What do all cultures have in language?
Nouns, verbs, negatives, tense, subjects, objects, adjectives, adverbs.
What is the critical period?
period of development during which language acquisition is most efficient.
(Case of Genie, where an isolated girl to the age of 13 is unable to learn language)
What is the system of symbols?
used to convey meaning; rules for combining symbols.
What is rule for symbolic?
Symbolic: The use of sounds, written words, or other signs to represent objects, actions, events, and ideas.
Example: The word “dog” is a symbol that represents the animal.
What is the rule for semantic?
Semantic: The study of the meaning of words and sentences, including the shared meaning that symbols have for a community.
Example: Understanding that “destination” and “last stop” are semantically similar but have subtle differences in nuance, or the word “dog” being different between languages but having the same meaning.
What is the rule for generative?
Generative: A property of language where a small number of symbols can be used to create an endless variety of messages.
Example: Combining a finite set of words and grammatical rules to form a unique sentence that has never been spoken before, making it infinite.
What is the rule fore structured?
Structured: The principle that language and communication are governed by specific rules about how words are arranged and how sentences are formed to ensure effectiveness.
Example: The rules of English grammar that dictate the difference in meaning between “the cat chased the mouse” and “the mouse chased the cat”.
Phonemes
Smallest units of speech
- 100 basic phonemes (40 in English)
Examples include the three phonemes in “cat” ((/k/,/a/,/t/)
Morphemes
Smallest units that have meaning
- Root words, prefixes, suffixes. (50,000 in English).
- Combined together to form words (450,000 in English).
Ex. Friend is a root word
Friendly adds a suffix to the root word
Unfriendly adds a prefix to the root word
Semantics
Shared meaning of words
Pragmatics: non-linguistic elements.
- Denotation: dictionary meaning.
- Connotation: the subjective associations or feelings a word brings to our minds, beyond its literal meaning. (The word “father” could be associated with a feeling of being protected)
- Flouting rules: Irony, metaphors, expressions.
Syntax
Rules governing word order.
Example: “I like the grape’s taste.” vs. “I grape’s the taste like.”
Stages of Language Development
Development proceeds in a specific order:
- Able to discriminate between phonemes from all languages (3 months).
- Babbling: repetitive production of phonemes from native language (6 months).
- Able to understand common words (8 months).
- First word (12 months).
What are overregulation?
Children understand the common rules of grammar and make mistakes that don’t follow grammatical rules.
“He runned to watch the gooses.”
How are we sure that children acquire language rather than learn it?
Researchers are sure that language is not learned by reinforcement/punishment or simple imitation.
- Critical period
- Perceptual bias: infants prefer language over other complex sounds.
- Stages to babies language development
Babbling is an antecedent of language development how?
Antecedent of language development (Pettito & Marentette, 1991): babbling is an innate part in babies for language development.
- if babbling is an artifact of speech, then it should not occur for signing in deaf babies.
- if babbling is antecedent for language, then it should occur for signing.
Conclusion of experiment: deaf babies are found to make hand motions 7 times more than hearing babies. Human babies innately try to absorb whatever language is exposed to them.
Receptive vs Productive vocabulary
Receptive: receiving and understanding language
Productive: creating and expressing language
- Produce 3 - 50 words (18 months).
- Rapid increase begins by 24 months.
- Words for concrete thoughts; nouns before verbs.
Vocab doubles every two years grade 1 to 5
Fast mapping
words associated with concepts after single exposure.
Overextension: word used to describe wider set of objects (e.g., candy, booboo. Candy can be anything sweet. Boo-boo just means anything that hurts.)
Underextension: word used to describe narrower set of objects (e.g., blanket, bear. Personal for kids, it’s not a blanket, but “my blanket”.)
Bilingualism
Compared to monolingual children, bilinguals…
- Have smaller vocabs in each language.
- Have larger vocabs overall (summing across languages).
- Reach normal language milestones in both languages.
- Have slower language processing skills.
- Have greater cognitive flexibility, analytical reasoning, command of attention.
- Experience slower cognitive deterioration later in life.
Factors affecting acquisition
Age (critical period); difficult after 15 years.
Acculturation: degree to which an individual is socially and psychologically integrated into a host culture (Contact with host population or their own people)
Integrative motivation: desire to be like others in the host culture. Higher as generation increases. First generation is less likely to be motivated, second generation has a higher chance of being motivated. Third is fully integrated into host language.
Disruptions to Language in the brain
Language disorders caused by damage to language centres in the brain.
Broca’s aphasia: disrupts person’s ability to produce speech and comprehend complex sentence structure.
Wernicke’s apahasia: disrupts person’s ability to verbalize coherently.
Dyslexia:
- Orthography: visual form of a word.
- Phonology: sound of a word.
- Inability to translate form into sound.
- Less activity in brain region responsible for word recognition and linking word and sound representations.
Teaching languages to Apes
- Pongids lack vocal apparatus to replicate human speech.
- American sign language (ASL): hand gestures and facial expressions.
- Lexigram: symbols representing words that have no inherent meaning.
- Kanzi with lexigram
Washoe and Koko
Washoe: female chimpanzee.
- First non-human to learn ASL.
- Trained using shaping and reinforcement (tickling).
- Produce telegraphic speech (e.g., “more fruit”)
- Learned 250 signs.
Koko: female gorilla.
- Learned 500 signs.
- Express emotions (e.g., pet cat).
- Refer to past & future.
- Lied when disobedient.
Both animals did not learn language at infancy
False evidence of animals understanding language
Over-interpret animal language.
Unintentional nonverbal cues (e.g., Clever Hans).
Evidence for syntax:
- “Me eat banana” vs. “Banana eat me.”
Conditioned responses.
Kanzi
Bonobo is subtype of chimpanzee.
- Learned lexigram without training! (Watched mom learn as baby)
- Understands novel commands (e.g., Put the key in the refrigerator). 72% of 660 requests.
- Understands syntax: (e.g., “Pour Coke in the lemonade.” vs. “Pour lemonade in the coke.”)
- Strong evidence of language ability!
- However, abilities pale in comparison to even very young children’s.
