The document discusses the significance of language for human communication, its origins, and its structural components, including phonemes, morphemes, and grammar rules. It highlights the relationship between language and cognition, emphasizing how language shapes thoughts and concepts influenced by culture. Additionally, it contrasts human language with animal communication, noting the capabilities observed in certain primates without equating them to human language complexity.

1. Language
Images
Concepts
Fatma Tuba Aydın
http://www.psikoterapi.info.tr/
The Building Blocks of Thought

2. LANGUAGE
• It is essential for communication.►
• A flexible system of symbols that enables us to
communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
• Distinguishing features of human language;
• Human language is semantic, or meaningful, unlike non-
humans we can exchange detailed information about all
kinds of object, understand each other.
• It is productive, we can combine sounds to make new
words, arrange words into phrases, and string phrases
into sentences.
• It is also characterized by displacement in that it is
not limited to the here-and-now.
LANGUAGE

3. • In 1866 Linguistic Society of Paris banned the
discussion of the origins of language.
• Adam In Eden task assigning names to all
animals and plants.
• In Tower of Babel, confusion of tongues. (Bible)
• In mythologies language of Gods.
• Chomsky, Kant humans born with a language
instinct.
• Imitating animals, sounds, sight pleasure moans.
• Selective advantage of words rather than visual,
ability to deceive.
Origins of Language

4. • Language represents oral gestures already in
use
• Aroused from rhythmic chants and vocalism.
• Linguistic monogenesis, protolanguage all
other.
• Spontaneous emergence (wolf children) out of
human contact. Grace, Virginia twins.
J.R.R.Tolkien
• Nature& Nurture
• Child learns how to speak through reward,
punishment. ”wa-wa” water comes.
Origins of Language

5. • Phonemes
– Basic sounds (ph, t) exp; zip, sip
• Morphemes
– smallest meaning unit (words, prefixes) exp; red, calm
• Grammar
– Rules of how sounds combine
• Syntax; rules for arranging words. SOV, SVO ►
• Semantic; criteria for assigning meaning to morphemes
• Surface structure
– Phrases of sentence
• Deep structure
– Underlying meaning of a sentence
Structure of Language

6. • There are about 45 phonemes in English, and
as many as 85 in some languages.
Phonemes

7. • Syntax and
semantics enable
speakers to perform
transformations
between surface and
the deep structure.
• According to
Chomsky; speaking
requires top-down
processing,
understanding
sentences bottom-up
Transformations

8. • Gesture,More elaborate manual
• Baby sign, six sense.
• Necesseriy for religious,scuba diving,stock
exchanges,baseball,dumb people
• Variations within a nation,international
Gestuno;Vineyard S.L. in USA, Kata Kolok in a
village in Bali
• Rich, complex grammars of their own
• Independent of oral language,USA, Britian
Sign Language

9. • Nonverbal mental
representations of sensory
experiences
Participants first rotated an image
of one pattern in their minds until
they could see both patterns from
the same perspective, Than they
matched the mental images of the
pairs of patterns to decide weather
they were same or different
Images

10. – Mental categories for classifying people,
objects, or experiences; dogs, books, cars..
– Provide a way of grouping experiences not
to surprise when encountered.
Concepts

11. • Mental model containing the most
typical features of a concept.
Prototypes

12. • Linguistic determinism
– Idea that patterns of thinking are
determined by the specific language one
speaks
Language and Cognition

13. • Eliminating words. (Rebel, Protest)
• Unpopular wars called “Pacification programs”.
• American War Department coined “Defense
Department”.
• Tuna did not become popular before labeling it
“Chicken of the sea”.
• Cola Turka, Zemzem Cola
How does Language affect what we think?

14. A father and a son, had a traffic
accident. They were brought to hospital,
in a bad situation. A surgeon, who comes
to operation room, exclaims after seeing
them. “This is my son!!!!”. Who is the
surgeon?

15. • All known cultures use categories to form concepts
• Culture has an effect on
– What information is included in a category
– How categories are shaped by experience
• In Alaska they have 20 words for different types of
snow.
• There is a relationship between a society's customs
and values and the grammatical characteristics of its
language.
– -"Who is preparing dinner?” "The being her-mine." Inuit
social life in which one's position within the group is much
more important that one's characteristic as an individual.
– In Eng. "I made him go home”, in Navajo; "Even though he did
not want to go home, when I asked him to, he did.“ In Navajo
social values, coercion is strongly rejected.
Culture and Cognition

16. • Can animals think? Animals can
communicate ,but do they have language?
Nonhuman Thought and Language

17. • Animal language is modeling human
language in non human animal system.
• Animal language is not very complex. Bee
dances, bird songs, whale songs.
• If a chimpanzee sees a snake, he makes
noise, or hides food.
• Technical term for such messages is
signs, about animal’s current state.
Nonhuman Thought and Language

18. – Only humans, Chimpanzees and orangutans show signs of
self-recognition.
– Human infants demonstrate mirror-recognition at 18 to 24
months.
Nonhuman Thought and Language

19. – Telegraphic speech is early speech stage of one and two
years old that omits words that are not essential to the
meaning of a phrase
Nonhuman Thought and Language
– Some chimps have learned to use keyboard symbols to
communicate even without formal training
– Chimpanzees have been taught to use American Sign
Language
–Chimpanzees have been observed using telegraphic speech
(two-word combinations)

20. Fatma Tuba Aydın