PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Part Of Speech, Psycholinguistics, Phoneme
12 Jun 2018
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Week 12: Cognitive Psychology II: Language Overview
Topic 01: Defining Language
• To be considered a language, it must have:
o Semanticity: The extent to which a language can use symbols to transmit meaningful
messages
o Generativity: The ability to combine words or symbols of a language using rules of
composition and syntax to communicate an almost infinite variety of ideas using a
relatively small vocabulary
o Displacement: Refers to the ability to use language to convey messages that are not tied
to the immediate context (time and place) but instead communicate information about
events in the past, or future, or at some other location
• Language: A socially agreed-upon, rule-governed system of arbitrary symbols that can be
combined in different ways to communicate ideas and feelings about both the present time and
place and other times and places, real or imagined
• Psycholinguistics: A branch of cognitive psychology devoted to the study of the acquisition,
comprehension and production of language
• Phonology: The rules that govern the patterns of sounds that are used in language- which
souds ae used, ad how thee oied
• Phonemes: The basic distinctive speech sounds in a language that distinguish one word (ex rice)
from another (ex lice)
• Morphemes: The smallest units of meaning within a language
o Free Morphemes: Meaningful on their own and can stand alone as words
o Bound Morphemes: Meaningful only when combined with other morphemes to form
words
• Semantics: The relationship between words and their meanings
• Syntax or Synatical Rules: Grammatical rules of a particular language for combining words to
form phrases, clauses and sentences
• Pragmatics: The social rules of language that allow people to use language appropriately for
different purposes and in different situations
• Levels of Language Analysis:
o Recognize the sounds (phonemes) in the utterance
o Identify the words in the message and associate them with their meanings
(morphological + semantic knowledge)
o Analyse the syntax of the message, using cues such as word order, word class, function
and content words, prosody
o Interpret the utterance in its context. This requires the ability to integrate knowledge
about the world (pragmatics) with the syntax and semantics of the utterance
• Prosody: Rhythm, stress and intonation of speech
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Document Summary
Levels of language analysis: recognize the sounds (phonemes) in the utterance. Identify the words in the message and associate them with their meanings (morphological + semantic knowledge: analyse the syntax of the message, using cues such as word order, word class, function and content words, prosody. This requires the ability to integrate knowledge about the world (pragmatics) with the syntax and semantics of the utterance: prosody: rhythm, stress and intonation of speech. Infant directed talk: exaggerated expressive verbal and nonverbal communication used with infants: stages of language in infants, crying- first two months of life, cooing- 8 to 10 weeks. For language, this occurs within the first years of life. Children who are not exposed to language at this time are never able to make up for it: ex. Genie was isolated for 13 years; could not speak properly, walk or toilet trained. Epigenetic stressors (malnutrition, physical and emotional abuse) can interfere with normal development.
