L1 - Language Flashcards
Outline Fodor’s (1983) Vertical Modularity Model:
Fodor said that three modular inputs all fed into a ‘General Problem Solver’ system. The three inputs were, vision, language, and audition.
What do Nativists like Pinker and Chomsky say about language acquisition?
Nativist theory of language acquisition states that there must be some sort of innate ‘language acquisition device’’. IE: unlearnable.
What is the Interactionists/Empirical view of language acquisition?
The interactionist/empirical view of language acquisition rejects the innateness of language as outlined by nativists.
Language is said to develop from experience and interaction from the environment.
Humans pick up predictive probabilities in a language from their environment.
Define linguistics:
The study of the structure of language(s).
Define psycholinguistics:
The study of the mental representations and processes involved in language as well as the different psychological functions of different units of language.
Why is linguistic knowledge difficult to investigate?
Linguistic knowledge is difficult to investigate because it is implicit, automatic and untaught.
Therefore the use of unconscious processes is often employed to help research. EG eye tracking tasks of MRI.
What is a word?
An auditory or visual symbol which has a consistent meaning.
What is phonology?
Phonology is the study of the sounds of a language.
What are phonetics?
Phonetics are the acoustic properties of sound.
What is a phoneme?
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sounds which is required to make a distinction between two words.
Eg: car - cars
What is a morpheme and what are the two varieties?
A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit of meaning.
There are free morphemes, which can be found by themselves as words, eg: dog, pen, etc.
And there are bound morphemes, such as prefixes and suffixes, eg: un, dis, etc. Or roots, eg: mit - permit, submit.
What are semantics?
Semantics are related to the meanings of words and sentences.
What does discourse refer to?
Discourse refers to a group of sentences combined together in a meaningful and coherent way.
What are pragmatics?
Pragmatics are the contextual aspects of language, ie when to use language in a socially appropriate way.
