Language

Question 1

What is Language?

Answer 1

A way of imparting information and communicating with each other

Question 2

Communication

Answer 2

An aspect of language; enables us to express or convey thoughts and ideas

Question 3

Input Modalities

Answer 3

Language Comprehension;

comprehending and absorbing what we hear or read

Question 4

Output modalities

Answer 4

Language production;

verbal or written language

Question 5

Four Aspects of Language

Answer 5

Phonology, Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Question 6

Phonology

Answer 6

The study of individual sounds that make up the words we produce.

Question 7

Phonemes

Answer 7

The smallest unit of sounds that contributes to meaning

Example: Shin = /Sh/ + /I/ + /N?

Question 8

Speech Perception

Answer 8

An natural ability to be able to distinguish where one phoneme finishes and the other one starts.

Question 9

Syntax

Answer 9

The set of rules that a language follows in order for people to be able to comprehend that language

Question 10

Descriptive Grammar

Answer 10

Regularities that are used by native speakers of a particular language. Not to be confused with prescriptive grammar.

Question 11

Grammar

Answer 11

A language governed by a complex set of rules.

There is an emphasis on the structural rules so other people can understand us. Even dialects follow some form of specific grammar

Question 12

Phrases and Sentences

Answer 12

Rules that determine the order that words should go in, how the sentence is made up with the different components of grammar, etc.

Question 13

Language Acquisition Device

Answer 13

A study by Chomsky in 1965;

Suggests that we have in-born structures in our brain (LAD) that organises the language we can hear.

Question 14

Morphemes

Answer 14

Smallest units of language that can carry meaning.

2 types of morphemes:

Content morpheme - e.g. colours

Function morpheme - e.g. and, “-ing”

Question 15

Pragmatics

Answer 15

The combination of world knowledge (context) and word knowledge that makes communication more successful.

Question 16

Broca’s area

Answer 16

Located in the the posterior area of the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere;

Language centre of the brain;

Question 17

Damage to Broca’s area

Answer 17

Good comprehension (input modality), but struggles with language production (output modality)

Question 18

Wernicke’s area

Answer 18

Found in the posterior area of the temporal lobe, in the left hemisphere of the brain;

Associated with the processing of language inputs

Question 19

Damage to Wernicke’s area

Answer 19

People can speak but they often don’t make sense; speech is incoherent e.g. poor grammatical structure or syntax

Question 20

Language and Early Infancy: 7 months

Answer 20

Crying and cooing;

Child’s attempt to interact with the world;

Communication in its earliest form

Question 21

4-6 months

Answer 21

babbling using all sounds;

repetition of all the small sounds they are able to make

Question 22

6 - 9 months

Answer 22

babbling becomes more focused to the “home language”;

Child discards the other sounds not attached to their home language;

May be affected by multilingualism

Question 23

10 - 12 months

Answer 23

First words develop;

words are more recognisable but individual

Question 24

18 - 24 months

Answer 24

Child begins to use meaningful two-word phrases like “ all gone” or “more milk”

Question 25

2 - 3 years

Answer 25

Child begins to use 3-word phrases in the correct order but does not necessarily use correct inflection

Example: “we goed shops”

Question 26

4 - 5 years

Answer 26

Child can speak with nearly complete syntax; adult form of grammar

Question 27

5 - 7 years

Answer 27

Child is able to use and understand more complex language including past and future tenses, make believe scenarios, and humour

Question 28

9 years and older

Answer 28

Understand almost all forms of home language(s)

Question 29

FOXP2 gene

Answer 29

Researchers studied the KE Family and found that carriers of the gene develop a genetic language impairment wherein there are scattered activations throughout the brain to draw on all possible language activations to compromise for their difficulty on coherence.

Question 30

Motherese

Answer 30

Child-directed speech characterised by high pitched tones and exaggerated intonation to parse speech signals for infants.

Question 31

Child-directed Speech

Answer 31

Fernald did a study in 1985 to prove that infants have a preference for CDS even if the voice wasn’t coming from their own mothers.

Question 32

Importance of babbling and cute gibberish at 7 - 12 months

Answer 32

Babbling is an important stage in the language development and should be encouraged by parents in order to ensure speech development is not delayed. It also helps parents detect speech impairments at an early age.

Question 33

The one-word speaker

Answer 33

Children can understand more words than they can produce. First words are commonly content words and are usually produced around 12 months.

Question 34

The two-word speaker

Answer 34

At around 24 months, the child is starting to grow their vocabulary. This stage is the beginnings of syntax. Their language still lacks function words, but the combination of content words build-up their sentence context.

Question 35

Later stages of language learning

Answer 35

Steven Pinker describes this as “all hell breaks loose,” due to the sudden explosion of vocabulary. At about 5 years old, a child would already know 10-15,000 words.

Question 36

Genie case

Answer 36

Patient was born in 1957; Grew up in an impoverished environment; Discovered at 13 years old.

Her case was enabled the researchers to conclude that the period between birth and 13 years old is critical for language development.

Question 37

Isabelle case

Answer 37

1938.

Discovered at 6 years old, researchers found out she cannot speak because she was brought up by a deaf mother who didn’t expose her to any spoken language. By age 7, she had a massive language explosion after being taught.

Question 38

The original of language: a gradualist view

Answer 38

Corballis believes that language is not uniquely human - there is mental continuity between humans and animals.

Question 39

Broca’s Aphasia

Answer 39

Speech is slow, laboured, and ungrammatical. Many content words, but few function words;

They have relatively good auditory comprehension, but problems become more evident when syntax is complex.

Question 40

Wernicke’s Aphasia

Answer 40

Speech is fluent, but semantically empty. They are unable to explain clearly, often using lots of output modalities which are mostly quite empty and irrelevant to the context.

They often use neologism when they can’t think of particular words.