PSYCH211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Phoneme, Categorical Perception, Noam Chomsky

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH211
• Professor: Mattieu Lecorre

Document Summary

First 6 months, babies do not know their own names and will not recognize it. Words: meanings: what each word refers to. In spanish, the meaning of almohada is pillow. Syntax, tone, context, arrangement of words of where it begins and ends, changes the meaning of that particular word. Few silences between words, and some within words! In english, changing i to r makes a different word (lake vs. rake). In zulu, adding a click can make a different word. There must be a meaningful way of splitting the speech into parts of understandable content. Words are not enough: syntax: how words combine to express relations between meanings. Jennifer loves brad. (but does brad love jennifer?) In all languages, syntax specifies who is the lover and who is loved. Words + syntax are not enough: pragmatics: the same sentence can mean different things. What kids know about their language by about age 3 .