered
to show the ordinary sentence processing. The variations in the ERP in
case of the incorrect sentences in contrast to the ERP of the correct
sentence show at what time the mistake is recognized. In case of
semantic incorrectness there was observed a strong negative signal about
400ms after perceiving the critical word which did not occure, if the
sentence was semantically correct. These effects were observed mainly in
the partial and central area. There was also found evidence that the
N400 is the stronger the less the word fits semantically. The word
"drink" which fits a little bit more in the context caused a weaker N400
than the word "cry". That means the intensity of the N400 correlates
with the degree of the semantic mistake. The more difficult it is to
search for a semantic interpretation of a sentence the higher is the
N400 response.

**Syntax** ! Syntactical incorrectness in a sentence can evoke an ELAN
(early left anterior negativity) in the electrodes above the left
frontal lobe after
120ms. in the electrodes above the left frontal lobe after 120ms.")

To examine the syntactical aspects of the sentence processing a quite
similar experiment as in the case of the semantic processing was done.
There were used syntactical correct sentences and incorrect sentences,
such as (correct:)"The cats won´t eat..." and (incorrect:)"The cats
won´t eating...". When hearing or reading a syntactical incorrect
sentence in contrast to a syntactical correct sentence the ERP changes
significantly on two different points of time. First of all there a very
early increased response to syntactical incorrectness after 120ms. This
signal is called the 'early left anterior negativity' because it occurs
mainly in the left frontal lobe. This advises that the syntactical
processing is located amongst others in Broca\'s area which is located
in the left frontal lobe. The early response to syntactical mistakes
also indicates that the syntactical mistakes are detected earlier than
semantic mistakes.

The other change in the ERP when perceiving a syntactical wrong sentence
occurs after 600ms in the partial lobe. The signal is increasing
positively and is therefore called P600. Possibly the late positive
signal is reflecting the attempt to reconstruct the grammatical
problematic sentence to find a possible interpretation.

! Syntactical incorrectness in a sentence evokes after 600ms a P600 in
the electrodes above the partial
lobe.

To summarize the three important ERP-components: First of all there
occurs the ELAN at the left frontal lobe which shows a violation of
syntactical rules. After it follows the N400 in central and partial
areas as a reaction to a semantical incorrectness and finally there
occurs a P600 in the partial area which probably means a reanalysis of
the wrong sentence.

**Behavioristic Approach -- Parsing a Sentence**

Behavioristic experiments about how human beings parse a sentence often
use syntactically ambiguous sentences. Because it is easier to realize
that sentence-analysing mechanisms called parsing take place when using
sentences in which we cannot automatically constitute the meaning of the
sentence. There are two different theories about how humans parse
sentences. The syntax-first approach claims that syntax plays the main
part whereas semantics has only a supporting role, whereas the
interactionist approach states that both syntax and semantics work
together to determine the meaning of a sentence. Both theories will be
explained below in more detail.

**The Syntax-First Approach of Parsing** The syntax-first approach
concentrates on the role of syntax when parsing a sentence. That humans
infer the meaning of a sentence with help of its syntactical structure
(Kako and Wagner 2001) can easily be seen when considering Lewis
Carroll´s poem 'Jabberwocky':

\"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.\"

Although most of the words in the poems have no meaning one may ascribe
at least some sense to the poem because of its syntactical structure.

There are many different syntactic rules that are used when parsing a
sentence. One important rule is the principle of late closure which
means that a person assumes that a new word he perceives is part of the
current phrase. That this principle is used for parsing sentences can be
seen very good with help of a so called garden-path sentence.
Experiments with garden-path sentences have been done by Frazier and
Fayner 1982. One example of a garden-path sentence is: "Because he
always jogs a mile seems a short distance to him." When reading this
sentence one first wants to continue the phrase "Because he always jogs"
by adding "a mile" to the phrase, but when reading further one realizes
that the words "a mile" are the beginning of a new phrase. This shows
that we parse a sentence by trying to add new words to a phrase as long
as possible. Garden-path sentences show that we use the principle of
late closure as long it makes syntactically sense to add a word to the
current phrase but when the sentence starts to get incorrect semantics
are often used to rearrange the sentence. The syntax-first approach does
not disregard semantics. According to this approach we use syntax first
to parse a sentence and semantics is later on used to make sense of the
sentence.

Apart from experiments which show how syntax is used for parsing
sentences there were also experimens on how semantics can influence the
sentence processing. One important experiment about that issue has been
done by Daniel Slobin in 1966. He showed that passive sentences are
understood faster if the semantics of the words allow only one subject
to be the actor. Sentences like "The horse was kicked by the cow." and
"The fence was kicked by the cow." are grammatically equal and in both
cases only one syntactical parsing is possible. Nevertheless the first
sentence semantically provides two subjects as possible actors and
therefore it needs longer to parse this sentence. By measuring this
significant difference Daniel Slobin showed that semantics play an
important role in parsing a sentence, too.

**The Interactionist Approach of Parsing**

The interactionist approach ascribes a more central role to semantics in
parsing a sentence. In contrast to the syntax-first approach, the
interactionist theory claims that syntax is not used first but that
semantics and syntax are used simultanuasly to parse the sentence and
that they work together in clearifying the meaning. There have been made
several experiments which provide evidence that semantics are taking
into account from the very beginning reading a sentence. Most of these
experiments are working with the eye-tracking techniques and compare the
time needed to read syntactical equal senences in which critical words
cause or prohibit ambiguitiy by semantics. One of these experiments has
been done by John Trueswell and coworkers in 1994. He measured the eye
movement of persons when reading the following two sentences:

The defendant examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable. The
evidence examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable.

He observed that the time needed to read the words "by the lawyer" took
longer in case of the first sentence because in the first sentence the
semanics first allow an interpretation in which the defendant is the one
who examines, while the evidence only can be examined. This experiment
shows that the semantics also play a role while reading the sentence
which supports the interactionist approach and argues against the theory
that semantics are only used after a sentence has been parsed
syntactically.

### Inferences Creates Coherence

Coherence is the semantic relation of information in different parts of
a text to each other. In most cases coherence is achieved by inference;
that means that a reader draws information out of a text that is not
explicitly stated in this text. For further information the chapter
Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience/Situation Models and
Inferencing#Neuropsychology of Inferencing Neuroscience of Text
Comprehension should be
considered.

### Situation Model

A situation model is a mental representation of what a text is about.
This approach proposes that the mental representation people form as
they read a story does not indicate information about phrases,
sentences, paragraphs, but a representation in terms of the people,
objects, locations, events described in the story (Goldstein 2005,
p. 374)

For a more detailed description of situation models, see Psychology and
Cognitive Neuroscience/Situation Models and Inferencing Situation
Models

## Using Language

Conversations are dynamic interactions between two or more people
(Garrod &Pickering, 2004 as cited in Goldstein 2005). The important
thing to mention is that conversation is more than the act of speaking.
Each person brings in his or her knowledge and conversations are much
easier to process if participants bring in shared knowledge. In this
way, participants are responsible of how they bring in new knowledge.
H.P. Grice proposed in 1975 a basic principle of conversation and four
"conversational maxims." His cooperative principle states that "the
speaker and listener agree that the person speaking should strive to
make statements that further the agreed goals of conversation." The four
maxims state the way of how to achieve this principle.

1\. **Quantity**: The speaker should try to be informative, no
over-/underinformation.

2\. **Quality**: Do not say things which you believe to be false or lack
evidence of.

3\. **Manner**: Avoiding being obscure or ambiguous.

4\. **Relevance**: Stay on topic of the exchange.

An example of a rule of conversation incorporating three of those maxims
is the given-new-contract. It states that the speaker should construct
sentences so that they include given and new information. (Haviland &
Clark, 1974 as cited in Goldstein, 2005). Consequences of not following
this rule were demonstrated by Susan Haviland and Herbert Clark by
presenting pairs of sentences (either following or ignoring the
given-new-contract) and measuring the time participants needed until
they fully understood the sentence. They found that participants needed
longer in pairs of the type:

`    We checked the picnic supplies. `\
`    The beer was warm.`

`    Rather than:`\
`    We got some beer out of the trunk. `\
`    The beer was warm.`

The reason that it took longer to comprehend the second sentence of the
first pair is that inferencing has to be done (beer has not been
mentioned as being part of the picnic supplies). (Goldstein, 2005,
p. 377-378)

## Language, Culture and Cognition

In the parts above we saw that there has been a lot of research of
language, from letters through words and sentences to whole
conversations. Most of the research described in the parts above was
processed by English speaking researchers and the participants were
English speaking as well. Can those results be generalised for all
languages and cultures or might there be a difference between English
speaking cultures and for example cultures with Asian or African origin?

Imagine our young man from the beginning again: Knut! Now he has to
prepare a presentation with his friend Chang for the next psychology
seminar. Knut arrives at his friend's flat and enters his living-room,
glad that he made it there just in time. They have been working a few
minutes when Chang says: "It has become cold in here!" Knut remembers
that he did not close the door, stands up and\..."stop! What is
happening here?!"

This part is concerned with culture and its connection to language.
Culture, not necessarily in the sense of \"high culture\" like music,
literature and arts but culture is the \"know-how\" a person must have
to tackle his or her daily life. This know-how might include high
culture but it is not necessary.

**Culture and Language**

Scientists wondered in how far culture affects the way people use
language. In 1991 Yum studied the indirectness of statements in Asian
and American conversations. The statement \"Please shut the door\" was
formulated by Americans in an indirect way. They might say something
like \"The door is open\" to signal that they want to door to be shut.
Even more indirect are Asian people. They often do not even mention the
door but they might say something like \"It is somewhat cold today\".
Another cultural difference affecting the use of language was observed
by Nisbett in 2003 in observation about the way people pose questions.
When American speaker ask someone if more tea is wanted they ask
something like \"More tea?\". Different to this Asian people would ask
if the other one would like more drinking as for Asians it seems obvious
that tea is involved and therefore mentioning the tea would be
redundant. For Americans it is the other way round. For them it seems
obvious that drinking is involved so they just mention the tea.

This experiment and similar ones indicate that people belonging to Asian
cultures are often relation orientated. Asians focus on relationships in
groups. Contrasting, the Americans concentrate on objects. The involved
object and its features are more important than the object\'s relation
to other objects. These two different ways of focusing shows that
language is affected by culture.

A experiment which clearly shows these results is the mother-child
interaction which was observed by Fernald and Morikawa in 1993. They
studied mother-child talk of Asian and American mothers. An American
mother trying to show and explain a car to her child often repeated the
object \"car\" and wants the child to repeat it as well. The mother
focuses on the features of the car and labels the importance of the
object itself. The Asian mother shows the toy car to her child, gives
the car to the child and wants it to give the car back. The mother
shortly mentions that the object is a car but concentrates on the
importance of the relation and the politeness of giving back the object.

Realising that there are plenty differences in how people of different
cultures use language the question arises if languages affects the way
people think and perceive the world.

### What is the connection between language and cognition?

**Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis**

In the 1950s Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed the hypothesis
that the language of a culture affects the way people think and
perceive. The controversial theory was question by Elenor Rosch who
studied colour perception of Americans and Danis who are members of an
stone-age agricultural culture in the Iran. Americans have several
different categories for colour as for example blue, red, yellow and so
on. Danis just have two main colour categories. The participants were
ask to recall colours which were shown to them before. That experiment
did not show significant differences in colour perception and memory as
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presumes.

!Color-naming experiment by Roberson et al.
(2000)")
**Categorical Perception**

Nevertheless a support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was Debi
Roberson\'s demonstration for *categorical perception* based on the
colour perception experiment by Rosch. The participants, a group of
English-speaking British and another group of Berinmos from New Guinea
were ask to name colours of a board with colour chips. The Berinmos
distinguish between five different colour categories and the denotation
of the colour names is not equivalent to the British colour denotation.
Apart from these differences there are huge differences in the
organisation of the colour categories. The colours named *green* and
*blue* by British participants where categorised as nol which also
covers colours like *light-green*, *yellow-green*, and *dark blue*.
Other colour categories differ similarly.

The result of Roberson\'s experiment was that it is easier for British
people to discriminate between green and blue whereas Berinmos have less
difficulties distinguishing between Nol and Wap. The reaction to colour
is affected by language, by the vocabulary we have for denoting colours.
It is difficult for people to distinguish colours from the same colour
category but people have less trouble differentiating between colours
from different categories. Both groups have categorical colour
perception but the results for naming colours depends on how the colour
categories were named. All in all it was shown that categorical
perception is influenced by the language use of different cultures.

These experiments about perception and its relation to cultural language
usage leads to the question whether thought is related to language with
is cultural differences.

### Is thought dependent on, or even caused by language?

**Historical theories**

An early approach was proposed by J.B. Watson's in 1913. His
peripheralist approach was that thought is a tiny not noticeable speech
movement. While thinking a person performs speech movements as he or she
would do while talking. A couple year later, in 1921 Wittgenstein poses
the theory that the limits of a person\'s language mean the limits of
that person\'s world. As soon as a person is not able to express a
certain content because of a lack of vocabulary that person is not able
to think about those contents as they are outside of his or her world.
Wittgenstein\'s theory was doubted by some experiments with babies and
deaf people.

**Present research**

To find some evidence for the theory that language and culture is
affecting cognition Lian-hwang Chiu designed an experiment with American
and Asian children. The children were asked to group objects in pairs so
that these objects fit together. On picture that was shown to the
children there was a cow, a chicken and some grass. The children had to
decided which of the two objects fitted together. The American children
mostly grouped cow and chicken because of group of animals they belong
to. Asian children more often combined the cow with the grass as there
is the relation of the cow normally eating grass.

In 2000 Chui repeated the experiment with words instead of pictures. A
similar result was observed. The American children sorted their pairs
taxonomically. Given the words \"panda\", \"monkey\" and \"banana\"
American children paired \"panda\" and monkey\". Chinese children
grouped relationally. They put \"monkey\" with \"banana\". Another
variation of this experiment was done with bilingual children. When the
task was given in English to the children they grouped the objects
taxonomically. A Chinese task caused a relational grouping. The language
of the task clearly influenced on how to group the objects. That means
language may affects the way people think.

The results of plenty experiments regarding the relation between
language, culture and cognition let assume that culture affects language
and cognition is affected by language.*Our way of thinking is influenced
by the way we talk and thought can occur without language but the exact
relation between language and thought remains to be determined.*

## References

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*Books*

-   O\'Grady, W.; Dobrovolsky, M.; Katamba, F.: Contemporary
    Linguistics. Copp Clark Pittmann Ltd. (1996)
-   Banich, Marie T. : Neuropsychology. The neural bases of mental
    function. (1997)
-   Goldstein, E.B.: Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and
    Everyday Experience. (2005)
-   Akmajian, A.; Demers, R. A.; Farmer, A. K.; Harnish R. M.:
    Linguistics - An Introductin to Language and Communication, fifth
    Edition; the MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England;
    (2001)
-   Yule, G.: The study of language, second edition, Cambridge
    University Press; (1996)
-   Premack, D.; Premack, A.J.: The Mind of an Ape. W W Norton & Co
    Ltd.(1984)

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*Journals*

-   MacCorquodale, K.: On Chomsky´s Review of Skinner´s verbal Behavior.
    Journal of experimental analysis of behaviour. (1970) Nr.1 Chap. 13,
    p. 83-99,
-   Stemmer, N: Skinner\'s verbal behaviour, Chomsky\'s review, and
    mentalism. Journal of experimental analysis of behaviour. (1990)
    Nr.3 Chap. 54, p. 307-315
-   Chomsky, N.: Collateral Language. TRANS, Internet journal for
    cultural sciences.(2003) Nr. 15

## Links & Further reading

Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience/Comprehension


[^1]: E. B. Goldstein, \"Cognitive Psychology - Connecting Mind,
    Research, and Everyday Experience\" (2005), page 346
