Psychology 1000 Chapter 9: Language and Thinking

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Terry Biggs

Document Summary

Language and thinking y humans have a remarkable ability to create mental representations of the world and to manipulate them in the form of language, thinking, reasoning and problem solving y mental representations include images, ideas, concepts, and principles. Language uses sounds, written characters or some other system of symbols to represent objects, events, ideas, feelings, and actions. A language s grammar is the set of rules that dictate how symbols can be combined to create meaningful units of communication. Syntax is the rules that govern the order of words. Generativity means that symbols of language can be combined to generate an infinite number of messages. Semantics is the meaning of words and sentences that have novel meaning. Displacement refers to the fact that language allows us to communicate about events and objects that are not physically present. The structure of language y surface structure and deep structure.