Language 2 Flashcards
What do all human languages share?
- Phonology
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Discourse
- Pragmatics
Phonology
Basic sounds (and signs: hand shapes, movement and location)
- Different languages choose different subsets
- No real boundaries between words
- Children have to learn to segment speech as part of language learning
Morphology
Morphemes: smallest meaningful units
- E.g., dog, complain, -s, -ed
- Saussure: “the arbitrariness of the sign”
Syntax
A simple language
- Nouns = Tom, Kate, Jane
- Verbs = thinks, likes
- Sentence = noun + verb + noun
- E.g., Tom likes Kate
Discourse
Linguistic context for a sentence
- Including: shared communication history between speakers and listeners
- “yellow disk”
“orange slice”
Laterality
Speech is lateralized to the left hemisphere in 90% of population
- Laterality is critical in surgical situations
Left hemisphere
More specialized for the analysis of sequences of stimuli and for high-frequency (details) input
- the outline
Right hemisphere
More specialized for the analysis of space, and low-frequency (global) info
- where everything is
Broca’s aphasia
Aware of their deficit
- Impaired at grammatical processing (in both production and comprehension)
- Can interpret based on content words and semantics
- E.g., understands “the man swats the mosquito” but not “the horse kicks the cow”
Wernicke’s aphasia
They are not aware of their deficit
- Articulation fluent and production appears grammatical; lost content words. No longer comprehend the meaning of words/sentences
Whorfian hypothesis
Language determines thought
- Speakers of different language differ in how the perceive and act in objectively similar situations (Whorf, 1956)
Nicaraguan sign language
Early signs are relatively iconic
- Lack words for certain concepts: early cohort has no words for “left” & “right”
- Cannot appropriately communicate about left/right relations
Language influences thought
Label influences memory, imagery, & blames
- Curtains/diamond (Reisberg)
- Car accident - retrospective bias (Loftus)
- Agentive vs non-agentive description of events (Fausey & Boroditsky)
Fausey and Boroditsky (2010)
Agentive vs non-agentive description of events
- People blamed Timberlake more following the agentive descriptive
- Also fine Timberlake and extra $30,829 (53%) more
- This was the case even when people watched the video first
Korean and English speakers
When they saw two examples: one tight and one loose fit
- Koran adults looked longer at the familiarized relations (tight fit)
- English adults: no different in looking time
- Also: when shown several examples of tight and loose (or vice versa) Koreans … - did better
