PSYCH 1X03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Phoneme, Blubber, Onomatopoeia
Document Summary
Language is a sophisticated form of communication unique to our species, characterized by the use of symbolism, arbitrary associations, productivity and rule use. Symbolic: words and gestures are used as representations of specific concepts and meanings. This allows for communication of abstract and hypothetical concepts as well as ideas, things, etc that are not present. Arbitrary associations: words used to represent concepts in language are made up and words in different languages as a result of this arbitrary nature of language. All words are not associated with their inherent meaning, however some are. Productive: with the limited set of sound combinations and words in a language, a potentially infinite number of expressions can be made, including completely novel arbitrary. This is why various languages exist the same concept is represented by different expressions (cid:523)various combinations of words we haven"t heard before but can still make succession.
