Module 27 Flashcards
speaking
brain and voice apparatus transmit airwaves that we send and enter others’ eardrums
language
spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to form meaning; can comprehend much we’ve never seen, make plans and have people carry them out, connect to people far away, know what another is thinking directly, store info
defining features of language
semantics, syntax, symbols are arbitrary and flexible, comprehensive naming, generativity, prevarication, displacement
displacement
conversing about things that aren’t there
prevarication
lying and understanding lies
generativity
ability to say the same thing with different words
phonemes
smallest distinctive sound units in a language; 869 over languages, 44 for English; can correlate to 2+ graphemes
grapheme
letters; written lang; correspond to phonemes (not 1:1)
grammar
lang’s set of rules that enable people to communicate
semantics
lang’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds; meaning goes beyond this and includes syntax, punctuation, and emphasis
syntax
set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences
universal grammar
Chomsky; language is an unlearned trait and we have a predisposition to learn grammar rules which allows children to learn lang fast; proved incorrect; not specific (nouns, verbs, etc.)
learning lang
grammar - by discerning patterns in lang they hear
words and syntax - naturally and w/o conscious thought
receptive lang
ability to understand what is said to and about oneself
cooing
noises with vowel sounds
4 months - lang
can recognize diffs in speech sounds, read lips, coo, cry; babbling
4-6 months- lang
babbling stage (babble consonants) and recognize object names (esp consonant-vowel pairs)
6-10 months - lang
increased ability to segment spoken sounds into individual words; echoic babble (household lang-related babble)
10-12 months - lang
one-word stage; usually uses nouns;
12-18 months - lang
30-50 words; 1 word/day
18-24 months - lang
two-word stage; 50-200 words; telegraphic speech (nouns and verbs)
2-2.5 years - lang
1000 words; production of phrases and incomplete sentences; understand > say; multi-word stage
3-5 years - lang
10,000+ words; production of sentences, mastery of grammatical morphemes, function words; can form Qs and negations
productive lang
ability to produce words
critical periods
childhood; time to master certain aspects of lang before learning decreases; by age 7
impaired lang dev
if late, will occur with same sequences but faster; if exposed to low quality lang, lang skills will decrease
cochlear implants
convert sounds into ele signals and stimulate auditory nerve via electrodes in child’s cochlea; controversial bc must be done before age of consent
how does hearing loss affect people (w/o hearing aids)
may struggle to make friends, academics decrease, low self-confidence, lowers capacity to perceive, comprehend, and remember words, sadder, less social engagement, shyness
aphasia
impairment of language; usually caused by L hemi damage to Wernicke’s or Broca’s areas
Broca’s Area
helps control language expression; in L frontal lobe; directs muscle movements with motor cortex in creating speech; damage can be fixed with ele stimulation; coordinates brain processing of lang in other areas
Wernicke’s Area
L temporal lobe; involved in language comprehension and expression; can only speak meaningless words
animal language
some display basic language processing, comprehension, and communication, esp about threats
why can only humans have lang (genetics)
gene variation of FOXP2 that enables lip, tongue, and vocal cord movements of speech
Whorfian hypothesis/linguistic determination
language determines thinking and perception; too extreme; disproved bc we think about things for which we have no words and unsymbolized thoughts (wordless images)
lingusitic relativism
words influence thinking
what does learning new words lead to
understandment of new ideas and new ways of thinking; express new ideas
bilingual advantage
bilingual people can inhibit one language while using other; can readily inhibit attention to irrelevant info; evident at 7 mon; can protect against cognitive decline later in life; increases social skill bc can shift to understand another’s perpective
mental images
sometimes ideas precede words (instead of words conveying ideas) and we may think with implicit memory instead of words
outcome stimulation
envisioning oneself succeeding; little effect on results
process stimulation
envisioning self effectively (studying) doing actions leading to desired results; has more effect than outcome stimulation
open class of words
relatively easy to add new words to or modify existing ones; include semantic content of sentences (nouns, verbs, etc.)
closed class of words
very difficult to add new words to; function content of sentences (prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, prefix/suffix)
American Dialect Society
choose expression that most reflect ideas, events, and themes which have occupied English-speaking world, especially NA, in the last year, decade, century, millennium
