AP Psych: Language

Syntax

the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language EX: Are the words in the correct order? The black is cat. are the rule of order

Holophrases

- 12-18 Months - ONE-WORD Sentence Stage - single terms that are used to describe a wider set of objects/ actions Ex: ball = anything round... a baseball, orange, the moon, or dog is all animals

Telegraphic speech

- 2 Years Old - Two-Word Sentences - combine words into simple commands - consists mainly of content words; articles, prepositions are omitted Ex: "More fish" instead of goldfish "No book, movie" the Cookie Monster stage: "Want cookie. Cookie good"

Conditioning

- B.F. Skinner from the Behaviorist School - Baby may imitate a parent. - If they are reinforced they keep saying the word. - If they are punished, they stop saying the word.

Babbling

- Birth to 10 months - experimentation with phonemes (sounds of language) - All phonemes not just own language eventually eliminate those that aren't in language - Appears to be innate: all kids even those born without hearing

Grammatical speech

- By about age 5 kids have mostly grammatical speech - By around 10: language essentially the same as adults

Semantics

- Is the study of meaning in language - The branch in linguistics and logic concerned with meanings - The meaning of a word, phrase, sentence or text - The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language EX: Does it make any sense? Cows flow supremely. the rules of meaning

Language Relativity Hypothesis: Benjamin Whorf-Linguistic Determinism

- 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. - Linguistic Determinism --> The structure of a language strongly influences of fully determines the way its native speakers perceive the world - Linguistic Relativity - structural differences between languages will generally be paralleled by non linguistic cognitive differences in the native speakers of the 2 languages his theory is that we think in words. if you don't have certain words, there are certain things you cannot think about. the language you have, the words you have, effect how you can think about the word.

Grammar

- The rules of a language. - EX: Is this the White House or the House White?

Morphemes

- The smallest unit of meaningful sound. - Can be words like a or but. - Can also be parts of words like prefixes or suffixes..."ed" at the end of a word means past tense. - free: word (root) - _____________ + ________________ = word have meaning (MM)

Phonemes

- The smallest units of sound in a language. - English has about 44 __________ there are about 869 in all languages - Has no meaning, only sound - _______________ + ________________ = Morphemes are sound

lingustic determinism

- The structure of a language strongly influences of fully determines the way its native speakers perceive the world

Language Acquisition Device: Noam Chomsky

- We learn language too quickly for it to be through reinforcement and punishment and we use it in novel ways so it can't just be imitation. - Innatist theory - LAD - Children have an innate knowledge of the basic grammatical structure that is basis the to all languages - The universal grammar (UG) - The critical Period - essential for first language acquisition he believes that language and our ability to learn language is innate. when we are born there is a part of our brain called the language acquisition device that allows us to learn language but it's a critical period. you need to learn language by a particular point, he thinks around 7, to be able to truly learn that language and speak like a native speaker

5. When the word "walk" is changed to "walked," the suffix "ed" is an example of a A-morpheme B-lexicon C-language acquisition device (LAD) d-phoneme e-syntax

A

6. If Elie who is 2½ years old says, 'Cookie me now,' she is demonstrating A-telegraphic speech. B-overregularization. C-one-word speech. D-holophrastic speech E-babbling.

A

1, A word or part of a word that is in itself meaningful but that cannot be broken into smaller meaningless units, is called a A-grapheme B-phoneme C-holophrase D-morpheme E-preformative

D

2. According to Benjamin Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis, which of the following is true? A-Individuals have a natural predisposition to learn language. B-Individuals learn positive instances of concepts faster than they learn negative instances. C-Children learn their first language from their relatives and their peer group. D-Different languages predispose those individuals who speak them to think about the world In different ways. E-Children learn quantifying words such as "more" and "further" sooner than they do absolutes such as "every and "all."

D

overregularization

- language error of ___________ begins- grammatical rules are incorrectly generalized, specifically rules are misapplied to irregular verbs Ex: "The girl goed home" "He is the baddest." is specifically verbs. it happens in telegraphic speech where you start to learn the rules but you misapply those rules to irregular verbs. most verbs to make them past tense you use ed but there are verbs that you don't do that to that are irregular like go. Past tense for go is went not goed. but some kids are going to say goed. it is an overextension error. they don't know enough to use it properly

linguistic relativity

- structural differences between languages will generally be paralleled by non linguistic cognitive differences in the native speakers of the 2 languages

3. Noam Chomsky's view of language proposes that A-there is an inherent language acquisition device b-thinking is merely subvocal language c-different levels of language ability are hereditarily determined D-language acquisition can be explained by social modeling E-language is learned principally through verbal reinforcement

A

4. The utterance "likes dog my swim to" does not sound correct because it violates the rules of A-lexicon B-syntax C-morphemes d-prosody e-fast mapping

B

Overextension

Example: language error where you don't know enough language to fully express self is a language error where you just don't know enough language to fully communicate yourself. (EX: when you use a word that's too big and you really don't know what it means but for little kids an example is holophrases speech).

Connotation

Is the intellectual (and or) emotional interpretation of a term

Denotation

Is the textbook definition of a term

Language

It is symbols that convey meaning, plus rule for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. it is dynamic, constantly changing the meaning of words

Surface Structure

Represents sentences that express those meanings (superficial appearance)

Deep Structure

Represents the meaning of the sentence