Transcript Psychology 100.18

Psychology 100:11
Chapter 11: Part III
Development
Outline
 Language acquisition
 Language and Communication
 Linguistic universals
 Linguistics
 Linguistic relativity
Study Question:
• Compare and contrast animal communication with human
language. Use Hockett’s defining features to underscore the
distinction.
Language
• Language acquisition in children
– Perception of speech sounds by infants
>Newborn:
 Startle response to loud noise
 Orients head towards sound
 Calmed by human voice
 Prefers mother voice over stranger
 Can discriminate between many speech sounds.
>1-2 months:
 Smiles when spoken to
>3-7months:
 Responds differently to different intonations
Language
• Language acquisition in children
– Perception of speech sounds by infants
>8-12 mo
 Responds to name
 Responds to ‘no’
 Recognizes phrases (Peekaboo, patty cakes, etc.)
 Recognizes some words (bye-bye, bottle, Elmo,
etc.)
Language
• Language acquisition in children
– Prespeech period and first words
>Newborn: Crying
>1-2 months: Cooing
>6 months: Babbling
>10 - 12 mo: Nonreduplicative babbling
>12 mo: First words - dada, baw-baw
 Protowords- Kii, brrrr, caw
Language
• Language acquisition in children
– The two-word stage
>18-24 mos:
 Da-da bye-bye, laa laa ball, kiit door
– Acquisition of adult rules of grammar
>Inflections: -ing, -s, -ed
>Function words: to, of, in, on, etc.
>Overextension: e.g., snow -> kii
>Underextension: e.g., Kitty -> only “Puddin
Head”
>Overregularization: Daddy goed to work.
Language
• Language vs. communication
– Continuity theory (Aitchison, 1983)
>Human language is a sophisticated calling
system not fundamentally different from animal
cries and calls
 Bee hive communication
 Mating and other ritualized displays
 Ververt monkeys
• “chutter” -> cobra
• “rraup” -> eagle
• “chirp” -> lion
Language
Language
• Language vs. communication
– Problems with continuity theory
>Apparent specifity
 Ververt Monkeys
• “chirps” for eagles as well as lions
• Intensity of threat or symbollic representation
 Intentionality
• Often difficult to infer the intentions of animal
communication
• E.g., Whale songs
Language
Language
• Some definitions
– Language
>A shared symbolic system for communication.
– Linguistics
>Concerned with the characteristics, functions and
structure of language.
– Psycholinguistics
>Concerned with language as it is learned and
used by people.
Language
Language
• Hockett’s linguistic universals
– Essential design features
> Semanticity
 Linguistic utterances convey meaning by use of the symbols used to
form the utterance
> Arbitrariness
 The connection between the symbol and the concept is arbitrary
 We have few ‘true’ onomatopoeia.
English:
bow wow
bang
Arabic:
haw haw
bom
Mandarin:
wang wang
peng
Korean:
meong meong ----Spanish:
guau guau
pum
ribbet
-----gua gua
gaegol
croac
Language
Language
• Hockett’s linguistic universals
– Essential design features
>Discreteness
 Small separable set of basic sounds (phonemes)
combine to form language
Language Language
i
I
e
æ
u
U
o
c
a
e
s
sip
z
zip
r
rip
s should
z pleasure
c chop
j gyro
y
yip
k kale
g gale
h hail
h sing
V
p pull
b bull
m man
w will
f fill
v vet
q thigh
o thy
t tie
d die
n near
l lear
Vowels
'
Consonants
i
heed
hid
bait
head
bad
boot
put
but
boat
bought
hot
sofa
many
Language
Language
• Hockett’s linguistic universals
– Essential design features
>Duality of Patterning
 Process of building an infinite set of meaningful words
from a small set of phonemic building blocks
Language
• Hockett’s linguistic universals
– Essential design features
>Displacement
Francois Truffaut’s
Wild Child (1970)
 “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”
 We talk about things are not in the here and now
 Displacement and bee hive communication
>Productivity
 If we were bees, we would make up a new word
 “Palimony”, “Podcasts”, “Twoonies”
>Traditional transmission
 Most elements of language are passed from
generation to generation
 “feral” children
Language
Language
• Linguistics
– Grammar: The complete set of rules that produce
acceptable sentences and not produce unacceptable
sentences
> Three levels
 Phonolgy
• Sounds of language
 Semantic or lexical
• Meaning
 Syntax
• Word order and grammaticity
 Semantics vs. syntax
The gorpy wug was miggled by the mimsy gibber.
Language
• Linguistics
Noam Chomsky
– A critical distinction
>Competence: Internalized knowledge of
language that fully fluent speakers have
>Performance: the actual language behaviour that
a speaker generates
Language
• Linguistics
Noam Chomsky
– Our speaking performance is not always a
good indicator of language competency
>Disfluencies: irregularities/ errors in speech
 Lapses in memory (er….ummm…..er)
 Distractions
>Linguistic intuitions
 Which sounds better?
• I need a long, hot bath
• I need a hot, long bath
Language Language
• Linguistics
B. F. Skinner
– The behaviourist approach to grammar
>Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour.
>Grammar as chaining discriminative responses.
– Chomsky’s Rebuttal: Perceived
Grammaticality
>Grammatical sentences should contain words
that have been paired often before:
 E.g.1,
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
 E.g.2,
Will he went to the newspaper is of deeply end.
Language
• Linguistics
Benjamin Whorf
– Whorf’s hypothesis
>Linguistic Relativity hypothesis: Your language
shapes your thoughts
 Language controls thought and perception
>The Hopi as a timeless people
>Heider (1971, 1972)
 Focal colours
 Dani Language (New Guinea)
• Two words for colours: Mola (bright) & Mili (dark, cool)
• Recognition memory influenced by focality
Language
• Linguistics
Benjamin Whorf
– “Eskimo words for snow” (100, 200, or 400?!?)
>Martin (1986)
 Franz Boas (1911; derived forms)
 4 ‘Eskimo’ words for snow
• Aput - snow on the ground; Qana - falling snow;
piqsirpoq - drifting snow; qimuqsuq - snowdrift.
 English words for water
• Liquid, lake, river, pond, sea, ocean, dew, brook, etc.
> these could have been formed from the ‘root’ water
> ‘Eskimos’ all snow related words from 4 ‘roots’
Language
• Linguistics
Benjamin Whorf
– “Eskimo words for snow” (100, 200, or 400?!?)
>Whorf (1940s)
 “We have the same word for falling snow, snow on the ground,
snow packed hard like ice, slushy snow, wind-driven flying snowwhatever the situation may be. To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive
word would be almost unthinkable; he would say that falling
snow, slushy snow, and so on, are sensuously and operationally
different, different things to contend with; he uses different wards
for them and for other kinds of snow.” (Whorf 1940)
 7 words for snow (what about sleet, slush, hail,
blizzard, etc.?)
Language
• Linguistics
Benjamin Whorf
– “Eskimo words for snow” (100, 200, or 400?!?)
> Brown (1958): Three words for snow
 Only looked at the figures in Whorf’s paper!
> Eastman's (1975) Aspects of Language and Culture
 Cites Brown: "Eskimo languages have many words for snow”
(Mentions six lines later that the number was 3)
> Lanford Wilson's 1978 play “The Fifth of July”
 50 words for snow
> New York Times editorial (1984) :100+ words for snow
> The Science Times (1988)
 "The Eskimos have about four dozen words to describe snow
and ice”
> Cleveland weather forecast: 200 words for snow
Language