Lecture 6 - Language Flashcards
What is a phoneme?
Basic unit of sound. Each language makes use of only a small number of phonemes.
What is a morpheme?
Basic unit of meaning. There are content morphemes and function morphemes.
What is syntax?
Basic rules of grammar
What syntactic rule does English follow?
SVO - Subject Verb Order
What are semantics?
The meanings of words
What is the definitional theory of word meaning?
An object is categorized by sharing defining features with other objects
What is the prototype theory of word meaning?
The meaning of the word is held together in a family resemblance structure
What is the first stage of language development? (6-12 months)
Babbling - babies begin producing all the phonemes found in the human language
What is the second stage of language development? (1-1.5 years)
First words - using phonemes in the language spoken by those around the child
What is the third stage of language development? (1.5-2 years)
Telegraphic speech - two-word sentences, typically combining a noun and a verb or adjective and noun
What is the fourth stage of language development? (2-4 years)
Acquiring grammar - learning prepositions, verb forms and other rules
What is the fifth stage of language development? (4-5 years)
Competent speech - full sentences with conventional grammar, though with less complex structure
What did Fernald (1992) discover about newborns’ heart rates?
They quicken or slow according to when they hear a human tone which is excited or soothing
When are babies’ first words?
10-14 months
What is the U-shaped development of morphological processing?
Children with learn a morphological rule (e.g. +ed past tense), then over apply it (e.g. buyed), then stop over applying it so that they use it correctly
What is Chomsky’s LAD?
Language Acquisition Device - enables children to abstract linguistic rules from the speech they hear
What did Vygotsky suggests about the relationship between language and thought?
Social processes become individual
What did Piaget suggest about the relationship between language and thought?
Thought comes before language
What is linguistic determinism?
Language determines thought and linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories
What is linguistic relativism?
Linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behaviour
What is aphasia?
Any language deficit caused by damage to the brain
