Language Flashcards
Morphemes
Made up of phonemes and are the smallest units of meaning in language
E.g. boy, -ing
Phrase
A group of words that when put together function as a single syntactic part of a sentence
E.g. walking the dog
Syntax
The arrangement of words into sentences as prescribed by a particular language
Grammar
The overall rules of the interrelationship between morphemes and syntax that make up a particular language
Prosody
Tone inflections, accents, and other aspects of pronunciation that carry meaning
Who is the most important figure in psycholinguistics?
Noam Chomsky
Transformational grammar
Differentiates between surface structure and deep structure in language
Surface structure
The way that words are organised
Phonemes
Discrete sounds that make up words but carry no meaning
E.g. ee, p, sh
Deep structure
Underlying meaning
What was Chomsky’s most famous contribution to psycholinguistics?
An innate language acquisition device (LAD): Humans have an innate ability to adopt generative grammar rules of the language they hear
Overregularization
The overapplication of grammar rules
e.g. founded, Sherpa
Overextension
Generalizing with names for things
e.g. Calling any furry thing a dog
Telegraphic speech
Speech without articles or extras
e.g. Me go
Holophrastic speech
When you use one word (holophrases) to convey a whole sentence
e.g. Me = give that to me
Are girls or boys faster and more accurate with language learning?
Girls
Are bilingual children faster or slower at language learning?
Slower
What regions of the brain process reading and writing?
The ones that produce and understand speech
Unable to read
Alexia
Unable to write
Agraphia
Do children use nouns or verbs first?
Children use nouns first, then verbs
Describe the language acquisition milestones.
1 year = speaks first word(s)
2 years = > 50 spoken words, usually in two- (and then three-) word phrases
3 years = 1000-word vocabulary but has many grammatical errors
4 years = grammar problems are random exceptions
Whorfian hypothesis
Language or how a culture says things influences that culture’s perspective
Roger Brown
Children’s understanding of grammatical rules develops as they make hypotheses about how syntax works and then self-correct with experience
