LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE

 Languageis a system of symbols and rules that is used for meaningful

communication.
 Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental aspects of language and speech.
It is primarily concerned with the ways in which language is represented and
processed in the brain.
 Cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics are closely related fields.
Cognitive psychology focuses on mental perception, memory and
information processing, while psycholinguistics explores the mental
processes involved in language comprehension, production and acquisition.
 Two Aspects of Psycholinguistics:
 Language Comprehension –how we understand the meaning of
words and sentences (receptive process)
 Language Production –how we speak and use language (productive
process)
 Grammar

 Thesystem of rules that determine how our thoughts can be

expressed.
 Grammar deals with three major components of language:
 Phonology,
 Syntax, and
 Semantics
 Structure of Language

 Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural
languages.
 It is the study of the smallest units of speech, called phoneme
 Phonemes: The smallest units of speech.
 Phonology is the study of phonemes, and the phonemes are the smallest
basic units of speech that affect meaning, and of the way we use those
sounds to form words and produce meaning.

 For instance, the a sound in fat and the a sound in fate represent two
different phonemes in English
 Difference between “b” and “d” sounds
 Structure of Language

 Syntax is
a system of rules that governs how words can
be meaningfully arranged to form phrases and sentences.
 Example: One rule of syntax is that an article such as
“the” must come before a noun, not after: “Read the
book,” not “Read book the.”
 Structure of Language

 Semantics is the study of meaning.

 How meaning works in language:
The study of semantics looks at how meaning works in language, and because of this it
often uses native speaker intuitions about the meaning of words and phrases to base
research on. We all understand semantics already on a subconscious level, it’s how we
understand each other when we speak.
How the way in which words are put together creates meaning:
One of the things that Semantics looks at, and is based on, is how the meaning of speech
is not just derived from the meanings but also how an individual words all put together.
 Pragmatics is  concerned with the use of language in social contexts
and the ways in which people produce and comprehend meanings
 through language.
  They are concerned with what is communicated by the manner
and style of an utterance.
 Acquiring Language – Language
Development

Cooing
 As early as six weeks, infants will begin to spontaneously make cooing
sounds. These extended sounds resemble vowel sounds, such as /aaa/,
/ooo/, /ahhh/.
 At this stage children are learning to make sounds by manipulating their
tongues, mouths, and breathing. This cooing behavior may occur when the
child is alone and clearly indicates the child is experimenting with making
sounds.
 Cooing
 First sounds are reflexive, non-intentional
 2 months, notes pleasure and comfort
 Babbling
 Infants’ sound production becomes more varied and complex around 4–6
months of age. At this time they begin to babble, making repeated
consonant–vowel sounds, such as ba-ba-ba. A more complex type of
babbling develops around 8–10 months.
 Meaningless speech like sounds made by children from around the age of 3
months through 1 year.
 Mamama; gagaga
 The Holophrase or one-word sentence
 First words that convey an entire sentence of meaning
“Shoe” means “There is Mommy’s shoe” or
“Shoe” means “I want to put my shoes on my feet”
1-year-olds can use holophrases for naming, questioning,
requesting, and demanding
Mama etc.
 The one-word stage or Holophrase is a significant development
because the child is now using a stable language unit to communicate
meaning.
 Often parents and family members will adopt the child’s invented
words or pronunciations as a way of encouraging the child to talk.
 Telegraphic Stage
The final stage of language acquisition is the telegraphic stage. This stage
is named as it is because it is similar to what is seen in a telegram;
containing just enough information for the sentence to make sense.
Some examples of sentences in the telegraphic stage are “Mummy eat
carrot”, “What her name?” and “He is playing ball.” During this stage
a child’s vocabulary expands from 50 words to up to 13,000 words. At
the end of this stage the child starts to incorporate plurals, joining words
and attempts to get a grip on tenses.
 Rather than saying, “I showed you the book,” a child using telegraphic
speech may say, “I show book,” and “I am drawing a dog” may become
“Drawing dog.”
 As children get older, of course, they use less telegraphic speech and
produce increasingly complex sentences
Overgeneralization
The phenomenon by which children apply language rules even
when the application results in an error.
 Thus,although it is correct to say “he walked” for the past tense of
walk , the -ed rule doesn’t work quite so well when children say “he
runned” for the past tense of run
 Plurals such as foots, mouses
 Most of you have probably heard a child say a word that you would never
say. For example, children acquiring English routinely produce verbs like
bringed and goed.
 So they aren't imitating adult speech, but they are figuring out grammatical
rules, in this case the way to form past tense verbs and plural nouns. This
process of figuring out a grammatical rule and applying it generally is
called overgeneralization.
 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

 Learning-theory approach (to language development)

 The theory that language acquisition follows the principles of reinforcement and
conditioning.
 Thereare various language development theories that have been
propagated by various proponents.
 Theseinclude Behavioral Theory, Nativist linguistic theories, social
interactionist theory and cognitive theory
 Behavioral Theory/ Learning Perspective

 Behaviorists believe language is something that can be observed and

measured. The need to use language is stimulated and language is uttered in
response to stimuli.
 The Learning perspective argues that children imitate what they see and hear,
and that children learn from punishment and reinforcement.
 The main theorist associated with the learning perspective is B.F. Skinner.
Skinner argued that adults shape the speech of children by reinforcing the
babbling of infants that sound most like words.
 B.F. Skinner is perhaps the best known behaviorist who posited that
children are conditioned by their environment to respond to certain stimuli
with language.
 When children speak the language of their parents they are rewarded and
become more skillful. They grow in their ability to respond in a manner that
responds to the environmental stimuli given by his parents. This shapes a
child’s language more than knowledge of rules.
 Shaping explains how humans come to produce speech as parents reinforce
attempts
 Nativist Linguistic Theories

 The father of most nativist theories of language acquisition is Noam Chomsky, who
brought greater attention to the innate capacity of children for learning language.
 He believed that learning language is innate.
 Nativist linguistic theories hold that children learn through their natural ability to organize
the laws of language, but cannot fully utilize this talent without the presence of other
humans.
 Chomsky claims that children are born with a hard-wired Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) in their brains.
 Nativist Theory believes that there are specific physical structures
in humans specialized for producing/processing language
 No single organ is LAD;
 Best thought of as several brain areas that are specialized to
process linguistic input and their connections
 Left side of temporal lobe
 Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area, arcuate fasciculus, angular
gyrus
Studies of individuals with brain damage resulting in aphasia provide
evidence of specialization for language within the left hemisphere
Damage to Broca’s area, near the motor cortex, is associated with
difficulties in producing speech
Damage to Wernicke’s area, which is near the auditory cortex, is
linked to difficulties with meaning(difficulty with understanding
speech )
 Social Interactionist theory

This theory is an approach to language acquisition that stresses the environment

and the context in which the language is being learned. It focuses on the
pragmatics of language rather than grammar.
The basic appeal of this approach is the importance it places on the home and
the cultural environment in early-childhood language acquisition. Language,
according to this theory, is not an innate ability. Rather, it develops in
negotiating your environment. Hence, vocabulary is bound by context or,
alternatively, by the culture within which speech is necessary and understandable .
It is based largely on the socio-cultural theories of Soviet psychologist, Lev
Vygotsky.
 Interactionist approach

 The interaction theory of language development is a compromise

between the nativist theory and the behaviorist theory of language
development.
 The interaction theory recognizes that both environmental and
biological factors are important in language development 
 Both Skinner and Chomsky appear right about some aspects of language development
 Some see both as too extreme in views.
 Interactions perspective seeks to describe how multiple factors interact
in language
 Cognitive Theory of language development

 This theory was proposed by Jean Piaget. He theorized that language is

made up of symbols and structures, but exhibits itself as a child’s mental
abilities mature. In addition, language is only one of many human mental
or cognitive activities.
 His particular insight was the role of maturation (simply growing up) in
children's increasing capacity to understand their world: they cannot
undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do
so.