PSYC 1101 Lecture Notes - Language Acquisition Device, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Preterm Birth
Document Summary
Only humans have the capacity for language. Psycholinguistics = study of the cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the acquisition, use, and understanding of language. You"re not bound to your immediate environment, with language! If i say i have a blue suv, you know what i"m talking about without there being a blue suv around << perception of speech. These symbols convey meaning (we agree on the meaning of the word house, for ex: rules for combining those symbols that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages (aka. Is semantic, aka has meaning, generative, creates new meaning, structured and symbolic. Language can be characterized by the fact that it"s symbolic, the symbols are semantic (they have meaning), and it"s generative (generates meaning) and structured (g-g-g-grammar!) Ex: cat << these letters make a word with a certain meanings: syntax -- grammar! A system of rules that specify how words can be arranged (into phrases and sent. s)