| | Category | BE | L02 | 'Language Modes' as a Determinant of Linguistic Competence |
| | Abstract | How does top-down processing play a role in our understanding of |
| | words? |
| | |
| | The concept that we perceive what we expect is well established in |
| | cognitive psychology. i.e. Given lines can resemble either a mouse or a |
| | slab of cheese, but users who have been exposed to pictures of mice see |
| | the mouse whereas the latter holds true for those exposed to cheese |
| | images. |
| | |
| | I want study the concept of expectancy in the field of linguistics. I recently |
| | realized, as a polyglot, that the word 'such' in English has a homophonic |
| | equivalent in Urdu/Hindi, but I had never noticed that before. I assumed that |
| | we must have 'language modes,' as I coin them*, whereby a set of |
| | sounds is interpreted according to the language mode we are in. We are |
| | effectively unaware of the implications of words in languages that we are |
| | not using at the moment. |
| | |
| | How quickly can an Urdu/Hindi-English speaker realize the double |
| | implication of 'such'? To test this, I will ask such a person to give me the |
| | definition of 'such' in one word. The problem is practically unsolvable for |
| | the English 'such' but the Urdu/Hindi homophone has a simple translation: |
| | ‘truth.’ I will induce them into their Urdu/Hindi mode if they initially fail by |
| | repeating the question in Urdu/Hindi, but with an air of frustration |
| | suggesting I resorted to the second language only to make myself clear. I |
| | will record how long the subject takes to recognize the cross-language |
| | meaning. |
| | |
| | I will test another subject group for crossover from Urdu/Hindi to English. I |
| | will ask these subjects (in Urdu/Hindi) to use the word ‘such’ in a sentence |
| | where it does not denote ‘truth’. I will with subtlety try to bring them into |
| | the English mode. |
| | |
| | I will judge for fluency in English or Urdu/Hindi by a test where the subjects |
| | are asked to translate prose when verbally recited. Urdu/Hindi to English |
| | subjects will be tested for fluency in English, and English to Urdu/Hindi |
| | subjects will be tested for fluency in Urdu/Hindi. Everything will be |
| | recorded on camera, so I will have learned people judge the fluency of the |
| | subjects on a scale from one to ten. |
| | |
| | I will ultimately correlate awareness of double meanings (in terms of the |
| | time required to realize the cross-language implication) with fluency in the |
| | corresponding language (on a scale of 1 to 10). As top-down processing |
| | theorizes that our experiences influence how we interpret stimuli, in this |
| | case awareness of the cross-language implication is our processing and |
| | fluency is experience. |
| | |
| | *The concept of language modes was in fact coined by Francis Ois |
| | Grosjean in 1985. I came up with the term myself only to find Grosjean's |
| | work afterword. I found that some of my theories have already been |
| | established by him so I will no build on his work to correlate language |
| | modes with linguistic competence. |