Quaid –e- azam university Topic name human speech perception psycholinguistic approach Group member Mujahid ramzan Muhammad Waseem Muhammad Abdullah Muhammad asghar

Human speech perception

Mujahid ramzan

Introduction Human speech helps in propagation of his ideas to others . Low auditory frequency information ,transmitted to womb (5-7 of gestation ) Rhythm is used by newborn to recognize and prefer their native language .

Broca’s area: In psycholinguistics we study the relationship of human brain and the language which he perceive. According to paul broca the left hemisphere of the brain is helpful in the perception of language. Production of articulate speech, clear and fluent. Moves the muscles that are required to speak.

The damage of broca area affect the language and speech production. Reading and writing are not affected. Deaf peoples can sometimes have difficulty signing if broca’s affected.

Muhammad Waseem

Wernicke’s area: This area is located in the left hemisphere only, next to the primary auditory cortex. This area is involve in the interpretation of speech, referred to as the language comprehension error. Locating appropriate words from memory to express meaning. Wernicke’s aphasia troubles the speech comprehension. If this area is damaged then meaningful sentences can not be produced.

Theories of language acquisition: According to the psychologists: According to Chomsky there is a Language Acquisition Device to acquire language. According to Chomsky, the presence of Universal Grammar in the brain of children allow them to deduce the structure of their native language from mere exposure.

Skinner’s view: Skinner view about a child is very simple he argues that ‘ baby brain is as ‘Empty vessels’ which language had to be ‘put in it’. Skinner also says that language acquisition as a cognitive behavior. The children can not perceive the long string of native language if he/she is in early stage of learning their native language. Parents rarely reinforce correct grammar in a child’s speech.

Similarities between Chomsky and Skinner theories Have different views and theories on same topic which is how all humans manage to obtain grammar Subject of their field is children

Differences between Chomsky and Skinner Theory Chomsky theory Language is a innate ability. Which all humans posses Skinner theory Learning process involving the correct form by the re-enforcement of the Other stimulus Child brain is a blank slate that is filled up by knowledge gained through experiences (traxler 2012)

Muhammad Abdullah

Innateness Theory Noam Chomsky's innateness or nativist theory proposes that children have an inborn or innate faculty for language acquisition that is biologically determined. According to Goodluck (1991), nativists view language as a fundamental part of the human genome, as a trait that makes humans human, and its acquisition is a natural part of maturation. cooing- 6 months- use phonemes from every language babbling- 9 months- selectively use phonemes from their native language one word utterances- 12 months- start using single words telegraphic speech- 2 years- multi-word utterances that lack in function normal speech- 5 years- almost normal developed speech

The Native Language Magnet Model (NLM) roposed by Kuhl (1994, 2000) focuses on infants' native phonetic categories a.The NLM specified three phases in development:Phase 1- infants are capable of differentiating all the sounds of human speech and abilities are derived from their general auditory processing mechanisms rather than from a speech-specific mechanism Phase 2- infants' sensitivity to the distributional properties of linguistic input produces phonetic representations. Experience accumulates and the representations most often activated begin to function as perceptual magnets for other members of the category Phase 3- The perception termed perceptual magnet effect produces facilitation in native and a reduction in foreign language phonetic abilitie

Muhammad asghar

Optimality Theory  In optimality theory, the essence of both language learning in general (learnability) and language acquisition (actual development children go through) entails the rankings of constraints from an initial state of the grammar to the language specific ranking of the target grammar (McCarthy, 2004). GEN- takes an input and generates the list of possible outputs or candidates EVAL- chooses the optimal candidate based on the constraints, and this candidate is the output CON- provides the criteria, the form of strictly ordered violable constraints, used to decide between constraints

Conclusion Language has been one of the central topics in cognitive science but has also been one of the most controversial. Languages are complex combinations of elegant principles and historical accidents, which is perhaps one of the reasons why there is no monolithic explanatory theory of language.  fact that they all believe that language is the key aspect that distinguishes humans from other organisms and by understanding how different aspects of language are acquired we can better understand the main vehicle by which we communicate.