PSYC 1200 Chapter Notes - Chapter Chapter 9: Function Word, Phoneme, Animal Communication
1 May 2018
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LANGUAGE
Language and Communication: From Rules to Meaning
Language- A system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according
to rules of grammar and convey meaning
-Language allows individuals to exchange information about the world, coordinate group
action, and forms strong social bonds.
Grammar- A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce
meaningful messages.
What are the distinctions between human language and animal communication?
- The complex structure of human language distinguishes it from simpler signalling
systems. Most humans can express a wide range if ideas and concepts as well as
generate an essentially infinite number of novel sentences.
- Humans can use words to refer to intangible things, such as unicorn or democracy,
these words could not have originated as simple alarm calls.
- We use language to name, categorize and describe things to ourselves when we think,
which influences how knowledge is organized in our brains
The Complex Structure of Human Language
-4000 human languages , despite their differences, all of these languages share basic structure
involving a set of sounds and rules for combining those sounds to produce meanings.
Basic Characteristics
Phoneme- The smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than as random
noise. – these building blocks of spoken language differ in how they are produced.
- B and P are classified as separate phonemes in English because they differ in the way
they are produced by the human speaker.
Phonological Rules- A set of rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce
speech sounds. For example: The initial sound ts is acceptable in German but not in English.
Morphemes- The smallest meaningful units of language.
- For example: Your brain recognizes the pe sound you make at the beginning of pat as a
speech sound, but it carries no particular meaning, the MORPHEME pat, on the other
hand, recognized as an element of speech that carries meaning.
Morphological Rules- A set of rules that indicate how morphemes can be combined to form
words.
- Content morphemes: refer to things and events or are affixes that, when added to a
ase ord, hage it’s eaig or part of speeh. Examples of affixes redo or playable
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since re and able changes the meaning of the base word- (changing them from verbs to
adjectives.
- Function Morphemes- serve grammatical functions, such as trying sentences together
(and or, but) or indicating time(when). It also includes affixes that indicate the
grammatical role of a base word, such as those required for plurals and for verbs
agreement. For example, the s- on the end of cats and the –ed or –ing on the end of
walked or walking.
Syntactical Rules- A set of rules that indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and
sentences.
- Every sentence must contain one or more nouns, which may be combined with
adjectives or articles to create a noun phrase.
- A sentence also must contain one or more verbs, which may be combined with noun
phrases, adverbs, or articles to create a verb phrase.
Meaning: Deep Structure vs Suface Structure.
Deep Structure- the meaning of a sentence
Surface Structure: How a sentence is worded. Eaple the dog hased the at, the at as
hased the dog ea the sae thig ee though o the surface their structures are
different.
Language Development
3 Characteristics of Language Development
-Children learn language at an astonishing rate ( the average 1- year- old has a vocabulary of 10
words. This tiny vocabulary expands to over 10 000 words in the next 4 years, requiring the
child to learn, on average, about 6 or 7 new words every words)
-Children make few errors while learning to speak (the errors they do make usually while
learning to speak, usually result from applying, but overgeneralizing, grammatical rules they
have learned.
-Childre’s passie aster deelops faster tha their atie aster ( at every stage of
language development, children understand language better than they speak)
Distinguishing Speech Sounds
What language ability do infants have that adults do not?
- Infants can distinguish among all of the contrasting sounds that occur in all human
languages
Language Milestones
-Toddlers generally learn nouns before verbs , and the nouns they learn first are names for
every day, concreate objects(e.g. chair, table)
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