LANGUAGE

Definition“formal system of communication involving

symbols (spoken, written, gestured)”

• Characteristics and structure of language• Steps in language development• Language acquisition• Language and Thinking

Three Characteristicsof Language

Semanticity– to convey thoughts in a meaningful way

Generativity– to combine symbols in novel ways

Displacement– to refer to past/non-present objects/events

Dogs and bees have no language

Structure of Language:Phonology

Phoneme

– basic sounds; the smallest unit in language

‘g’ and ‘o’ in ‘go’

– words are combinations of phonemes

COGERITE vs. KLPUTNG

– difficult learning other language’s phonemes

– may be a critical period to learn phonemes

Structure of Language:Morphology

Morpheme– smallest unit of meaningful sound in language

‘o’ (but not ‘g’) in ‘go’

– in English, with 40-45 phonemes, you can form more than 100,000 morphemesand more than 500,000 words

– talk about Generativity...

Structure of Language:Syntax

• Acceptable arrangement of words/phrases

“She ate the ice cream”

“She the ice cream ate”

“Throw mamma from the train a kiss”

• Varies across language (e.g., adjectives)

English adjective-noun ‘the red book’

Spanish noun-adjective ‘el libro rojo’

Structure of Language:Semantics/Pragmatics

• How we convey meaning

“The boy fed the horse”

“The horse was fed by the boy”

• Depends on social context (pragmatics)

– remember the magic word: “Please”

– “Nice hat”

Steps inLanguage Development

• All children everywhere follow the same

sequence and approximate timetable

– Crying

– Babbling

– First words (one-word, two-words, sentences)

Language Development:Grammatical Rules

• Rules like ‘ed’ for past, ‘s’ for plural

– seen in very young children with ‘ed’ exceptions‘did’ ‘went’ ‘brought’

– children make mistakes as they learn rules‘do-ed’ ‘go-ed’ ‘bring-ed’

When Kids Use a Grammar:Berko-Gleason Wug Test

If children usecorrect grammar when

confronted by never-before-seen words,

they MUSTbe using rules

(not rote memory)