Module 36 - end of Unit VII

Module 36 - end of Unit VII

Thinking and Language

Poll

Do you know more than one language?

• Yes

• No

• Somewhat

Open Ended

What does language mean to you?

Language

• Steven Pinker (1998) realized that listening to other people is merely noises being made as they exhale as those hisses and squeaks contain information

• Language is our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Language Structure

• 3 building blocks for a spoken language

• 1. Phoneme - the smallest distinctive sound unit in a language. ex. bat - b,a,t

• there are over 869 phonemes but no language uses them all

• English uses about 40 and other languages less and more

• As a general rule, the consonant phonemes carry more information than do vowel phonemes

Language Structure

• 2. Morphemes - the smallest language units which carry meaning such as a prefix or affix.

• Most combine two or more phonemes.

• Every word in a language contains one or more morphemes

• AP Exam Tip pg. 382

Open Ended

Give an example of a morpheme.

Language Structure

• Grammar - language's set of rules than enable people to communicate

• Grammatical rules also guide in deriving meaning from sounds (semantics) and in ordering words into sentences (syntax)

• ex. genes or jeans - semantics

• ex. Let's eat grandma vs Let's eat, grandma! - synatx

Multiple Choice

What is being used in this sentence semantics or syntax? I like cooking my family and my pets.

• Semantics

• Syntax

Language

• over 600,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary

• humans can store thousands of words in their minds and effortlessly create almost perfect syntax

• speak at rate of three words per second!

Language Acquisition

• Steven Pinker (1990) language is "the jewel in the crown of cognition."

• Linguist Noam Chomsky argued that language is nature's gift - an unlearned human trait, separate from other parts of human cognition.

• theorized that we all have a built in ability to learn grammar rules - universal grammar

• not born with specific language of specific set of grammatical rules

Language Development: When do we learn languages?

• infants - in fantis - not speaking

• 4 months old recognize differences in speech sounds

• recognizing differences marks development of babies' receptive language - ability to understand what is being said to and about them

Receptive Language

• start speaking at 7 months but before that infants recognize object names

• brains not only discern word breaks but also statistically analyze which syllables (ex. happy baby) must go together

Productive Language

• babbling stage - begins around 4 months and is a the beginning of speech development where an infant utters nonsense sounds

• one-word stage - from age 1-2 where child speaks generally in one word phrases

• two-word state - 18 months+, child goes from learning one word a week to a new word a day

Productive Language

• telegraphic speech - early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram ex. go car

• occurs around age 2

• speech will follow rules of syntax

• ex. English white house or Spanish casa blanca

• Know chart pg. 384

Critical Periods

• even if language is delayed due to a cochlear implant or adoption from another country, the same stages of language development occur

• if not exposed to any form of language either spoken or read by age 7, the ability to master any language diminishes

• the older the person learning the language also diminishes learning

• children learning with younger children also diminishes learning

Deafness & Language Development

• native deaf children who learn sign language after age 9 never learn it as well as those who learned it early in life

• sign language is different in each country - over 360 million worldwide - deaf culture

• learning to sign as a teen or adult is like being an immigrant and never truly fluent

• Remember auditory cortex is responsive to touch and and visual input

The Brain and Language

• aphasia - impairment of language usually caused by damage to either the Broca's area (impairing speaking) or Wernicke's area (impairing understanding)

• Remember: in processing language as in other forms of information, the brain operates by dividing its mental functions - speaking, perceiving, thinking, remembering - into subfuctions

• AP Exam Tip - pg. 388

Language and Thought

• Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) - "language itself shapes a [person's] basic ideas"

• linguistic determination - the strong form of Whorf's hypothesis that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us

Language and Thought

• Linguistic Influence - the weaker form of "linguistic relativity" the idea that language affects thought (thus our thinking and world view is "relative to" our cultural language)

• ex. bilingual people report different senses of self based upon language and culture - bilingual advantage of seeing another perspective easily (Wallace Lambert)

Open Ended

What foreign language would you like to learn and why?

Thinking in Images

• think in implicit (nondeclarative, procedural) memory - mental picture

• if you know a skill, watching it will stimulate your brain

• its better to spend your fantasy time planning how to reach your goal than to focus on your desired destination

• thinking affects our language which then affects our thoughts