PSYC 1010 Lecture Notes - Interpersonal Communication, Phoneme, Gerd Gigerenzer

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Rebecca Jubis

Document Summary

A language consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. Symbols allow one to refer to objects that may be in another place and to events that happened another time. People use spoken sounds and written words to represent objects, actions, events, and ideas. The symbols used in language are arbitrary in that no built-in relationship exists between the look or sound of words and the objects they stand for. The word pen has shared meanings for people who speak english, french, and spanish. A limited number of symbols can be combined in an infinitive variety of ways to generate and endless array of novel messages. You comprehend many sentences that you have never encountered before and you create sentences that you have never spoken before. Rules govern the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences; some arrangements are acceptable and some are not.