Language

By Chevon Garrard

Language Definition

Language is a communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols.

Views of Language Development

Learning TheorySkinner proposed that language is

learnt through operant conditioning.Nativist View -

-Children must be exposed to speech for speech to develop. Children imitate the sounds that they hear. There parents encourage verbal interaction.

-Children are born with a device that helps them develop grammar in any language.(Chomsky)

Properties of Language

There are six properties of Language

Communicative

Arbitrary

Meaningfully structured

Multiply structured

Productive

Dynamic

Stages of Language Acquisition

Prenatal response to human voicesPostnatal response to human voices- Cooing( this is comprised of all possible phones) All infants coo in the same way regardless of culture, language, hearing impaired or not.Babbling(This is comprise only from the distinct phonemes of the primary language of the infant.One word utterances Two word utterances Telegraphic speech Basic adult sentence structure (by age 4)

Language Development

At nine months infants can distinguish the sound of their own language By 18 months children posses a vocabulary of about 3 to 100 wordsAt around 30 months children began to combine words into two- word utterances or telegraphic speech(it consist of mostly nouns and verbs with functioning words mostly omitted.Ages 2.5 –5 the vocabulary increases tremendously. Vocabulary becomes more adult-like

Language Dev. Cont.

Pre-school increases the complexity of language because of the increased semantics

From ages 6 to 17 the vocabulary continues to expand. There is a general understanding of and use of complex words in sentences. A person learns about 13 words a day until they are 17.

Components of Language

Phones

- There are 100 possible phones orsounds possible( no language uses them all

Phonemes - Distinguishable sounds of a language(alllanguages have a different sets of

phonemes)

Phonetics- A written system for representing sounds

Morphemes

The Smallest meaningful unit in the English language

Ex. Prefixes and Suffixes a-, -ing

Ex. Unladylike(un- not, lady- feminine,like- having characteristics of

Syntax

How a speaker puts words together

In English,a noun phrase,verb phase, are combined into sentences.

In other languages such as German or Latin, words may be strung together in any order as long as the suffixes are correct.

Lexicon and Vocabulary

Lexicon the entire set of morphemes a person knowsThe avg. person knows about 60 thousand morphemesVocabulary is the number of words a person knowsThere is over three million words in the English Language. Of those only about 200 thousand are used today.On avg. an educated person has about 20 thousand words in their vocabulary

Bilingualism

Additive bilingualism is when the second language is learned alongside the original one( Cognitive function is increased)

Subtractive bilingualism is when the second language replaces the original one(cognitive function is decreased)

The greater the understanding in both languages the greater the cognitive benefit.

Effects of Language on thought

There are different points of view on cognition in language.

Language determinism states that language structure does effect cognition

Linguistic relativity proposes that language creates different cognitive systems that lead to differing views of similar concepts

Semantics

The branch of linguistics that deals with the study of meaning, changes in meaning and the principles that govern the relationship between sentences or words and their meaning

Theories of Meaning

Definitional Theory of Meaning is the theory that the meanings of words can be fractured into component parts, which are stored in the mind in a set of levels, such as that encountered in a dictionary or encyclopedia.

Prototype Theory of Meaning is the theory that the meaning of words or concepts is organized in the mind by a system of family resemblances

Pragmatics

A field of linguistics that was developed in the late 70’s

It studies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or speech in a conversation(conversation analysis).

Sociolinguistics

A study of the connection between language and society,and the way that we use language in different social situations

It is a wide range of study. It can study the way that men and women speak to each other, or study the dialect of people across a region.

Works Citedhttp://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/courses/CS/Lectures/language/language.html

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryofLinguisticsTerms/WhatsIsAPhoneme.htm

http://www.yourdictionary.com

http://www.wordorigins.org

http://www.gxnu.edu.cn.personal/szliu/definition.html

http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/scioling