PSYC 1001 Chapter 8: PSYC1001 Chapter 8 Notes
6 Dec 2016
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Cognition: the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge. Language: consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an in nite variety of messages: language systems include a number of critical properties. First, language is symbolic: people use spoken sounds & written words to represent objects, actions, events & ideas. Fourth, language is structured: rules govern the arrangement of words into phrases & sentences. Some arrangements are acceptable & some aren"t. Phonemes: phonemes: the smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually, considering that an unabridged english dictionary contains more than 450,000 words, you might imagine that there must be a huge number of phonemes. In fact, linguists estimate that humans = capable of recognizing only about 100 such basic sounds. November 28&30: moreover, no one language uses all of these phonemes.
