UNIT 4 - LANGUAGE
Language
Language, our spoken, written, or gestured work,
is the way we communicate meaning to ourselves
and others.
Language transmits culture.
Language - Psycholinguistics
 Images
 Nonverbal mental representations of sensory
experiences
 Language
 A flexible system of symbols that enables us to




communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings
Nonhumans communicate primarily though signs
Human language is semantic, or meaningful
It is also characterized by displacement in that it is
not limited to the here-and-now
Infinite Generativity
Thinking in Images
To a large extent thinking is language-based.
When alone, we may talk to ourselves. However,
we also think in images.
We don’t think in words, when:
1. When we open the hot water tap.
2. When we are riding our bicycle.
Images and Brain
Imagining a physical activity activates the same
brain regions as when actually performing the
activity.
Jean Duffy Decety, September 2003
Language Acquisition
Stages that we learn
language…
1. Babbling Stage (ah-goo) – 4
months
2. Holophrastic Stage (one
word stage – doggy) – 1 year
3. Telegraphic Speech Stage
(2 word stage -- “Go car”) –
before 2 years old
 Syntax Understanding
 Overgeneralization -- rules
 Overextension -- concepts
Language – Building Blocks of Thought
How do we learn
language?
Social Learning Theory
 B.F. Skinner from the
Behaviorist School
 Baby may imitate a
parent.
 If they are reinforced
they keep saying the
word.
 If they are punished,
they stop saying the
word.
Noam Chomsky’s (Nativist theory)
 We learn language too quickly for it to be through
reinforcement and punishment.
 Inborn universal language acquisition device
Critical Period Hypothesis for Language
Development

Childhood is a critical period for fully
developing certain aspects of language.
Children never exposed to any language
(spoken or signed) by about age 7 gradually
lose their ability to master any language.
*Genie
*The Girl in the Window
*The Girl in the Window (2)
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Critical Period
Learning
new
languages
gets harder
with age.
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Genes, Brain, & Language
Genes design the mechanisms for a language, and
experience modifies the brain.
Benjamin Whorf’s
Linguistic Relativity/ Determinism
 The idea that language determines
the way we think.
 The Hopi tribe has no past tense in
their language, so Whorf says they
rarely think of the past.
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Do animals use language?
• Washoe (chimp) 181 Signs (ASL)
•Kanzi uses Lexigram (300 +) – phrases & semantics – Novel
Sentences
•Limited Vocabulary & Lack Syntax Understanding
•Animal Language
Universal Characteristics of
Language
1. Semanticity
2. Arbitrariness
3. Flexibility of symbols
4. Naming
5. Displacement
6. Generativity
Structuring Language
Phonemes
Basic sounds (about 40) … ea, sh.
Morphemes
Smallest meaningful units (100,000)
… un, for.
Words
Meaningful units (290,500) … meat,
pumpkin.
Phrase
Composed of two or more words
(326,000) … meat eater.
Sentence
Composed of many words (infinite)
… She opened the jewelry box.
All languages contain….
Phonemes
 The smallest units of
sound in a language.
 English has about 44
phonemes.
Morphemes
 The smallest unit of
meaningful sound.
 Can be words like a or
but.
 Can also be parts of
words like prefixes or
suffixes…”ed” at the
end of a word means
past tense.
Unforgettable = un · for · get · table
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Language Structure
Phonemes: The smallest distinct sound unit in a
spoken language. For example:
bat, has three phonemes b · a · t
chat, has three phonemes ch · a · t
How many meanings can you make by varying the vowel phoneme between B and T?
Generally _____________ phonemes carry more information.
Answers
 Bait, bat, beat/beet, bet bit, bite, boat, boot,
bought, bout, and but.
 The consonant phonemes. The treth ef thes
stetement shed be evedent frem thes bref
demenstretien.
Language Structure
Morpheme: The smallest unit that
carries a meaning. It may be a
word or part of a word. For
example:
Milk = milk
Pumpkin = pump . kin
Unforgettable = un · for · get · table
Grammar
Is this the White
House or the House
White?
 The rules of a language.
 Syntax: the order of
words in a language.
 In English, syntactical
rule says that adjectives
come before nouns; white
house. In Spanish, it is
reversed; casa blanca.
 Semantics: the set of
rules by which we derive
meaning from
morphemes, words, and
sentences.
 Ex: adding –ed to the word
laugh
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Structure of Language
 Surface structure
 How we order the sentence
 English “She ate an apple”
 Japanese “She an apple ate”
 Deep structure
 Underlying meaning of a sentence
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