1 / 8

Language

Language . Turning Thoughts into Words. What is Language?. Language consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. Language is: Symbolic Semantic Generative Structured. The Structure of Language.

hetal
Download Presentation

Language

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Language Turning Thoughts into Words

  2. What is Language? • Language consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. • Language is: Symbolic • Semantic • Generative • Structured

  3. The Structure of Language • Is hierarchical and composed of: • Phonemes are the smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually (English has 40) • Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language (English has approx. 50, 000) • Ex: Fire (1) unfriendly (3)

  4. More Structure • Syntax is a system of rules that specify how words can be arranged into sentences. • Ex: A sentence must have a noun phrase and a verb phrase • An articles(such as the) must come before the word it modifies (the swimmer)

  5. Language Milestones • By 3 mos babies can distinguish all the phonemes of all possible languages. Eventually they lose this ability and only hear their own languages. • 1st 6 months: Infants vocalize but its mostly crying, cooing, laughing and babbling.

  6. More Milestones • 10-13 months: Utter sounds that correspond to words (dada, mama, papa) These sounds are easy to produce • 13-18 months: Typically say 3- 50 words • Receptive vocabulary • Productive vocabulary • Understand more than you can say • Nouns(objects) before verbs(action)

  7. ….And more Milestones • 18-24 months: Vocabulary spurt • Fast mapping • Overextensions • Underextension • 2 years: combine words into sentences • Telegraphic speech • 3 year: More complex sentences with plural and past tenses • overregularizations

  8. Noam Chomsky • All children have the same innate capabilities and work at the same time periods. • Eric Lenneberg (1967): Critical Period Hypothesis: There is a developmental deadline for learning language, if not acquired by puberty it is too late. • Genie

More Related