LANGUAGE

Updated: 2020-04-09

Language has six properties that many psychologists accept as definitional. Language is:

• communicative
• arbitrary
  • except for onomatopoeia
• meaningfully structured
• multiply structured
• productive
• dynamic.

Language In Its Own Words

• All human groups have a spoken language
• Today, there are about 6,000 languages, but that number is dropping fast.
• Phones, phonemes, phonemics, & phonetics
  • 100 phones or sounds possible
    • but no language uses them all
  • Phonemes are distinguishable sounds of a language
    • all languages have differents sets of phonemes,
      • i.e., ! the glottal stop (not used much in English)
      • i.e., Spanish double R as in "perro" where the Rs are rolled (Spanish Tongue Twister)
  • English phonemes tend to be vowels or consonants
  • Phonemics is the study of the phonemes found in the various languages
  • Phonetics is a written system for representing sounds.
• Morphemes, lexicon, and vocabulary
  • Simplest units of sound with meaning
  • Prefixes and suffixes
    • a-, -ing, e.g., "moral" vs. "amoral" the "a" morpheme changes the meaning.
  • Types
    • content morphemes, functional morphemes, and inflections
  • Lexicon
    • total set of morphemes a person knows
    • 60,000 morphemes
  • Vocabulary
    • number of words a person knows
    • hundreds of thousands of words
• Syntax
  • How speakers put sentences together
    • word order syntaxes (like English)
      • in English, a noun phrase, verb phrase (or a predicate) are combined into sentences
      • e.g., "John hit Bob." had different meaning than "Bob hit John." The word order tells the tale.
    • word ending syntaxes (like German or Latin)
      • in German or Latin, words may be strung together in any order as long a the suffixes are correct

II. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• Stages of Language Acquisition
  • The stages are:
    • (1) prenatal responsivity to human voices,
    • (2) postnatal cooing,
    • (3) babbling,
    • (4) one-word utterances,
    • (5) two-word utterances,
    • (6) telegraphic speech,
    • (7) basic adult sentence structure (by age 4)
  • Characteristics of language acquisition in newborns
    • Mothers' voices are preferred by newborns,
    • Post partum infants move while spoken to and they reflect the mood of their caretakers.
  • Cooing
    • all infants coo in the same way regardless of culture, language, hearing impaired or not.
    • all infants discriminate all of the possible phones
  • Babbling
    • infants can only distinguish sounds of their own language after 9 months of age
  • Vocabulary and Syntax
    • By 18 months, children typically possess a vocabulary of 3-100 words
    • overextensions are common
      • i.e., all four-legged animals, for example, are called "doggie
    • At around 30 months, children begin to combine words into two-word utterances or telegraphic speech
    • tremendous increase in vocabulary
    • understanding and use of syntax
    • general understanding and use of complex words and sentences.
    • By age 10 no differences exist between children's' and adults' speech.

III. SEMANTICS: THE STUDY OF MEANING

• Semantics
  • Definition
    • study of meanings of words.
  • Theories of Meaning
    • Componential theory or definitional theory
      • meaning comes from the defining features of a concept (e.g., bachelor = male, unmarried, adult).
    • Prototype theory
      • characteristic features and prototypical aspects of a concept, are a better way to understanding meaning.
      • Think of a chair. Now think of the chair that most fully exemplifies the concept. What is is made of? Does it have wheels? Is it padded? See below.

    Chair types (from International Journal of Design)

    

IV. PRAGMATICS AND SOCIOLINGUISTICS: LANGUAGE IN CONTEXT

• Pragmatics
  • Higher level of analysis
  • Concentrates on sociolinguistics, proxemics, and other elements of discourse (e.g., modifications to speech as a function of context).
  • Speech errors
    • slips of the tongue are among the most common.
      • Freud believed they revealed the workings of the unconscious mind.
      • modern cognitive theoristsbelieve they provide of the workings of the mind in processing language
  • Types of slips of tongueFromkin (1973)
    • anticipation
    • perseveration
    • substitution
    • reversal
    • different types not caused by the same level of neural processing

V. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

• Linguistic Relativity
  • Syntax
    • Languages differ widely in their syntactic structures
    • Do syntactic differences cause cognitive differences?
      • Linguistic determinism states that language structure does affect cognition deeply
      • Linguistic relativity proposes that language creates differing cognitive systems that lead to differing views of similar concepts.
      • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
        • i.e.,
        • Eskimo words for snow
        • Types of sailing ships

    In 1850 you might have been very familiar with the following words:

    From Naval History and Heritage Command

    

• So, are "ketch", "yawl", or "sloop" in your vocabulary? Why or why not? Most of us would just say "sailboat."
• Have you seen a lugger or a dhow?
• Bilingualism
  • Additive bilingualism
    • second language is learned alongside a strong original one
    • cognitive functioning is increased
  • Subtractive bilingualism
    • second language replaces the original one
    • cognitive function is decreased
    • there are internationallly adopted children in Magnolia who no longer can speak their original language because their adoptive parents did not speak it. So, the children lost their original language and had to learn to speak English.
  • The greater the competence is in both languages, the greater the cognitive benefit.
  • Diglossia
    • High status formal language and low status everyday language co-exist:
      • Immigrant populations
      • Colonial legacies (Africa, South America)
• Oxymorons
  • Pairs of words with contradictory meanings.
    • friendly fire
    • fresh frozen
    • live recording
    • no comment
    • this page left intentionally blank
  • Read: http://www.oxymorons.info/reference/oxymorons/definition.asp
  • Notice how we do not find oxymorons unusual or challenging to understand
• Gender and Conversation
  • Deborah Tannen video (notice who does most of the talking!)
    • men
      • communicate information
      • maintain status
      • talk about future action
      • use language to solve problems
      • fear loss of independence
      • men talk more overall, but more in public
      • more activity, less conversation
    • women
      • talk to create and support relationships
      • talk for its own sake
      • establish intimacy
      • seek emotional support through language
      • women talk less, but more at home
      • less activity, more conversation
    • Tannen's main point is that each gender fails to understand how the other uses language.

VI. READING AND WRITING

• Writing Systems
  • Logographic
    • symbols and morphemes correspond (i.e., Chinese and Japanese kanji)
  • Syllabic
    • symbols and syllables correspond (i.e., Japanese kana, Akkadian, and Mayan)
  • Alphabetic
    • symbols and sounds correspond (i.e., Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, and others)
    • English also uses logographic symbols: &, @, $, *, and many others
• Reading
  • Saccades--eye movements during reading (3-4/second)
  • Backward saccades slow reading
• Perception in Reading
  • Eye-voice span--how much ahead eyes lead voice in oral reading
    • Cnsnts r mr mprtnt t cmprhnsn thn vwls.
    • a ou ee y?
  • English is Tough
    • This poem shows how hard reading English can be.
  • Direct lexical access
    • Do readers go straight from written word to its meaning? (Whole word)
  • Phonological reading
    • Do readers sound out words first? (Phonics)
• Writing
  • Prewriting
    • Getting ready to write
      • know your audience
      • break writing into smaller pieces
  • Drafting (or Composing)
    • Actually writing thoughts down
      • pencil and paper
      • pen and paper
      • typewriter
      • word processor
  • Revising (or Editing)
    • Self editing
      • meaning
      • style
      • grammar
      • spelling
    • Editing by others
      • social aspect of writing
      • give-and-take
  • Eats, Shoots, and Leaves
    • Lynne Truss' best selling book on grammar!
    • See: http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/

Lecture Outlines

Read these for more information about topics covered in this section.

Communication versus Language

Properties of Language

Sales Success

Esperanto

Vocabulary Development

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