Psychology 2134A/B Midterm: Midterm 2 Notes
27 Sep 2018
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Words are labels for concepts: dual nature of words. Word: minimal unit of meaningful speech that can stand alone. Rarely use a single-word utterance typically embed words into larger utterances and context can change pronunciation. At a more abstract level, can think of words as labels for concepts. Concept: mental representation of some sort of statistical regularity in our experience: representations of classes of objects or events and provide expectations that guide our response to new instances of those objects or events. Words have a dual nature: phonological form the way it sounds when spoken in isolation or within an utterance (may vary her vs. tell her sounds like teller , semantic representation concept associated with that word. Types of words: different classes depending on (1) type of concept they represent (2) role in sentences. Function words: remain fairly stable across generations and even centuries closed-class words. Conjunctions: combine phrases into larger units (i. e. and, but, because)
