Today’s Lesson 5/27/2015 Clark Doll Study lesson is due today Check textbooks for numbers. –TURN IN TEXTBOOKS ON FINAL EXAM DAY Final Exam Review –Chomsky/ Skinner debate –Reading Open book quiz on language acquisition

Language “The jewel in our crown of cognition.” - Steven Pinker

Language Spoken, written or gestured words and The way we combine them Humans have more than 5000 languages.

Building blocks of spoken languages Phonemes-basic sounds Morphemes-the smallest units of sound that carry meaning Grammar-a system of rules for communication

Phonemes Phonemes are the basic sounds of a language English has about 40 phonemes. Typically, consonant phonemes carry more information than vowel phonemes: ppl cn rd ths txt wtht vwls

Morphemes The smallest unit of language that carries meaning. In English, most morphemes are combinations of two or more phonemes. Some morphemes are words, others are only parts of words. Prefixes, suffixes, “s” to indicate a plural all are morphemes. In English, 40 phonemes combine to form more than 100,000 morphemes.

Practice #1 The word "chimps" contains ________ phoneme(s) and ________ morpheme(s). a. 5; 2 b. 6; 2 c. 1; 5 d. 2; 6

Grammar Grammar is a set of rules that enables us to communicate. Semantics is a set of rules we use to derive meaning. Syntax refers to rules we use to order words. Examples: –In English, adjectives come before nouns: white house; –In Spanish, nouns come before adjectives: casa blanca.

Systematic Nature of language Memorize this sequence: 3, 9, 2, 7, 8, 1, 2, 4, 3, Or this sequence

Practice #2 Adding -ed to the word "laugh" means that the action took place in the past. This illustrates one of the rules of English: a. semantics. b. algorithms. c. syntax. d. phonemes.

Language Development The average high school graduate knows 80,000 words. You know words no one ever consciously taught you. You only use about 150 words for most of what you say.

Babbling stage At 4 months, infants can read lips, and they prefer to look at a face that matches a sound. In the babbling stage, the infant utters various sounds, even those that do not occur in a household language. Nature enables a wide variety of phonemes. /

Infant speech At 10 months, the infant utters phonemes within their native tongue. Infants gradually lose the ability to discriminate sounds they never hear.

Language development Around the first birthday, the child enters the one-word stage. In the one-word stage, an inflected word can equal a sentence. (Doggy!) Around the second birthday, the child enters the two-word stage of telegraphic speech. Telegraphic speech is like a telegram- omits auxiliary words but follows syntax.

Summary of language development

Practice #3 Vocal sounds that are not included in one's native language first begin to disappear from usage during the ________ stage of language development. a. one-word b. two-word c. telegraphic d. babbling

Skinner explains language Learning principles: –Association –Imitation –Reinforcement –According to Skinner, humans learned language when “the vocal musculature became susceptible to operant conditioning.” ocw.mit.edu

Chomsky explains language The rate at which infants learn is too rapid to explained by learning principles. Human languages are dialects of the “universal grammar” in which are brains are pre-wired. Chomsky called this capacity our “language acquisition device.” Ali G interviews Noam Chomsky

Cognitive neuroscientists explain language The language capacity is a blanker slate than Chomsky believes. It involves gradual changes in neural connections and a knack for soaking up connections. Research examples: 6-month old infants look at the named parent when a synthesizer says “mommy” or “daddy” 7-month old infants detect familiar English words, and listen longer to sentences with familiar words.

Nature and Nurture

Learning a second language Those who learn a second language as an adult speak with an accent. Also, mastering grammar in a second language is more difficult as an adult. Chomsky would say the grammar switches are thrown during a child’s developing years (0-7).

Practice #4 Which language theorist would have been most likely to emphasize that children master the rule for forming the past tense of regular verbs like "push" before they learn common past tense constructions of irregular verbs like "go"? a. Skinner b. Whorf c. Chomsky d. Frisch

Second language learners’ brains Brain scans reveal that adults who learned a second language early in life use the same patch of frontal lobe tissue. Those who learned their second tongue after childhood displayed activity in an adjacent area.

Hypothesis of linguistic relativity Benjamin Whorf (1956) promoted the linguistic relativity hypothesis. –“Language itself shapes a man’s basic ideas.” –Does language determine the way we think? –Does language influence the way we think? Gender in language can influence our thinking. Relativism Reality

It pays to increase your word power! A study of bilingual children in Canada who had been taught French in immersion classes showed increased aptitude scores, math scores, and appreciation of culture. Sign language has benefited deaf people in profound ways-once considered incompetent for challenging work, the deaf can now become fully literate.

Thinking without language We often think in images. Examples: –Which is the hot water handle? In physical activities, mental rehearsal can sustain one’s skill.

Practice #5 To simulate the learning of the statistical relationships among language terms, researchers are likely to make use of: a. telegraphic speech. b. the framing effect. c. computer neural networks. d. the representativeness heuristic.

Practice #6 Your ability to recall which direction you turn the faucet handle in your bathroom in order to get cold water best illustrates the importance of: a. algorithms. b. the framing effect. c. thinking without language. d. the representativeness heuristic. e. the belief perseverance phenomenon.

F9iP3M Skinner Chomsky