Introduction To Language

Critera of language
1. Language is regular - It is regulated by rules of grammar
2. Words in a language arbitrarily represent what they mean.
3. Words in a language can be combined in many productive ways
Hypothesis why language is so important to humans.
Spair-Whorf Hypothesis
Language influences our thoughts and the way we perceive and experiance
the world.
Evidence: Tribe can only say 1, 2 and many
Struggled counting objects in #3.
On the other hand, some languages have specific terms to each family
member, while others have the same name for two family members, yet one
can still differentiate them.

Structure of language
Grammar forms the structure of human language
Morphemes: Smallest unit of sound that contains information. Often a word,
but some words contain multiple morphemes.
Ex. Table - 1 Morphemes
Ex. table Cloth - 2 Morphemes.
• Not all morphemes can be used alone.
Morphemes can be broken down into constituent sounds called Phonemes.
Syntax: The rules that govern how words in a sentence are put together
(grammar)
• Sentences can be syntactically correct without any semantic meaning.

Developments of the segmentation problem

Babbling: Characterized by drawn out sound made up of a
variety of combination of vowels and consonants
• May sound like a read sentence or question because of
the use of inflection (change in the form of a word) and
rhythm in the production of the babble.
• Combinations progress to become real words.
Segmenting individuals words is difficult in the speech of a foregn language.
Infints with good segmentation skills when young had good segmentation skills when
older.

Universal Phoneme Sensitivity: Ability of infants to discriminate between any sound

they’re tested on. Includes sounds from non-native languages.
- Infants can distinguish between more phonemes than adults.
• Infants are just as good as native speakers in distinguishing between foreign
phonemes.

When does universal phoneme sensitivity in infants disappear?

Adults need more practice to distinguish phonemes in a new language than infants do.
Theories of language development
Social learning Theory: Children learn language from a combination of imitation and
instrumental conditioning.
• Lack of early social interaction leads to an inability to develop language skills
• Language productivity in children is too fast to be driven by social interaction alone.
• Overextension: Occurs when children apply a rule too broadly.

S
• When children make a syntactical error by applying a grammatical rule to broadly is
called overregulization.
• Underextention: categorize objects too specifically.

Language acquisition Device

• An innate mechanism, present only in humans, that helps language develop rapidly
according to universal rules.
Innate Mechanism theory: Humans are born with the instinct for acquiring language.
-Congenitally deaf children develop a visual sign language without formally learning it.
-Infants brains areactivation
wired to listen to speech, evensend
before understanding language.
nectral over ha speesh sond
prefer speech
Animal Communication
• The waggle dance in bees communicates the location of food sources.
•

• Birds use complex songs for mate attraction. Waggle phase (bee moves forward with
the direction of the line indicating the direction of food source)
Difference between human and animal communication:
• Instrumental conditioning technique. A gorilla was taught how to communicate with
sign language. could communicate with sign language, but without systematic
grammar.
• Another gorilla was taught to use symbols to communicate. Used a large vocabulary,
was able to answer questions Could not generate new sentences.
• Another gorilla learned lexigrams through immersion and not by the
typical instrumental condition tecchqnieus. Learned through observations.
• Kanzi could communicate novel requests and demands, but its limited
grammar.
-Displays limited ability to create combinations.

Language is a defining characteristic of human cognition.