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Week 4 PSYC251 Queen's University

Lecture notes, language

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17 views

Week 4 PSYC251 Queen's University

Lecture notes, language

Uploaded by

jfell803
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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W4 - language

Wednesday, September 25, 2024 5:39 PM

Lecture
Language
Infinitely generative
Allows for displacement
In language development - comprehension
almost always preces production

Generative - a system In which a finite set of


words can be combined to generate an infinite
number of sentences
When a language can come up with an
infinite number of sentences from a limited
amount of word
Semanticity - the extent to which a form of
communication can meaningfully represent ideas,
events, and objects symbolically (the meaning)
The usage of symbols or phonemes (basic
units of sound) to generate meaningful
messages.
Displacement - when languages can refer to
things that aren't physically present.

Phonemes - components of sound


Morphemes - units of meaning (don't confuse
with syllables)
Eg "happy" - one, "unhappy" two,
"unhappiness" three
Word can't be broken down anymore
Semantics - meaning of words and sentences
Grammar - syntax and morphology rules
Pragmatics - how language is used in social
settings
Eg turn taking, talking about relevant
information, irony, sarcasm, humour
Metalinguistic knowledge - ability to reflect on
one's own knowledge of language
Infants able to detect phoneme differences
Use distributional properties to pick up boundaries of words (eg. If
sounds/stresses/pauses occur together in the same way you can assume
something is a word, not a word, etc)

6-8 months in age - can distinguish many vowels and consonants that
aren't present in English
Categorical perception (video to watch link in lect)
Infant-directed speech - how people often talk to babies
Eg sweet tone, exaggerated prosody, enunciation, and pauses, more
emotion, repetition of key words
Can help babies learn language but it's not necessary
Babies like it and it holds their attention more
Won't have any questions of voice time thing I forget the wording
Babbling
Start to babble around 6-10 months
Usually start with one sounds (eg ma, da) then they do more sounds
Gradually takes on the sounds, rhythm, and intonation of the
language child is learning
Deaf kids babble but drops out, if taught sign baby will babble in sign
Hardwired into brain, not learned, but might need motivation (eg parents
babbling back sometimes)
Intersubjectivity
Person being on the same page, not just for language

Not necessary for normal language learning but helps with pragmatics and
understanding intentions of communicator
Turn taking comes in at about 4 months
Pointing
Beings to understand around 9 months
Protodeclarative - they just want to declare something, looking for
something to be labeled (eg asking parent what something is called)
Children autism don't do this
Protoimperative - "gimme that cookie" showing what they want right
now
Early words
Common words for kids - mommy, daddy, doggy, kitty, toy, big, little, no,
sad, please, etc
Nouns are easiest to learn
Infants learning new words
Pragmatic cues - eg if person is looking at blue ball, kid looking at pink
ball, if person labels at blue ball and labels it out loud kid will assume
they're labelling blue ball not pink ball
Joint attention - looking at same stuff - following where child is pointing,
Nouns are easiest to learn
Infants learning new words
Pragmatic cues - eg if person is looking at blue ball, kid looking at pink
ball, if person labels at blue ball and labels it out loud kid will assume
they're labelling blue ball not pink ball
Joint attention - looking at same stuff - following where child is pointing,
or pointing at stuff yourself
Through games, routines, pointing
Fast-mapping- 2-3 years olds can learn a words after hearing it once (if
they're focused)
Under extension - thinking only one thing has the name (eg. Only my dog
is called dog)
Over extension - thinking many things has the name (eg. Calling
everything that's round a ball)
Quine's Dilemma
How can kids know what people are referring to (eg. Someone says
bunny - how do kids know it's bunny and not just the ears or the colour of
the bunny)
Whole object assumption - kids assume a word refers to the whole object
and not a part of it
Eg if you say "that's a bunny" kids know you mean the whole thing
Mutual exclusivity - kids knowing some words and if they hear a new word
they'll figure out what it's referring to (eg they know word blue and see a blue
ball and red ball. If u say red they'll assume its red ball)
Shape bias - if they know the name for one thing, they might assume other
things with same shape are the same thing
Syntactic bootstrapping - idea that the grammatical form of speech may give
children important clue or guessing what a word means (eg using the rest of the
sentence to give context)
Grammar development
Use grammar by age 2 (eg. Say daddy play instead of play daddy)
Telegraphic speech - don't violate word order rules
Overregularization - get things correct with irregular verbs n nouns easier
because the simple ones they overregularize (eg saying go to the park,
then say goed to the park instead of went)
They get them correct when younger (I think 4?) and overregularize
when they're older
The Wug test (video to watch link in lect)
Pragmatic development
Good at turn taking, not good at saying related things
Common ground - when you have the same knowledge as other person
(establish in conversation)
In grade school metalinguistics begins and kids tell jokes etc
School-age development
Pragmatic development
Good at turn taking, not good at saying related things
Common ground - when you have the same knowledge as other person
(establish in conversation)
In grade school metalinguistics begins and kids tell jokes etc
School-age development
By high school kids know about 80 000 words

^^might be questions on this


Language development theories
Nurture theories
Skinner, behaviourism
Learned through reinforcement
Nature theories
Language acquisition device
Interactionist theories
We learn language because we're motivated to communicate to
others
Language often presented in structured situations
Kids are very motivated to communicate with others-
intersubjectivity
Have many domain general mechanisms
Have tended to focus on semantics but has grown on grammar
Connectionist theories
Language often presented in structured situations
Kids are very motivated to communicate with others-
intersubjectivity
Have many domain general mechanisms
Have tended to focus on semantics but has grown on grammar
Connectionist theories
Everything needed to learn within language
• Statistical regularities in the language allow us to learn without
any innate structures other than general learning mechanisms
• Neural network models make same overregularization errors
• Doesn’t explain fast-mapping
Innate theories
§ Has a focus on syntax and ignores semantics and pragmatics
§ Chomsky said - grammar all over the world must be the same
otherwise how would we learn them, then he was proven wrong
He said their must be a language acquisition device (section of
the brain dedicated to detecting and learning rules of
language)
§ Modularity hypothesis - similar to core knowledge
§ Critical period - if you don't learn a language by puberty you
probably won't learn a language

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