PSYC 1010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Language Acquisition Device, Phonemic Awareness, Metalinguistic Awareness

• School: Humber College
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Gerald Goldberg

Document Summary

Cognition- mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge (involves thinking) Language- symbols that convey meaning + rules for combining symbols that is used to generate infinite variety of messages. Language is symbolic- allows us to refer objects that maybe in another place + events that happened at another time + different object can be called by same name. Semantic (meaningful)- no built in relationship exists btw the look or sound of words + objects they stand for. Generative- limited # of symbols can be combined in an infinite variety of ways to generate endless array of novel messages. Structured- sentences must be structured in limited number of ways (rules govern arrangement of words into phrases + sentences) Phonemes- smallest speech units in language that can be distinguished perceptually (100 basic sounds we can hear) Letter in alphabet can represent more than one phoneme if it has more than one pronunciation. Some are represented by combination of letters (ex: ch, th)