ANTHRCUL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Visual Space, Noam Chomsky, Silent Treatment

• School: U of M
• Department: Anthropology, Cultural
• Course: ANTHRCUL 101
• Professor: Holly Peters- Golden

Document Summary

Universal grammar: basic set of principles and rules that underlie all languages. It was his intention that children learn language by applying this universal grammar to the sounds they hear. The mistakes that children make can be seen as evidence that they already know the rules and haven"t just memorized vocabulary. Not just random mistakes; you can see a pattern. They form words based on the rules of grammar; they says runs, foots, mouses, etc. (basic rule for making things plural) To test this, they gave preschoolers pictures and told them to associate the pictures with nonsense words. When the children were asked to point to a dib, they pointed to a picture that showed just one object. When they were asked for dibs, they pointed to a picture that had multiple things. Were able to use clues in the grammar. Making mistakes with language is an important part of learning language for children.