language development Flashcards
Hockett: 4 differences between animal and human languages
Tradition (animal language wired in, humans learn it)
Displacement (animal language is stimulus bound, humans can talk about things they’ve never seen)
Duality of patterning (animals have fixed, meaningful sounds humans don’t)
Openness (animals closed system, humans open system, new words invented)
What does combinatorial system mean?
when structure of sentence also conveys a meaning
What does compositionality mean?
meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of it’s parts
What does it mean is language has infinite generativity?
means that in an English sentence, there’s multiple words (one average 20) that could be produced next
Chomsky: how did language evolve
due to increase in overall brain size
Pinker and Bloom: how did language evolve
evolved aș system for communicating complex cognitive thoughts more clearly
Can other animals learn human-like languages?
example of Alex (an African grey parrot) who can name objects and answer complicated Qs about them
(Pepperberg)
How does language work?
through linguistic representations
What is phonology
study of patterns of speech sounds in a language
What are Phonemes?
sounds that signal differences in language
What is an example of a phoneme?
the /k/ phoneme is heard it words like ‘cat’ and ‘kit’ and ‘skit’
What is free variation?
when 2 or more linguistic representations such as phonemes can be used interchangeably without changing meaning of the word
what is contextual variation?
the way words are spoken and how context affects meaning of words
What is morphology?
the study of the internal structure of words and meaningful form of language
What are morphemes?
smallest units of language that have meaning
What is an example of a morpheme?
reusable
re use able
meaning = repeat use possible
Does inflectional morphology change the syntactic category / meaning of a word?
No
Does derivational morphology change the syntactic category / meaning of a word?
Yes
What does syntax mean?
refers to the rules that control how words are ordered
What does semantics mean?
refers to the meaning of words and sentences
What does pragmatics mean?
refers to how we use language to do things in the world
What is an example of pragmatics?
‘it’s cold in here’ is an indirect way to convey meaning of wanting to close the window or turn heating on
