22 Language I Flashcards
What purpose does language serve BETWEEN groups
Languages are mostly IMPENETRABLE to others, so language serves as a BARRIER between groups
(Communication WITHIN groups)
What is Skinner’s theory about language development?
“Verbal BEHAVIOR”
= explained using behavioral terms
= language is EMITTED and REINFORCED
What is Chomsky’s theory about language development?
“Syntactic stuctures”
= language is GENERATIVE (can create NOVEL sentences), so cannot be
explained by behavior learning
What is the smallest unit of PHONOLOGY
Define it and give an EXAMPLE
Phoneme = smallest unit of SOUND to ∆MEANING
eg. Pit, pig, put, pat
What is the “Motor Theory of speech perception”?
We perceive phonemes according to how we SPEAK them
Why do PHONEMES keep languages DISTINCT?
FOREIGN phonemes are hard to learn
= hard to lose an ACCENT
Roughly how many phonemes are there?
How many does each laguage generally use?
~1500 phonemes
Each language only uses a SMALL FRACTION of the total phonemes
Does SIGN language have phonemes?
YES
Smallest unit of MOVEMENT to ∆MEANING
Define SYNTAX
RULES by which elements are combined to form
- words
- sentences
Is syntax equivalent to GRAMMAR?
Roughly
Syntax is ‘grammar’, but different languages have different grammar
Chomsky believes what about grammar?
That there is a “UNIVERSIAL” grammar - controversial
Does correct syntax = semantics?
NO
Grammar is not equivalent to MEANING
eg. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
What is the STUCTURE of syntax?
Explain
HIERARCHICAL
- can build UP to paragraphs/stories
- can break DOWN to syllables, phonemes
The structure of syntax is deemed…
RECURSIVE
= can add the SAME elements at DIFF places
Define GENERATIVITY
Since language is RECURSIVE, you can theoreticalyl create sentences of INFINITE LENGTH/NUMBER
What LIMITS the length/number of the sentences we can create?
Our WORKING memory
What is “Unbounded Merge”
Can continously merge letters…words…sentences…FOREVER
Name the 3 aspects of syntax
Generativity
Inflections
Variations
What are INFLECTIONS
ADDING elements to CHANGE a word’s:
- grammatical status
- tense
- number
- gender
Etc
Is English inflectional?
English is WEAKLY inflectional
- 4 inflections for VERBS: walk, walkS, walkING, walkED
- 2 inflections for NOUNS: dog, dogS
Instead of inflections, English often uses…
Auxiliaries
“I HAD BEEN” sleeping
“I WILL BE” running
Heavily INFLECTED languages are also called…
Explain
Heavily inflected = “SCRAMBLING languages”
Word ORDER doesn’t matter
Weakly inflected languages like English uses WHAT to maintain meaning?
Weakly inflected = uses WORD ORDER
eg. English is SVO language
Generativity may be a property of ______, not of language
THOUGHT, not language
