Psychology 100:11 Chapter 11: Part III Development

1. Psychology 100:11 Chapter 11: Part III Development

2. 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.

3. 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

4. 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.)

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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 ribbet Arabic: haw haw bom ------ Mandarin: wang wang peng gua gua Korean: meong meong ----- gaegol Spanish: guau guau pum croac

11. Language Language • Hockett’s linguistic universals • Essential design features • Discreteness • Small separable set of basic sounds (phonemes) combine to form language

12. Language Consonants Vowels p p ull s sip i heed I b b ull z zip hid m m an r rip e bait ' w w ill s head should f f ill z pleasure æ bad v v et c chop u boot th igh j gyro put U q V o th y y but yip k t t ie kale o boat g d d ie gale bought c a n h n ear hail hot sofa l l ear sing h e i many Language

13. 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

14. Language Francois Truffaut’s Wild Child (1970) • Hockett’s linguistic universals • Essential design features • Displacement • “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

15. 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.

16. Language Noam Chomsky • Linguistics • A critical distinction • Competence:Internalized knowledge of language that fully fluent speakers have • Performance:the actual language behaviour that a speaker generates

17. Language Noam Chomsky • Linguistics • 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

18. Language B. F. Skinner Language • Linguistics • 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.

19. Language Benjamin Whorf • Linguistics • 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

20. Language Benjamin Whorf • Linguistics • “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’

21. Language Benjamin Whorf • Linguistics • “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 snow- whatever 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.?)

22. Language Benjamin Whorf • Linguistics • “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

23. Language