Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language Acquisition Device, Speech Segmentation

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Shauna Burke

Document Summary

1: mental representation: images, ideas, concepts, principles. Language: language: symbols & rules for combining these symbols in ways that can generate an infinite number of possible messages & meanings, psycholinguistics: scientific study of psychological aspects of language. Adaptive functions of language: present form: 50,000 years ago, evolution: more socially oriented lifestyles, survival problems: need to create divisions of labour and cooperative social systems, to develop social customs & communicate thoughts, pass on knowledge. Properties of language: properties: symbols, structure, meaning, generatively, displacement. Language is symbolic & structured: uses sounds, written characters, other system of symbols to represent objects, events, ideas, feelings & actions, arbitrary: ex. Dog french: chien (does not sound like it: grammar: set of rules that dictate how symbols can be combined to create meaningful units of communication, syntax: order of words; ex. Language conveys meaning: semantics: meaning of words & sentences; ex.