PSYC 334 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Onomatopoeia, Formal System, Noam Chomsky

• School: Chico State University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 334
• Professor: Martinusvanden Berg

Document Summary

Symbols: linguistic units, sounds that form words and other meaningful units that symbolize or stand for the referent of the word. Shared: connections between sounds and meaning are arbitrary, but because they are shared they can be used. Communication: thoughts and ideas can be turned into a public message, and the other way around as well. Linguistics: the academic discipline that takes language as its topic focuses on language itself as a formal system. Studies language by looking at competence: the internalized knowledge of a language and its rules that fully fluent speakers of that language have. Problems: language is too complex to be learned, learn the rules of language. Psycholinguistics: the study of language as it is used and learned by people. Studies language by looking at performance: the actual language behavior a speaker generates, the strings of sounds and words that the speaker utters.