Exam 3 Ch 11 Flashcards
Language major features [placeholder]
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Symbolic
Words are symbols that represent other things
- even things that are abstract and/or not immediately present
Nested/hierachial
Small units can be combined into bigger ones endlessly
Rule-based
govern the nested combinations
Generative
Allows us to express and compregend a LIMITLESS variety of things, including totally new things noone has ever said or heard before
Modality independent
Words across auditory (speech), visual (written, sign), tactile (braille)
Spoken vs Written Language [placeholder]
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Spoken language
- a natural ability that evolved
- when?
- 50,000 years ago?
- 1.8 million years ago? (homo erectus)
- brain areas
- we automatically learn spoken language when raised around it
Written Language
- An invention
- 5,000 years ago (Mesopotamia cuneiform tablets)
- rides on top of spoken language processes
- must be explicity taight and learned
Differences between animal commumication and human language
Humans: complex combination of symbols
Animals: Seems more association of stimulus with response. Their “language”is not generative (they dont come up with unique sentences and do not use language to represent their feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences)
Psycholinguistics: understand the difference between comprehension and production [placeholder]
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Comprehension
How we understand language
Production
How we create and speak language
Structure of Language (linguistics [placeholde]
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Phonemes
- The smallest unit of sound that can distinguish words in a language
- ex: call, car
ex: pit, spit, happen
- ex: bat, cat differ by 1 phoneme
- Could be 1 letter (b) or more than 1 letter (th, sh, ch)
- 1 letter may correspond to >1 phoneme (cAt vs. cAke) but they do not correspond directly to letters
- Not all languages use phonemes
- Babies can perceive and produce all of them as they are learned in the first year of life
Morphemes
- The smallest unit of MEANING
- Can be equivalent to one word
- Can be less than one word
–UNhappy
–walkING, walkER, walkED, walkS
- Each word could be made of several morphemes
Ex: bedroom, broomstick, bookbags
- Changing a morpheme changes the meaning
Ex: REspect, DISrespect, respectFUL, respectABLE
Words [placeholder]
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Phonology
The sequence of phonemes that make up the word
Orthography
How the word is spelled (if the speaker is literate)
Semantics
What the word means