Module 26: Language and Thought Flashcards
Language
our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.
Phoneme
in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.
Morpheme
in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).
Grammar
in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.
Babbling Stage
beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.
One-word Stage
the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.
Two-word Stage
beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.
Telegraphic Speech
telegraphic speech:
the early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—“go car”—using mostly nouns and verbs.
Aphasia
impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).
Broca’s Area
helps control language expression—an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.
Wernicke’s Area
a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.
Linguistic Determinism
Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.
Linguistic Relativism
the idea that language has an influence on the way we think.
