Language Flashcards
Language is Regular
- it is governed by rules and grammar
- a sentence can be recognized and still retain its meaning
because a system of rules details how each word fits with
the ones around it
Language is Arbitrary
what specific sound is assigned to
represent a concept is arbitrary
Language is Productive
Here are almost limitless ways to combine words to describe objects, situations and actions
- this is evident when observing native language
-
Give an example of how Language is Arbitrary
ex. there is nothing about the sound of the word “cat” to
indicate that it is a furry animal with whiskers and a tail
Worf-Sapir Hypothesis:
language influences our thoughts and the way we experience the world
Morphemes
the smallest unit of sound that contains information
often a word, but some words contain multiple morphemes
- in sign language, they are identified as units of signs rather
than sound
- can form their own words
Example of an Morphemes
- the word table is a single word that contains a single morpheme, but the word tablecloth is a single word that contains 2 morphemes
Syntax:
The rules that govern how sentences are put together - also known as grammar
Semantics:
- the meaning of each individual word
- a sentence may have perfect syntactical structure but no
semantic meaning
Example of Semantics:
ex. The colourless green ideas sleep furiously beside the kwijibo violates no English syntactic rules but contains no semantic meaning
12 weeks a baby:
Makings cooing sounds
16 weeks a baby:
Turns head towards voices
6 months
Imitates sounds
1 year
babbles;
a wide range of drawn out sounds and made up of a variety of combinations of consonants and vowels
2 years
uses 50-250 words; uses 2 word phrases
2.5 years
vocabulary > 850 words
- “language explosion/ naming explosion/ word spurt”
Universal Phoneme Sensitivity:
The ability of infants to discriminate between sounds they’re tested on
- includes sounds from non-native languages
Social Learning Theory:
Children learn language through a combination of imitation and operant (modifying) conditioning
over extensions
Occur when children apply a rule too broadly, and can occur at the level of meaning or syntax
Example of Over Extensions
- ex. if a child learns that his family pet is called a doggie, he may start to use the word “doggie” to label any 4 legged animal
- a child may appropriately add the suffix “ed” when saying that she played with her friend yesterday, but may over extend it to other verbs such as “runned” instead of correctly
Language Acquisition Device (LAD):
innate mechanism, present only in humans, that helps language develop rapidly according to universal rules
Transparent Orthographies:
consistent letter to letter
correspondence, so that a given letter will always make the same
sound
Perceptual Narrowing
the process of losing ability to distinguish
between contrasts in sounds not used in native language
Infant Directed Speech
when people talk to infants, they tend to speak in a higher pitch and exaggerate changes in pitch and use of rhythm
