Download Language - Solon City Schools

Language
Language – our spoken, written
or signed words and the ways we
combine them to communicate
meaning
Language can be…..
Language Structure
• Phonemes
• Morphemes
• Grammar
– Semantics
– Syntax
All languages contain….
Phonemes
• The smallest units of
sound in a language.
• English has about 44
phonemes.
Example:
How many
phonemes
does platypus
have?
Morphemes
• The smallest unit of
meaningful sound.
• Examples :
– Can be words like a or
but.
– prefixes or suffixes…”ed”
at the end of a word
means past tense
•
•
How many phonemes in cats?
How many morphemes in cats?
How many phonemes and
morphemes?
Phonemes
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rich
Hat
Knock
Bring
Through
Strict
Stretch
Morphemes
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bats
Called
Nightly
Luck, lucky, unlucky
Coolness
Zebras
Defroster
Language Structure
• Grammar: The rules of a language.
– Example: Subject/verb agreement - singular subject takes a
singular verb, while a plural subject takes a plural verb.
– Semantics - rules by which we derive meaning from
morphemes, words, and sentences.
• Examples:
– Arms race means weapons race, not body parts race
– ed on the end of a word makes it past tense
– Syntax: the order of words in a language.
• Examples:
– Adjectives come before nouns
– Don’t use dangling participles, run on sentences, fragments
Is this the White House or
the House White?
Language Acquisition
• Receptive language
– Ability to
comprehend speech
– Begins at @ 4 months
– Can read lips
– 7 mo. Can segment
spoken sounds into
individual words
– Can listen to an
unfamiliar language
• Productive language
– Ability to produce
words with meaning
– Starts around 4
months of age with
babbling
Language Acquisition
Stages that we learn language…
1. Babbling Stage
– make speech sounds both in and out of native language
– First able to discriminate speech sounds
– Example: Ba da ta
2. Holophrastic Stage/one word stage
– Productive language begins (speaking meaningful words)
– Receptive language (comprehension of meaning)
– Example: Momma, dada, dog
3. Telegraphic Stage/two word stage
Grammatically correct 2 word saying
Contains mostly nouns and verbs
Follows rules of syntax
Example: Want juice
– Overgeneralization - extending the application of a rule
to items that are excluded from it in the language norm,
–
–
–
–
• Example: Mommy holded the baby
4. Speaking in Complete Sentences
How do we learn language?
1. Behaviorist Theory
2. Nativist Theory
Behaviorist Theory
• B.F. Skinner
• Association – sights
and sounds
• Imitation – modeling
others
• Reinforcement- by
smiles and hugs
Chomsky’s Theory
Inborn Universal Grammar
• Universal language acquisition device – In born
(innate)readiness to learn grammatical rules
– Prewired to learn language, social interaction
turns the switch on
• The stages of language development occur at about
the same ages in most children, even though
different children experience very different
environments.
• Universal grammar – common grammatical building
blocks that all languages share (inborn).
• Children use nouns first before they learn
verbs or adjectives
• All languages have nouns and verbs, subjects
and objects, negations and questions
• If there is a word purple in a language it will
also have a word for red
• Example: Overgeneralization
Overgeneralization
• Overgeneralization Applying a grammatical
rule too widely and
thereby creating
incorrect forms
– Supports Chomsky’s
Universal Grammar
• Example: “I goed to the
store to get cookies”, “I
rided my bike”
Statistical Learning and
Critical Periods
• Statistical Learning –
discerning word breaks,
analyzing which syllables
most often go together
• Infants up to the age of
10 months can do this,
after that they become
functionally deaf to
other languages
• Critical Period –
sensitive period for
mastering certain
aspects of language
• Children not exposed to
language by age 7
gradually lose ability to
master any language
• Learning a language as
an adult you will always
speak with an accent
• Most easily master
language as a child
• Your little sister says: “Taked cupcake!”
Explain how this utterance may illustrate the
following language concepts: phoneme,
morpheme, telegraphic speech, language
acquisition device.
Whorf’s Linguistic
Determination Hypothesis
• The idea that language
determines the way we
think.
• The Hopi tribe has no
past tense in their
language, so Whorf says
they rarely think of the
past.
• Underestimates how
much thinking occurs
without language
Thinking and Language
• Bilingual advantage
• Thinking and images
• Thinking affects
language, which then
affects our
thoughts.