Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Language Acquisition Device, Baby Talk, Phenome

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Laura Fazakas- De Hoog

Document Summary

Language consists of a system of symbols and rules for combining these symbols in ways that generate messages and meanings. Psycholinguistics is the scientific study of the psychological aspects of language, such as how people understand, produce, and acquire language. Over evolution, humans adopted a more social lifestyle that helped with survival and reproduction. Language is also an extremely powerful learning mechanism. Properties essential to any language: symbols, structure, meaning, generativity, displacement. Language uses sounds, written characters, and other symbols (e. g. hand signs) to represent objects, events, ideas, feelings, and actions. Grammar: the set of rules on how symbols can be combined to create meaning. Syntax: the rules that govern the order of words. Generativity: means the symbols of language can be combined to generate an infinite number of messages that have meaning. Displacement: the fact that language allows us to communicate about things that are not physically present. Language has a surface structure and a deep structure.