The Psychology of Language:
Part II
Psychology 337
• Dr. Werker
– Kenny 2404
– Office hours, Mondays 3:30 – 5:00
– Email: jwerker@psych.ubc.ca
• Whitney Weikum
– Kenny 1003
– Office hours, Wednesdays 2-3 (or by apptmt)
– Email: whitney@psych.ubc.ca
Goals of the Course
• To develop a fuller understanding of the foundations of
language in evolution, biology, and infancy
• From this, to understand more fully just what language is
and what makes it so remarkable
• To advance in critical thinking and analysis skills, and to
be able to show that both in classroom discussions and in
exams
How we’ll achieve those goals
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Readings
Lectures
Questions from class
Class Discussions
Class creation of study questions
Exams as a sub-set of those
– Midterm exam February 12
Topics
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Language Evolution
Brain and Language
Prelinguistic Development
The Transition to Word Learning
Bilingualism
Sign Language Acquisition
Literacy Development
Course Outline
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Schedule of lectures and readings
Exams and assignments
Office hours
T.A.
The first few weeks….
What is Language?
• Language is one of our most complex cognitive
functions
• Allows us to plan, recall the past, and prepare for
the future
• The basis for human relationships, commerce, and
our civilization
• Involves all the cognitive processes studied in any
course on cognition, but perhaps in unique ways
Language
• Uses a finite number of symbols (words)
• Uses a finite number of rules for combining
these symbols (syntax)
• With these, we can produce an infinite
number of sentences
• Language is productive; we have a
generative grammar
Some basic divisions
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Phonology and Phonetics
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
Phonology & Phonetics
• Phonology – the sound system of the language
• The rules for how sounds combine
• Phonemes
– the smallest unit to distinguish meaning
– typically described via features
– Perceived categorically: discrete categories
• Phonetic
– a more complete description of the sounds of language
– Featural: acoustic, auditory, or articulatory
– Likely more graded
Why is articulation so important?
• How sounds are made
• How sounds are perceived
The Vocal Tract as a set of Resonating Cavities
Anatomical structures bounding vocal tract:
Some fixed, some moveable
Source-Filter Theory of Speech
Production
• Source of energy – build up of air
• Set in motion by vibration of vocal cords
• The shape of the vocal tract, the filter,
determines the quality of the sounds
• Vowels described in terms of height, frontbackness, and roundedness
• Consonants in terms of voicing, manner,
and place of articulation
Speech Perception
• Speech may be perceived in terms of the
mode(s) of articulation
• Auditory models have it recovered from the
acoustic signal
Morphology
• The study of the meaningful units in language and
how they combine
• Words can be decomposed into smaller units
– Fisherman, walked, laughing
• What is a morpheme?
– The smallest unit of language that has a meaning
• Dog, tiny, chair
– Or a grammatical function (e.g. specifies relations
between words)
• On, with, and
Syntax
• Rules for how words can be combined
• Think of syntax as a skeletal frame – slots for words
• Generating acceptable vs. unacceptable word orders is
incredibly complex
• Classic Chomsky: we have a set of rules which generates
grammar. This is special to humans & part of our
endowment.
• Competence (or internalized, I-language) vs. performance
(E-language)
• Need transformations from deep to surface structure
• (Chomsky’s recent minimalist program differs from this
substantially).
Semantics
• The study of meaning – of words and of
sentences
• Many different approaches to meaning
• Talk about word meaning being stored in a
“lexicon”, a mental dictionary
• But along with the meaning is stored the
syntactic category, the sound, and perhaps
even written appearance
Pragmatics
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The social rules for language use
Turn taking
Motherese
New vs. old information
What to talk about and when
Any theory of evolution needs to
account for all of these
Some argue that all of these are part and parcel
of language and propose theories of
language evolution to account for all
Others separate the “Faculty of language in a
Narrow” (FLN) vs. the “Faculty of language
in a Broad” (BLN) sense.
The proposed theories of language evolution
need to account for FLN, and account for
BLN more broadly
FLN vs. FLB
Did it evolve specifically for language, or is it used
more generally and by non-humans?
• All put syntax in FLN (but not all parts)
• Most aspect of morphology in
• Some put phonetics & phonology in FLN
– Many put production in
– And perception out (but some disagree)
• Only a few put semantics in
– But some put some semantic constraints in
• Very few put pragmatics in
– But some do consider “theory of mind” in
When did language evolve?
• Standard story is that it probably evolved over
400,000 years ago
• Recent thinking puts it within past 120,000
years
• Central to this debate is just what IS core to
language.
• FLN? Likely more recent
• FLB? Certainly started a long time ago.
Where did human language come
from?
• Continuity Theorists
– Human language from animal communication
• Discontinuity Theorists
– Punctuated evolution – specific genetic mutation
• Combination Theorists
– Some specifically evolved traits, some exapted
– (Comes from Gould & Lewontin – a structure that
evolved for another reason being used for a new
function: spandrels in cathedrals)
Why all the attention on the vocal
tract?
• Liberman – the descent of the larynx
– Once thought this was unique to humans
– And allowed for speech. But, not unique.
• The possibility for rapid, coarticulated, and
embedded speech
• Essential for that “Duality of Patterning
• Recent evidence re FOX:P2 gene
“Disappearing dichotomies”
raised by Aitchison
• Nature/nurture
• Continuity/Discontinuity
• Punctuated (Pop)/Gradual Evolution (Slow
Haul)
• Single/Multiple appearance of language
• Instruction/Selection
Next Classes….
• Tuesday, January 13 Dr. Laura Sabourin
• Thursday, January 15 Me for a short time,
– Then Whitney and Laura
– Questions from you required
• Tuesday, January 20, Whitney Weikum
• Thursday, January 22, I’m back, and we will as a
class generate test questions from Evolution &
Language & the Brain
– Questions from you required