week 2: origins Flashcards
hocketts design features of language
- language as a system of symbols and rules to convey meaning
- duality of patterning: combining meaningless units (ie sounds) to make meaningful ones (ie words)
arbitrariness: symbols dont resemble what they stand for - genrativity: potentially infinite number of sentences
lang evolution approaches
- lang as a tool
- lang as an organ of the body (connections to ohter species comm. systems, bio underpinnings of lang, critical period hypothesis)
sounds - phones
all possible speech sounds (consonants and vowels)
phonemes
sound categories that matter in language (~40 in english)
morphemes
- smallest meaningful units in a lang
- content (cover, rain) or grammatical (un-, -ed, but, the)
___ -are language units made up of one+ morphemes that can stand alone
words
content vs grammatical words
- content: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
- grammatical: articles, prepositions, conjunctions
sentences
convey ideas, infinite number
recursion
- specifying a structure through same structure
- ex chld thinks (S>NP+VP)
child thinks man came (S>NP+VP+S)
language has ____ organization
hierarchical
grammar
rules that specify permissible arrangements of units at one level to produce a unit at a higher level
ASL and duality of patterning
- hand shape, palm orientation, movement, location, expression/non-manual signs
why should lang be an organ
- evolutionary advantage
- evolutionary spandrel
- learnability (universal grammar)
learnability problem
- absence of negative evidence
(end sentence w for and not and) - order of letters matters, some sound better
analogous vs homologous communication systems
- analogous: likely developed independently under dif selective pressures (what pressures are important)
- homologous:shared w closest animal relatives via shared ancestry (what abt human lang is unique, what evolved to give us lang)
bio underpinning s of language
- lower larynx than monkeys (we cna talk but can also choke)
- anatomical adaptions for speech
- vocal learning mechanisms
- genetic changes
vocal learning
- ability to modify acoustic sounds, aquire new sounds via imitation and produce vocalizations
- found in humans, bats, whales, elephants, parrots, hummingbirds etc
critical period hypothesis
- critical period = period in life where specific biological and enviro events must occur in order for dev to proceed normally
- humans must be exposed to lang for it to develop
Children can acquire native competency in a language only if they are exposed to it before ______
puberty - Lenneberg
how implants work for the deaf
- you need auditory nerve that isnt effected by deafness
- device itself goes inside skull (receiver) nd microphone in front of ear transmits wire connecting to inside
- tiny wire connections cochlea and stimulates auditory nerve and hairs so ppl can regain hearing
- most deafness cases are due to prob w the tiny bones in the ear
___% of deaf children are born to hearing parents
90
optimal time for cochlear implants is ______
under 2 years to help sound localization ability form
- sam period for ASL
second language and critical period
- not so much critical but more sensitive period
- unclear if deficits in language are due to lang deprivation only
- decline starts if person exposure is past age 7
- age which you’re exposed to lang effects proficiency
- phenology: trances of first lang is more prominent the later a person learns the language
- # of years speaking was less of a predictor than age learnt
language as a tool
- constrained by our bodies and function
- brain constrains the shape lang takes overtime
- evolves overtime
-helps solve communication problem - can use gesture in place of speech
