PSY 244 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Language Acquisition Device, Noam Chomsky, Regular Sequence
Document Summary
Language: communication system in which words and their written symbols combine in rule-governed ways and enable speakers to produce an infinite number of messages. Communicative competence: ability to convey thoughts, feelings, and intentions in a meaningful and culturally patterned way. The components of language: phonology, semantics, grammar, and pragmatics (page 233) Children learn about the sounds, meaning, structure, and use of language simultaneously. Phonology: system of sounds that a language uses. Phoneme: basic unit of a language"s phonetic system; phonemes are the smallest sound units that affect meaning. Rules about how we put phonemes together to form words or rules about the proper intonation patterns for phrases and sentences. Semantics: study of word meanings and word combinations. Grammar: structure of a language; consists of morphology and syntax. Morphology: study of morphemes, language"s smallest units of meaning. Morpheme: a language"s smallest unit of meaning, such as a prefix, a suffix, or a root word.
