Language Flashcards
What makes up “true” language?
There are three criteria that make up true language. Language is regular, arbitrary, and productive.
What is the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis? What evidence supports this? What evidence does not?
Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis states that language influences our thoughts and the way we perceive and experience the world. Individuals part of a tribe only count using the numbers “one,” “two,” and “many.” When these individuals were asked to group familiar items together based on similar sample size, as soon as the number got greater and greater, it became more difficult for them to complete the task. This difficulty understanding specific numbers supported the hypothesis. On the other hand, in some cultures, they call all older male figures by a certain name, whether they are our cousin, uncle, etc. But we still know the difference between them. The ability to recognize different relatives with similar labels counters this hypothesis.
Define Morpheme. Provide an example.
Morpheme is the smallest unit of sound that contains information. It can form complete words (ex.table), and a single word can be made of more than one morpheme (ex.tablecloth = table + cloth). However, it is not always the case that each morpheme that makes up a word contain direct meaning. For example, the word tables, has two morphemes - one is table, and the other is “s” which means more than one table.
What makes up the smallest unit of sounds in a word?
Phonemes makeup smallest unit of sounds in a word. For example, dog = d/o/g.
What is the difference between syntax and semantic?
Syntax is rules that govern how words in a sentence are put together, while semantic refers to the meaning of each individual word. A sentence can be syntactically correct without any semantic meaning.
List the milestones that a baby goes through.
Cooing sounds (12 weeks) -> turning head towards voice (16 weeks) -> imitating sounds (6 months) -> babbling (1 year) -> 50-250 words, 2 word phrases (2 years) -> more than 850 words (2-5 years).
Between what ages do kids enter the “language of explosion?”
They enter this stage at about 1.5-6 years of age. Their vocab rapidly increases and most kids have mastered the language.
Researchers wanted to see if segmentation predicted language proficiency later in life. What results did they obtain?
Kids who demonstrated good speech segmentation when they were little, now had a larger vocabulary, meanwhile kids who demonstrated poor speech segmentation when they were little, now had smaller vocab.
Are children or adults better at distinguishing between foregin phonemes?
Infants can distinguish between more phonemes than adults. This is described as universal phoneme sensitivity, which is the ability of infants to discriminate between any sound they’re tested on which includes sounds from non-native languages.
What does social learning theory state?
Social learning theory tells us that kids learn language through a combination of imitation and operant conditioning.
What is the difference between overextension and underextension?
Overextension occurs when kids apply a rule too broadly. Underextension is when kids apply a rule to a specific object only. For example, when a kid learns that their pet at home is called doggie, they may go and start calling all four-legged animals doggie (overextension). Another scenario that a kid may then only refer to their specific dog as doggie and no other dogs as doggie (underextension).
Some people believe that an infant’s brain is wired to listen to speech, even before understanding language. What theory explains this?
This serves as evidence for the language acquisition device. The language acquisition device is an innate mechanism that is present only in humans that helps language develop rapidly to universal rules.
What are the two phases of the Honey Bees Waggle Dance?
When the forager is successful in finding a source of food, it returns to the hive and performs a waggle dance to communicate the location of the food to the other bees. This occurs in two phases - waggle phase and return phase. The distance of the waggle represents distance of the food and angle of the waggle represents direction of the food.
How did Washoe, Sarah, and Kanzi communicate?
Washoe was a chimpanzee that communicates requests using signs and did not seem to use systematic grammar. Sara was a chimpanzee that was taught to use symbols to communicate and was able to use large words to answer questions but could not generate new sentences. Kanzi was a chimp that was taught to use lexigrams (set of geometric figures) to communicate.
