PSYCH 1F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Speech Segmentation, Tswana Language, Phoneme
Document Summary
Language form of communication, use symbols to transmit into morphemes. The smallest unit of sound that contains information. May be a word or part of a word. Tablecloth is a single word that contains two morphemes: table and cloth. Each morpheme provides a discrete piece of information. Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound e. g. dog: has three phonemes, d o g. Syntax/grammar - rules governing word order, sound combination, sentence, formation, etc e. g. french: objects have gender. As studied by dr. p. gordon, the piraha people show evidence for the whorf-sapir hypothesis. Arapapho indians: senior male relative same word for grandfather, father, uncle and brother. The arapapho indians show evidence against the whort-sapir hypothesis. English, russian, and setswana languages that have 11, 12, and 5 basic colour terms, respectively grouped colours into very similar categories. Characterized by drawn-out sounds made up of a variety of combinations of vowels and consonants.