University:
Eastern Kentucky University
Course:
PHY 317 | Cognitive Psychology
Academic year:

2021
Views:

387

Pages:

2
Author:

5prinzg1s

Cognitive Psychology Notes Module 9: Language 1 What is language?  A SYSTEM OF SYMBOLS AND RULES THAT ENABLE US TO COMMUNICATE (HARLEY, 2013)  A FORMAL SYSTEM FOR PAIRING SIGNALS WITH MEANINGS (FERNÁNDEZ & SMITH CAIRNS, 2010) Levels of language description  PHONETICS: THE ACOUSTIC DETAIL OF SPEECH SOUNDS & HOW THEY ARE ARTICULATED  PHONOLOGY: THE STUDY OF SOUNDS & HOW THEY RELATE TO LANGUAGES  MORPHOLOGY: THE STUDY OF HOW WORDS ARE BUILT UP FROM MORPHEMES o MENTAL LEXICON  SYNTAX: THE RULES OF WORD ORDER OF A LANGUAGE  SEMANTICS: THE STUDY OF MEANING  PRAGMATICS: THE ASPECTS OF MEANING THAT DO NOT AFFECT THE LITERAL TRUTH OF WHAT IS BEING SAID What questions motivate research into human language?  IS LANGUAGE INNATE?  DOES LANGUAGE INFLUENCE THOUGHT?  CAN OTHER SPECIES ACQUIRE LANGUAGE?  TO UNDERSTAND THESE QUESTIONS IT IS NECESSARY TO APPRECIATE THE COMPLEXITY OF LANGUAGE AND HOW LANGUAGES DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER WHAT DOES THE INFANT NEED TO SOLVE WHEN ACQUIRING SPOKEN LANGUAGE Problem 1 – Speech is complicated The vocal tract      It's even hard to deliver auditory information to people in MRI scanners because of metal Left  structural MRI image Glottis – vocal folds are here – humm noises Epiglottis – closes off windpipe when you’re swallowing Pharyngeal cavitiy – tongue pushed up here to produce different sounds – Arabic    Uvula – dangly – used in some languages by blocking off or par/ally blocking off the airflow from the lungs, that's how we make consonants Vowels are made up by moving the tongue around this part of the vocal tract Problem 2 Languages Differ  CANTONESE o tonal language  IRISH o spoken as a first language by many people in Ireland  !XÕO – Taa language o Click language – spoken in Africa o if you learnt this language first, those clicks, those types, clicks and tones would sound just as much like a consonant, like a tuh or a duh.  JAMAICAN MESOLECT ENGLISH o Creole - mix of English and languages from Africa  Infant will grow up speaking the language of their environment  Differ…IN THE NUMBER OF PHONEMES o PHONEMES: THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF LANGUAGE  A BIT LIKE ENGLISH LETTERS, BUT NOT QUITE  MEANINGLESS UNITS COMBINE IN INFINITE WAYS TO CREATE NEW MEANINGS o E.G., CAT, ACT, AND TACK ALL CONTAIN PHONEMES /K/ /Æ/ /T/  DIFFERENT LANGUAGES → DIFFERENT PHONEME INVENTORIES  ENGLISH: # DEPENDS ON THE DIALECT - AUS 43, BRITISH RP 47  OTHER LANGUAGES: AVERAGE: 20-37  different languages also have different phonemes  regional differences  accents  by the Gme you're an adult, then someGmes that can get in the way of being able to hear the differences between sounds in other language