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Language
Language is a system of symbols used to communicate ideas between individuals. It must be learnable by children and capable of expressing ideas normally communicated in social contexts. There are three main building blocks of language: 1) Phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound, and morphemes, the smallest units of meaning; 2) Words and morphemes combine to form phrases and sentences according to the rules of syntax; 3) Language develops through stages from babbling to first words to telegraphic speech as children learn the rules of their native language.
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Language
- 1. LANGUAGE Skyline, Psych 100,Meghan Fraley, PhD
- 2. What is Language? A system of symbols used to communicate ideas among two or more individuals. Must be learnable by children, spoken and understood by adults, and capable of expressing ideas that people normally communicate in a social and cultural context.
- 3.
- 4. Phonemes Morphemes Content morphemes Function morphemes Rules ofsyntax Tree diagram Phrase structure description Definitional theory of word meaning Semantic features Prototype theory Family semblance structure Prototypes Subject Predicate Proposition Semantic role Case markers Garden path Basic-level words Superordinates Subordinates American Sign Language (ASL) Crib bilingualism Aphasia Specific language impairment (SLI) Whorfian hypothesis Key Terms
- 5. 1. Sound Units 2.Morphemes and Words 3. Phrases and Sentences The Building Blocks of Language
- 6. Speech Units Phonemes: Smallestunits of sound Morphemes: Smallest units of sound that convey meaning
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- 8. Phonemes in Different Languages 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Percentageable to discriminate Hindi t’s Hindi- speaking adults 6-8 months 8-10 months 10-12 months English- speaking adultsInfants from English-speaking homes We are all born to recognize speech sounds from all the world’s languages
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- 10. ©John Wiley &Sons, Inc. 2007 Huffman: Psychology in Action (8e) Language Development Prelinguistic Stage (crying, cooing, and babbling) Linguistic Stage (single- utterances, telegraphic speech, and learning the rules of grammar)
- 11. Stages of Language Development Crying(newborn) Cooing (6wk-3mo) Babbling (4-6mo) Word Comprehension (9- 10mo) Echolalia (9-10mo) First words (13 mo: 10-15mo) Holophrasic Speech (12-18mo) • Phoneme (unit of speech) • Morpheme (meaning unit) • Median expressive vocab: 50 words Telegraphic Speech (18-24mo) • Median vocab: 200 words
- 12. Holophrastic and Telegraphic Speech Bottle! Holophrasticspeech refers to the use of single words to express whole phrases and sentences
- 13. Rules of Syntax The regular principles governing how words can be assembled into sentences, and also describing the structure of those sentences Tree diagram depicting phrase structure
- 14. Syntax isn’t everything:Context Examples in Which Syntax Is Correct but the Interpretation Can Be Ambiguous: Grandmother of Eight Makes Hole in One Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder Farmer Bill Dies in House Old School Pillars Are Replaced by Alumni Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung Include Your Children when Baking Cookies
- 15. Language Development: Nativist View Chomsky Innate Language Acquistion Device (LAD) Learn in same sequence without formal instruction
- 16. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: speakersof different languages think differently
- 17. Bootstrapping Semantic bootstrapping Use knowledge of word meaning to inferm grammatical category Syntactic bootstrapping Using grammer knowledge to learn the meaning of new words Prosodic bootstrapping Prosody (pitch, etc) to make inferences about syntax Morphological bootstrapping Knowledge about morphemes to deduce syntax or meaning
- 18. Language Structure Surfacestructure Organization of words, phrases, and sentences Deep structure Underlying meaning of sentences Speaking involves transforming deep structure (meaning) into surface structure (grammatical sentences)
- 19. Language Development Errors UnderextensionOverextension
- 20. 1. Wild Children 2.Isolated Children 3. Language without Sound 4. Language without a model 5. Children Deprived of Access to Some of the Meanings 6. Children Exposed to More than One Language: Bilingualism Alternative Language Learning
- 21. Bilingualism and Bilingual Education Early studies: Bilinguilism leads to cognitive deficits Current research: Bilingual do as well or better Cognitive flexibility Cognitive complexity Analytical reasoning Metalinguistic awareness Benefits may be temporary Education: Mixed results Language minority students in high-quality programs may do better than those in English only programs
- 22. Second-Language Acquisition Moredifficult for adolescents and adults Exposure during childhood, more likely to speak with native accent
- 23. Code Switching Alternatinglanguages during conversation Switch to native language: express better, establish rapport, express attitude toward listener
- 24. 1. When theNature and State of the Brain is Changed 2. The Sensitive Period 3. Language in Nonhumans Changed Endowments
- 25. Critical and SensitivePeriods Critical Periods Specific time most sensitive to influences Specific event must occur or it will not occur at all Lorenz: Gosling imprint 12-17 hours For humans, probably only with physical development Sensitive Periods Human development Event has most impact i.e. attachment and language
- 26. Brain Damage &Language Broca’s aphasia is an inability to speak fluently without effort and correct grammar. Speech is halting and agrammatic. Wernicke’s aphasia is a comprehension dysfunction. Speech is fluent and effortless but also semantically vacuous.
- 27. Left for Language 90% of the population is left-hemisphere dominant. Right- handedness and left localization of Broca’s and Wernicke’s are universal, at least in males. Left-handed individuals may present with left, mixed, or in some cases right language representation. Females show more bilateral language representation.
- 28. The language zoneextends far beyond Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in neocortical and subcortical regions.
- 29. Contrasts to Animal Communication Only language uses symbols to represent objects. Words are detached from their referents unlike the calls of a bird or chimpanzee. Displacement in space and time is thus possible with language. Productivity is ability to create novel sentences that can be understood by other speakers of the language. Although chimps can learn ASL and sign novel expressions, there is a vast difference in productivity.
- 30. 1. Languages havemany similarities and differences 2. How Language Connects to Thought 3. Do People Who Talk Differently Come to Understand the World Differently? 4. How Can We Study Language and Thought? Language and Thought
- 31. Language and Thought •Language determines how we think Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis • Language and thought are independent Nativist • Language is dependent on thought Piaget
- 33. Gender and LanguageStyle • Establish dominance • Gain attention • Give orders • Talk longer • Interrupt more Boys • Provide support • Demonstrate attentiveness • Ask questions • Attach tag questions Girls
- 34. Dyslexia Deep Dyslexia Mistakes words for similar meaning Surface Dyslexia Must sound out words Phonological Dyslexia Can’t read nonwords aloud Neglect Misreads first or last half of word
- 35.
Editor's Notes
- #3 Language involves both the ability to comprehend spoken and written words and to produce meaningful communication when we speak or write. Most languages first appear in their spoken form. Although speaking may seem simple, it is a remarkably complex skill that involves a variety of cognitive, social, and biological processes, including operation of the vocal cords and the coordination of breath with movements of the throat, mouth, and tongue. A number of languages that are primarily or entirely expressed in sign also exist. In sign languages, communication is expressed by movements of the hands along with facial and bodily gestures. The most common sign language is American Sign Language (ASL), currently spoken by more than 500,000 people in the United States alone. Except for artificial languages developed for technology and an occasional special-use language, languages do not develop in written form. Although writing is generally derivative of spoken language, it involves a complex set of processes, some of them unique to writing. Language is often used for the transmission of factual information (“Turn right at the next light, and then go straight,” “Place tab A into slot B”), but that is only its most mundane function. Language also allows us to access existing knowledge, to draw conclusions, to set and accomplish goals, and to understand and communicate complex social relationships. Language is fundamental to our ability to think, and without it we would be nowhere near as intelligent as we are. Spoken languages can be conceptualized in terms of sounds, meaning, and the environmental factors that help us understand it. Although we usually notice words and sentences when we think about language, some of the most important psychological research on language involves more basic elements that give form and content to words and sentences. In the next section, we discuss phonemes, which are elementary units of sound that make up words; morphemes, which are “word parts”—small but meaningful sounds that alter and refine a word’s meaning; and finally, syntax, which is the set of grammatical rules that control how words are put together into phrases and sentences. Languages are governed by rules, but contextual information, the when, where, and why of communication, is also necessary for understanding
- #7 All language can be described with phonemes and morphemes. Phonemes are the smallest unites of sounds in any language. Click here to listen to the various English phonemes. In the English language there are about 44 different phonemes. There are many phonemes used around the world that we do not use. My wife, who speaks Spanish, does this really cool rolling R phoneme that sounds sexy but I cannot do to save my life. My Grandma, who spoke Yiddish, can do this funky throat clearing phoneme, that I can only do when I have a bad cold. Some of the phonemes that we use, foreign speakers have difficulty pronouncing, like the th sound. Spoken languages can be conceptualized in terms of sounds, meaning, and the environmental factors that help us understand it. Although we usually notice words and sentences when we think about language, some of the most important psychological research on language involves more basic elements that give form and content to words and sentences. In the next section, we discuss phonemes, which are elementary units of sound that make up words; morphemes, which are “word parts”—small but meaningful sounds that alter and refine a word’s meaning; and finally, syntax, which is the set of grammatical rules that control how words are put together into phrases and sentences. Languages are governed by rules, but contextual information, the when, where, and why of communication, is also necessary for understanding the meaning of what a person says. The importance of context is also discussed in this section. lexeme The set of inflected forms taken by a single word.
- #8 http://www.phonemicchart.com/learn/ earn the phonemic chart A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that makes a meaningful difference in a language. Phonemes correspond to the sounds associated with the letters of an alphabet, though there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters. The word bit has three phonemes, /b/, /i/, and /t/ (in transcription, phonemes are placed between slashes), and the word pit also has three: /p/, /i/, and /t/. These two words differ by a single phoneme: /b/ versus /p/. However, the six-letter word phrase has only four phonemes: /f/, /r/, /long-a/, and /z/. In spoken languages, phonemes are produced by movements of our lips, teeth, tongue, vocal cords, and throat (the vocal tract), whereas in sign languages phonemes are defined by the shapes and movement of the hands.
- #9 Hundreds of unique phonemes can be made by human speakers, but most languages use only a small subset of the possibilities. English uses about 45 phonemes, whereas other languages have as few as 15 and others more than 60. For instance, the Hawaiian language contains only about a dozen phonemes, including five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, and w). The fact that different languages use different sets of phonemes is the reason people usually have accents in languages that are not their native language. It is difficult to learn to make a new speech sound and use it regularly in words if you did not learn it early in life. And accents are not the whole story. Because the phoneme is actually a category of sounds—that is, many variations on a sound—and the members of this category are treated alike by the brain, some languages group several sounds together as a single phoneme, and others separate those same sounds as different phonemes. Speakers of different languages can hear the difference only between the sounds their language marks as different phonemes, and they cannot tell the difference between two sounds that are grouped together as the same phoneme. This is known as the categorical perception of speech sounds. For example, English speakers can differentiate the /r/ phoneme from the /l/ phoneme, and thus rake and lake are heard as different words. In Japanese, however, /r/ and /l/ are the same phoneme, and thus native speakers of Japanese cannot tell the difference between rake and lake. The /r/ versus /l/ difference is obvious to native English speakers, but English speakers run into the same problem when listening to speakers of other language. Try saying cool and keep out loud. Can you hear the difference between the two /k/ sounds? To English speakers, they both sound the same, but to speakers of Arabic they are two different phonemes.
- #10 Phonemes are units of sound, but sound is simply used by language to convey meaning. The basic meaningful units of words are called morphemes. A morpheme is a string of one or more phonemes that make up word meanings and, if a morpheme is added, eliminated, or changed, the meaning of the word changes. In some cases, an entire word is a morpheme. For instance, the word painted has seven letters, six phonemes (/p/, /long-a/, /n/, /t/, /e/, and /d/), and two morphemes (paint + ed, which is a morpheme that means that the first morpheme occurred in the past). However, we can add morphemes—for instance, the prefix re to make repainted—or eliminate morphemes, taking the ed away to leave the single morpheme word, paint. We can even add a morpheme to make up new words, such as unrepainted or depainting, even if we aren’t quite sure what they mean. However, in general, we know what the changed word means when we add a morpheme. For example, the syllable re-, as in rewrite or repay, means “to do again,” and the suffix -est, as in happiest or coolest, means “to the maximum.” Morphemes, the basic unit of morphology, are the smallest meaningful unit of language. Thus, a morpheme is a series of phonemes that has a special meaning. If a morpheme is altered in any way, the entire meaning of the word can be changed. Some morphemes are individual words (such as "eat" or "water"). These are known as free morphemes because they can exist on their own. Other morphemes are prefixes, suffixes, or other linguistic pieces that aren’t full words on their own but do affect meaning (such as the "-s" at the end of “cats” or the "re-" at the beginning of “redo.”) Because these morphemes must be attached to another word to have meaning, they are called bound morphemes. Within the category of bound morphemes, there are two additional subtypes: derivational and inflectional. Derivational morphemes change the meaning or part of speech of a word when they are used together. For example, the word "sad" changes from an adjective to a noun when "-ness" (sadness) is added to it. "Action" changes in meaning when the morpheme "re-" is added to it, creating the word "reaction." Inflectional morphemes modify either the tense of a verb or the number value of a noun; for example, when you add an "-s" to "cat," the number of cats changes from one to more than one.
- #11 Most psychologists are interested in how we first learned language and what kind of influence language has on the way we view the world. The first stage of language acquisition is often called the babbling stage. During this stage the baby is experimenting with various phonemes and if you listen closely to the cute babbling, you will here phonemes from ALL languages from all over the world. So even though I cannot roll my R's or do that cool African Bushman clicking sound, my four month old can!!! It takes a few months of listening to those around us so we can begin to limit our phonemes to the ones that we will need for the English language. This is a great argument as to why we should teach second and third languages at very young ages (they already know the phonemes). The next language acquisition phase is telegraphic speech. This is where babies combine words into simple commands. Although an adult can understand what the child is trying to say, their speech has no syntax. They may say "Bottle, TV now!!!" and we know they mean "Daddy, can you please go the the fridge, prepare my bottle, give it to me and put Sponge Bob on. Thank you ever so much." During this stage children begin using syntax, but often incorrectly. For example, they might learn that adding the suffix -ed signifies past tense, but they might apply it at inappropriate times, such as, "Caleb hitted my head so I throwed the truck at his face".
- #12 Birth Language learning starts at birth. Even new babies are aware of the sounds in the environment. They listen to the speech of those close to them, and startle or cry if there is an unexpected noise. Loud noises wake them, and they become "still" in response to new sounds. 0-3 months Astoundingly, between 0-3 months babies learn to turn to you when you speak, and smile when they hear your voice. In fact, they seem to recognise your familiar voice, and will quieten at the sound of it if they are crying. Tiny babies under three months will also stop their activity and attend closely to the sound of an unfamiliar voice. They will often respond to comforting tones whether the voice is familiar or not. 4-6 months Then, some time between 4 to 6 months babies respond to the word "no". They are also responsive to changes in your tone of voice, and to sounds other than speech. For example, they can be fascinated by toys and other objects that make sounds, enjoy music and rhythm, and look in an interested or apprehensive way for the source of all sorts of new sounds such as the toaster, birdsong, the clip-clop of horses' hooves or the whirr of machines. 7-12 months The 7 to 12 months timeframe is exciting and fun as the baby now obviously listens when spoken to, turns and looks at your face when called by name, and discovers the fun of games like: "round and round the garden", "peep-oh", "I see" and "pat-a-cake" (These simple games and finger plays have regional names and variants). It is in this period that you realise that he or she recognises the names of familiar objects ("Daddy", "car", "eyes", "phone", "key") and begins to respond to requests ("Give it to Granny") and questions ("More juice?").
- #13 Holophrastic speech refers to the use of single words to express whole phrases and sentences The next language acquisition phase is telegraphic speech. This is where babies combine words into simple commands. Although an adult can understand what the child is trying to say, their speech has no syntax. They may say "Bottle, TV now!!!" and we know they mean "Daddy, can you please go the the fridge, prepare my bottle, give it to me and put Sponge Bob on. Thank you ever so much." During this stage children begin using syntax, but often incorrectly. For example, they might learn that adding the suffix -ed signifies past tense, but they might apply it at inappropriate times, such as, "Caleb hitted my head so I throwed the truck at his face".
- #14 Every language is different. In English, an adjective comes before a noun ("red house"), whereas in Spanish, the adjective comes after ("casa [house] roja [red].") In German, you can put noun after noun together to form giant compound words; in Chinese, the pitch of your voice determines the meaning of your words; in American Sign Language, you can convey full, grammatical sentences with tense and aspect by moving your hands and face. But all languages have structural underpinnings that make them logical for the people who speak and understand them. Syntax is the set of rules of a language by which we construct sentences. Each language has a different syntax. The syntax of the English language requires that each sentence have a noun and a verb, each of which may be modified by adjectives and adverbs. Some syntactical rules make use of the order in which words appear, while others do not. In English, “The man bites the dog” is different from “The dog bites the man.” Because the words are the same in both sentences, the order of the words must convey the difference in meaning. In German, however, only the article endings before the noun matter. “Der Hund beisst den Mann” means “The dog bites the man” but so does “Den Mann beisst der Hund.” The German word der goes with the subject of the sentence, while den goes with the object. The order of the words in this sentence is not as important as it would be in English. Grammatical rules that specify how words and other morphemes are arranged so as to yield acceptable sentences. Implicit knowledge provides linguistic intuitions of ungrammatical strings and equivalency of meaning of different grammatical constructions.
- #16 Recent cognitive theorists have stated that children not given reinforcements still use learn language, so BF is full of it. Researcher and philosopher Noam Chomsky believed that humans learned language WAY to fast for it to be learned purely through reinforcers. He theorized that children are born with a language acquisition device, an inborn universal understanding of language where children just know how to learn language from birth (this is also called the nativist theory of language acquisition). The true answers probably lies with a combination of both Skinner and Chomsky.
- #17 Language and how we view the world Most of us assume that humans think about the world and come up with words to describe what is in our minds. Psychologist Benjamin Whorf came up with an interesting concept called linguistic relativity hypothesis, that challenges the status quo and states that language may control the way we think, not vice versa. He theorized that the limitations on the grammar and vocabulary in our language may create limitations on how we see the world. For example, the Hopi Indian tribe in North America had very few words in their language for past tense. Thus because their language did not address past tense, the Hopi Indians seldom ever thought about the past. The implications of Whorf's idea are extraordinary. If our language restricts our thinking, then just by changing some of our language rules and definitions, may change the way we view the world!
- #18 In the field of linguistics and language acquisition, the term bootstrapping refers to the idea that infants and children are innately equipped with mental processes that aid in language learning.[1] The language acquisition bootstrapping processes can be divided into smaller mechanisms, including semantic bootstrapping, syntactic bootstrapping, prosodic bootstrapping, and pragmatic bootstrapping. Semantic bootstrapping Semantic bootstrapping refers to a process in which children use expectations about how semantic information will be mapped onto syntax in order to discover syntactic features. For instance, a child may use the expectation that the "doer" of an action should be the grammatical subject to identify how subjects are marked in her language. The theory of semantic bootstrapping was developed by Steven Pinker based on a suggestion by Jane Grimshaw.[6] Syntactic bootstrapping Syntactic boostrapping refers to the idea that children are able to deduce word meaning from the syntax of the sentence. The knowledge of the grammatical structure of their language will help them in learning words that they do not know, by being able to understand how phrase structure works, and what kinds of words can go in certain places. The idea of syntactic bootstrapping began with an experiment done by Roger Brown at Harvard University in 1957[7]. Brown showed children between the ages of three and five various pictures that corresponded to nonsense words. The words shown in the pictures varied from singular nouns, mass nouns, and verbs. Brown showed these pictures to a child and asked them to tell him where the nonsense word was. By placing the word in different places in the sentence, different aspects of the picture were identifed by the children. For example, when Brown wanted the child to identify a mass noun, he would ask: “Do you see any sib?”, and the child would point at the red confetti-like mass in the picture. To identify a verb, the question was: “What is sibbing?”, and for a singular noun, it was: “Do you see a sib?”. The children were for the most part able to identify the objects in the picture depending on where the word was introduced in the question that Brown put to them. This shows that the structure of a sentence provides children with valuable clues as to the meaning of words. In 1990, Lila Gleitman took this idea further by examining the acquisition of verbs in more detail[8]. In her study, she found that children could differentiate between verbs that take one or more arguments and this knowledge was used to help them narrow down the potential meanings for the verb in question. This discovery explains how children can learn the meaning of verbs that cannot be observed, like ‘think’. Preboundary lengthening or lengthening of the rhyme - the part of syllable that does not include the initial consonant - assists infants in determining syntactic boundaries.[9]
- #32 Identity hypothesis equates thought with subvocal speech. Modularity regards language as independent of general cognitive resources. Alternatively, language might be dependent on such general resources. Linguistic relativity asserts thought is dependent on the form of language.
- #33 Object permanence (sensori-motor thought) precedes first words at around 12 months. Gestural abilities (e.g., pointing, pretending, imitating) predict the transition from babbling to first words.