PSYC-223 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Bound And Unbound Morphemes, Pragmatics, Linguistic Universal
21 Sep 2016
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Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Chapter 9: Language and Communication
Elements of Language
Language: is a system that relates sounds (or gestures) to meaning
-It has arbitrary units and is therefore symbolic.
-It is structures and meaningful.
-It show displacement - one can communicate about events distant in time and space,
not just here and now.
-It is characterized by generativity - one can produce infinite number of utterances
from a language’s vocabulary, provided that one follows the structure.
Five Components of Language
-The five components of language are:
-Phonology - refers to the sounds of a language
Phonemes: unique sounds that can be joined to create words
-Morphology - refers to rules of meaning within the language
Morpheme: the smallest unit of a meaning in a language.
Free morpheme: Single word morpheme ex. cat or dog, a free morpheme is
those with stand alone
Bound morphemes: -s for plurals or the -ing suffix. These bound morphemes
change the meaning of a word; dog becomes dogs and run becomes running
-Semantics - is the study of words and their meaning
-Syntax (Grammar)
Pragmatics: is the study of how people use language to communicate effectively.
Sociolinguistic knowledge
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Wednesday, December 3, 2014
The Learning (or Empiricist) Perspective
-This perspective says that children learn language largely by imitation, and by the
reactions of their elders to their own attempts at speech
-When children produce grammatically correct speech, this is often reinforced
-When children produce grammatically incorrect speech, they are generally
corrected
-Also consider that, as a child ages, s/he must produce closer and closer
approximations of correct ‘adult’ speech to earn the same amount of praise—
shaping
Evaluation of the Learning Perspective
-It’s clear that we gain some of our language ability through learning
-We speak the way our caregivers do
-There is evidence that reinforcement affects children’s language acquisition
-However, parents rarely reinforce children’s utterances on the basis of syntax, and yet
children still learn it
-Children produce unique sentences that would have been unlikely to hear an adult
say, suggesting that they’re not simply imitating things they’ve heard adults say
The Nativist Perspective
-Language acquisition device (LAD)
Universal grammer
-Language-making capacity (LMC)
-We know that language is species specific
-Biological bases of, and constraints on, language ability
-Cultural influences
-Sensitive periods
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Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Can Animals Aquire Language?
-Most impressive attempts to teach language to animals with dolphins and
chimpanzees
-After years of training, chimps acquire vocabularies of several hundred words and
could use two word utterances
-But, is this language?
Language Areas in the Brain
-Broca’s area
-located in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex
that controls speech production
-Broca’s aphasia (non fluent aphasia) – speech is laboured and
telegraphic
-Minimum number of words are used to convey meaning
-Speech consists mostly of nouns and verbs
-E.g., “Buy bread store”
Support for the Nativist Perspective
-Wernicke’s area
-located in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex
that is responsible for interpreting speech
-Wernicke’s aphasia (fluent aphasia) – characterized by a marked
deficiency in language comprehension as well as production
-Rich in articles, prepositions, and conjunctions but deficient in nouns,
verbs, and adjectives
-E.g., “Nothing the keesereez the, these are davereez and these and this
one and these are living”
!3
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Document Summary
Language: is a system that relates sounds (or gestures) to meaning. It has arbitrary units and is therefore symbolic. It show displacement - one can communicate about events distant in time and space, not just here and now. It is characterized by generativity - one can produce in nite number of utterances from a language"s vocabulary, provided that one follows the structure. Phonology - refers to the sounds of a language. Phonemes: unique sounds that can be joined to create words. Morphology - refers to rules of meaning within the language. Morpheme: the smallest unit of a meaning in a language. Free morpheme: single word morpheme ex. cat or dog, a free morpheme is those with stand alone. Bound morphemes: -s for plurals or the -ing suf x. These bound morphemes change the meaning of a word; dog becomes dogs and run becomes running. Semantics - is the study of words and their meaning.
