PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

UNIVERSITAS TANJUNGPURA PONTIANAK

MID SEMESTER EXAMINATION
SUBJECT : PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
SEMESTER/ CREDIT : V / 2 SKS
DAY/ DATE : 14 Oktober 2020
LECTURER : DR. ENDANG SUSILAWATI, M.Si.
Name : Siti Aisyah
NIM : f1022181058
1. Language is universal. What is meant by this statement? What are the formal properties
shared by all languages in the world? Please explain correctly.

Answer: Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and
understood by all or most of the world's population. In some contexts, it refers to a means of
communication said to be understood by all living things, beings, and objects alike. It may be the
idea of an international auxiliary language for communication between groups speaking
different primary languages. In other conceptions, it may be the primary language of all
speakers, or the only existing language. Some religious and mythological traditions state that
there was once a single universal language among all people, or shared by humans and
supernatural beings. In other traditions, there is less interest in or a general deflection of the
question. For example in Islam the Arabic language is the language of the Qur'an, and so
universal for Muslims. The written Classical Chinese language was and is still read widely but
pronounced differently by readers in China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan; for centuries it was a de
facto universal literary language for a broad-based culture.

The formal properties that shared by all languages are:

• All languages have a grammar.
• All languages & grammars are equally valid, in linguistic terms.
• All languages have some universal properties in common.
• Every language changes over time.
• Most of our knowledge of the mental grammar of our language is unconscious
2. Do you think other creatures also speak a language like human being? Why (why not)?
What makes the language of human being different from the language of other creatures?

Answer: No, they don’t. Because non-humans, do not have a true language like humans. Human
language is unique because it is generative, recursive, and has displacement. Human language is
more complex than animal's as it is interwoven from nuances of linguistics. Using good
communication, human also can survive the harshness of the world. Human language is the best
of all language of other creatures in the world because human mind always develops as well as
the way people think and speak or communicate with others, in different situations or
circumstances. The language of other creatures will never develop in such way as human's,
which has various sounds, structure/ grammar, vocabulary. Not to mention that human' places
of origin creates more diversity in the human language and its development
The differences between human and nonhuman language:

 Duality

Duality of patterning: Distinctive sounds, called phonemes, are arbitrary and have no meaning.
But humans can string these sounds in an infinite number of ways to create meaning via words
and sentences. The primary difference is known as duality of patterning, or structure. Each
human language has a fixed number of sound units called "phonemes." These phonemes are
combined to make morphemes, the smallest unit of sound that contains meaning. Thus,
language has got two levels of patterning that are not present in other animals' communication.

 Creativity

Yet another distinctive feature is creativity. Human beings use their linguistic resources to
produce new expressions and sentences. They arrange and rearrange phonemes, morphemes,
words, and phrases in a way that can express an infinite number of ideas. This is also called the
open-endedness of language. Animal communication is a closed system. It cannot produce new
signals to communicate novel events or experiences.

 Displacement

Human language can talk about things that aren't happening here or now. Other animals react
only to stimuli in the present. Human beings can talk of real or imaginary situations, places, or
objects far removed from their present surroundings and time. Other animals, on the other
hand, communicate in reaction to a stimulus in the immediate environment, such as food or
danger. Because of this, human language is considered context-free, whereas animal
communication is mostly context bound.

 Interchangeability

Human language is interchangeable between sexes. But certain communications in animal world
are performed only by one gender. For example, bee dancing is only performed by worker bees,
which are female.

 Cultural Transmission

Cultural Transmission: Human language is culturally transmitted, or taught. Other animals

communicate largely with signs they are born knowing.

Another important difference is that human language is culturally transmitted. Human beings
brought up in different cultures acquire different languages. Man can also learn other languages
via the influence of other cultures. Animals lack this capacity. Their communication ability is
transmitted biologically, so they are unable to learn other languages.

 Arbitrariness

Human language is a symbolic system. The signs, or words, in language have no inherent
connection to what they signify, or mean (that's why one object can have so many names in
different languages). These signs can also be written with the symbols, or alphabet, of that
language. Both verbal and written language can be passed down to future generations. Animal
communication is not symbolic, which means ideas cannot be preserved for the future.
 Biology

Biological differences also play a vital role in communication. Human vocal cords can produce a
large number of sounds. Each human language uses a number of those sounds. Animal and birds
have entirely different biological structures, which impact the way they can form sounds

3. What do you know about language acquisition and language learning? Explain whether
the process of each of them is similar or different. Complete your explanation with
relevant examples.

Answer: Language acquisition is the development of subconscious language that occurs as a

result of interaction and input. Unintentional process. Language learning is the result of direct
instruction in the rules, structures, or lexics of language. Often it's a deliberate process. The
difference between language acquisition and language learning is that language acquisition is
one of the ways a person learns language naturally and can be said to be unconscious, in this
case someone also learns in informal situations and does not need to learn about grammatical
structures. For example, like a child learning his mother tongue. Children do not need to learn
about grammar structures. He only spoke based on what they heard from the people around
them so that they only knew about the language but did not know about the grammatical
structure of the language. Language learning is one of the ways a person learns language
artificially and can be said to be conscious. In this case one also learns in formal situations and
must know about grammar structures. Suppose you signed up for a Spanish class. The teacher
teaches letters, words, explains their meanings, grammar rules, and asks you to do some
worksheets, give tests later, and so on.

4. What do you know about critical age in language acquisition? Is it possible for a child to
acquire a language if his/her critical age has exceeded. If it is or it is not, how might the
process occur? Write your explanation with a number of cases.

Answer: Critical age or also known critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an
organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental
stimuli. If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this
“critical period” to learn a given skill or trait, it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or
even possible to develop some functions later in life. When child age has exceeded, they still can
learned or acquired language but it less efficiently. For example when children learn the first
language easily and speak it with an accent characteristic of their region, an adult or child who
has age exceeded can’t reproduce the success he or she had when learning the first or second
language, mainly because a child and an adult employ different learning mechanisms.

5. Children’s language acquisition starts from ‘vocalization stage’ and then proceed to such a
higher stage called ‘telegraphic stage’. Please explain how those two stages occur and
write the examples of the language level the children can produce for each of the stage.

Answer: Vocalizations in the first year of life. At birth, the infant vocal tract is in some ways more
like that of an ape than that of an adult human. Compare the diagram of the infant vocal tract
shown on the left to diagrams of adult human and ape. In particular, the tip of the velum
reaches or overlaps with the tip of the epiglottis. As the infant grows, the tract gradually
reshapes itself in the adult pattern. During the first two months of life, infant vocalizations are
mainly expressions of discomfort (crying and fussing), along with sounds produced as a by-
product of reflexive or vegetative actions such as coughing, sucking, swallowing and burping.
There are some non-reflexive, non-distress sounds produced with a lowered velum and a closed
or nearly closed mouth, giving the impression of a syllabic nasal or a nasalized vowel. During the
period from about 2-4 months, infants begin making "comfort sounds", typically in response to
pleasurable interaction with a caregiver. The earliest comfort sounds may be grunts or sighs,
with later versions being more vowel-like "coos". The vocal tract is held in a fixed position.
Initially comfort sounds are brief and produced in isolation, but later appear in series separated
by glottal stops. Laughter appears around 4 months. During the period from 4-7 months, infants
typically engage in "vocal play", manipulating pitch (to produce "squeals" and "growls"),
loudness (producing "yells"), and also manipulating tract closures to produce friction noises,
nasal murmurs, "raspberries" and "snorts". At about seven months, "canonical babbling"
appears: infants start to make extended sounds that are chopped up rhythmically by oral
articulations into syllable-like sequences, opening and closing their jaws, lips and tongue. The
range of sounds produced are heard as stop-like and glide-like. Fricatives, affricates and liquids
are more rarely heard, and clusters are even rarer. Vowels tend to be low and open, at least in
the beginning. Repeated sequences are often produced, such as [bababa] or [nanana], as well as
"variegated" sequences in which the characteristics of the consonant-like articulations are
varied. The variegated sequences are initially rare and become more common later on. Both
vocal play and babbling are produced more often in interactions with caregivers, but infants will
also produce them when they are alone. No other animal does anything like babbling. It has
often been hypothesized that vocal play and babbling have the function of "practicing" speech-
like gestures, helping the infant to gain control of the motor systems involved, and to learn the
acoustical consequences of different gestures.

 The Telegraphic Stage, occurs around the age of 2 1/2 years.

In this stage, children begin stringing more than two words together, perhaps three or four or
five at a time. However, the style of speaking children use in this stage resembles the way of
writing that used to be used in telegrams. That’s why this stage is called telegraphic. In the past,
every word in a telegram cost money, so people used to write the shortest possible messages to
save money. For example, to send the message "We arrived in Paris on Monday," someone
might write "Arrived Paris Monday." Function words (pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions) and
even grammatical morphemes (-ed) are typically absent. Articulation of sounds continues to
develop in order described in earlier stages. 20 consonants are articulated, and all vowels are
articulated by approximatey 3 years of age. All vocabulary development processes continue, and
more words are added. Utterances exhibit phrase structure, that is, they tend to follow the
grammatical rules of the language.

6. What do you know about bilingualism? Describe your explanation clearly. How do you
think bilingualism in early age will affect the process of language learning and the
intelligence of young children? Explain your answer based on the result of some relevant
researches (studies).

Answer: Bilingualism is the ability of an individual or the members of a community to use two
languages effectively. The ability to use multiple languages is known as multilingualism.
Bilingualism refers to the ability to use two languages in everyday life. Bilingualism is common
and is on the rise in many parts of the world, with perhaps one in three people being bilingual or
multilingual. Several studies have suggested that bilinguals show certain advantages when it
comes to social understanding. In some ways, this is not surprising, as bilinguals must navigate a
complex social world where different people have different language knowledge. It is important
to note that considerations of code mixing also have important social implications. Research has
examined socio-cognitive development rather than socio-emotional development. Studies have
shown that bilingual children have advantages in terms of understanding the communication
needs of their conversational partners. Young bilingual children are sensitive to the fact that
they cannot understand someone who speaks a foreign language earlier than monolingual
children. Also, bilingual children show an earlier understanding that other people can have false
beliefs than monolingual children. Studies have also shown that bilingual children achieve higher
scores than monolinguals on a number of tests of cognitive ability, including mental flexibility,
non-verbal problem-solving tasks, understanding the conventional origin of names,
distinguishing between semantic similarity and phonetic similarity and capacity to judge the
grammaticality of sentences. One possible reason for the bilingual advantage is that bilingual
children must learn to reduce the interferences between their two languages in order to speak
only one. Another possibility is that bilingualism trains children to focus their attention on the
relevant variables in the context, particularly information that is ambiguous or contradictory.
Increased cognitive abilities may help children to develop the representational abilities that are
thought to be involved in effective communication. For example, knowing two words that name
the same concept could help children develop the understanding that an object or event can be
represented in more than one way, which could bolster children’s understanding of other
people’s perspectives. Research investigating how bilinguals use their languages to express
emotions has been conducted mostly in adults (mostly autobiographical memory studies) and
has shown that a particular language is an effective retrieval cue if it matches the language in
which an event or experience was originally encoded. Memories encoded in the mother tongue
are typically richer in terms of emotional significance than memories encoded in the second
language. Bond and Lai argue that this is because the second language is typically acquired in a
more emotionally neutral setting than the first language. In conclusion, research has shown that
bilingualism does not lead to confusion, nor does it have any inherent negative impact on
development. In the early stages of the acquisition of a second language, children hearing two
languages can show some developmental lags relative to children who speak only one.24
However, bilinguals are not globally behind monolingual children in all areas of language
acquisition, and the observed lags are typically small and do not last for long periods of time.
Bilingual children show some advantages in socio-cognitive development when compared to
monolinguals, particularly in understanding the beliefs of others, picking out the important
variables to solve a problem, and entertaining two possible interpretations of the same stimulus
at once. There has been no research on bilingual children’s use of emotion language. However,
research with bilingual adults suggests that the language in which events occur could be strongly
linked to the emotional overtone of the memory of those events. It is possible, then, that the
context in which a language is learned can have an impact on bilingual children’s ability to
express themselves and their accuracy in expression. In sum, there are no overall disadvantages
to bilingualism. On the contrary, there can be significant disadvantages regarding children’s loss
of a home/heritage language, which is often deeply intertwined with family, emotions and
identity.