Psychology 2135A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Kanzi, Interpersonal Communication, Cooperative Principle

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2135A/B
• Professor: John Campbell

Document Summary

Demonstrates there is a risk to interpreting a sentence as it arrives. Phoneme: smallest unit of sound we can make: e. g. , mat vs. cat. Morpheme: smallest unit of sound we can make that has meaning: e. g. , take vs. taking, syntax. Rule for how to put together sentences and phrases: e. g. , english is svo the girl will hit the boy , semantics. Non-modular view of language: language perception, production, and comprehension are the joint product of garden-variety cognitive processes. Modular view of language: language is comprised of a unique set of capacities that cannot be reduced to other cognitive processes. Jerry fodor (1983) argues that some cognitive processes in particular, perception, and language are modular. 1) domain specific it operates with certain kinds of input but not others. 2) informationally encapsulated it operates independently of the beliefs and the other information available to the processor. Universal grammar provides the rules for enabling us to transform meaning into words.