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language

language. What is language? How does language work? Does language affect thought?. Overview. A system of communication that is: Hierarchical Rule-Governed Generative. What is Language?. We are biologically prepared to learn language Rapid acquisition without formal training

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language

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  1. language

  2. What is language? How does language work? Does language affect thought? Overview

  3. A system of communication that is: • Hierarchical • Rule-Governed • Generative What is Language?

  4. We are biologically prepared to learn language • Rapid acquisition without formal training • Similarity across languages • Common development sequence • Babbling (4 mo.) • One word utterances (12 mo.) • Two word utterances (24 mo.) What is Language?

  5. Phonology Semantics Syntax Pragmatics How does language work?

  6. Phoneme – shortest segment of speech that affects word meaning Phonemes are categories of sounds The speech signal is continuous and must be segmented Phonology

  7. Morpheme - smallest unit that carries meaning • words/root words • prefixes • suffixes Semantics

  8. Context affects meaning • Both meanings of an ambiguous word are initially available; context disambiguates • While the exterminators were searching the house they found several bugs in one room. • While the CIA agents were searching the house, they found several bugs in one room. Semantics

  9. Rules for combining words and morphemes • Meaning depends on syntax • His face was flushed, but his broad shoulders saved him. Syntax

  10. How is speech planned? Speech errors can indicate what type of planning was used Spoonerisms Speech Errors

  11. “You have tasted the whole worm.” “Our queer old dean.” Switching Phonemes

  12. “a catful of houses” “gownless evening straps” Switching Morphemes

  13. “the brain supply to the blood” “you’ve eat me seen that” Switching Syntactic Elements

  14. Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975) • Conversational maxims • Quantity • Quality • Manner • Relation Pragmatics

  15. DOES LANGUAGE AFFECT THINKING? • Linguistic Determinism • If language limits thinking, then color categorization and memory should be limited by the color words in one’s language

  16. DOES LANGUAGE AFFECT THINKING? English: purple / blue / green / yellow / orange / red Dani (New Guinea): mili (dark) / mola (bright)

  17. Does language affect thinking? • Speakers of different languages tend to select the same focal colors, even if they don’t have a word for that color category • Individuals show better color discrimination between colors that have different words in their language

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