LANGUAGE
Updated:
2015-11-17
I. GENERAL PROPERTIES OF LANGUAGE
Language has six properties that many psychologists accept as
definitional. Language is:
- communicative
- arbitrary
- meaningfully structured
- multiply structured
- productive
- dynamic.
Language In Its Own Words
- 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.,
!
- 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 (e.g., "Descartes")
- Morphemes, lexicon, and vocabulary
- Simplest units of sound with meaning
- Prefixes and suffixes
- 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
- 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 Development 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 chairs. What is the prototypical chair made of? Is it padded? Have wheels?
- Context and Meaning
- Shoe polish
- Polish pope
- "The house blew it."
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).
- Think of sales success
- "Hello, would you like to buy an encyclopedia." vs. "Do you have children? Are you worried about their future? If you could change that for only pennies a day? ...
- 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
- Also nonverbal communication (see more below)
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
- Similar words in English
- ketch
- yawl
- sloop
- brig
- brigantine
- sloop
- schooner
- cutter
- Linguistic universals
- Color labelling
- Only 11 color names suffice
- black
- white
- red
- yellow,
- green
- blue
- brown
- purple,
- pink
- orange
- gray.
- Different languages use anywhere from two to all 11
names
- As colors are added to a lexicon, the pattern is the
same.
- Exemplar or prototype colors were used similarly by
different cultures
- 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.
- 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)
- Mental representation
- dual-system hypothesis proposes
- two language systems exist in brain
- single-system hypothesis asserts.
- one language system supports both languages
- Oxymorons
- Gender and Conversation
- Deborah Tannen
- 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
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
Lecture Outlines
Read these for more information about topics covered in class
Communication
versus Language
Properties of
Language
Sales
Success
Esperanto
Vocabulary
Development
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