m30 language slides

Language and Thoughtm30

Review

Turn to a neighbor and explain to them how you would find your lost keys using

• an algorithm,

• a heuristic, and

• insight,

With your neighbor, make up examples of

• Mental Set

• Functional Fixedness

• Representativeness Heuristic

• Availability Heuristic

Language Structure

Language: our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Conveys meaningArbitraryFlexible

Allows us to name objectsEnables us to talk about something not presentGenerative; we generate, not repeat sentences

Steven Pinker

Phoneme – a sound

• B, P, and Th

Morpheme — the smallest unit with meaning

• “-ed”, “-ing”, “anti-”, “pre”

Grammar — rules of a language

Syntax — rules for combining words into grammatically correct sentences

• “The yellow chair is lovely”• “She skated elegantly”• “My son has grown another foot”

Semantics — rules of meaning

• “I sawed the chair”

• “That depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”

Language Development

High school graduates know 80,000 words

That averages to 13 new words per day

Month Stage

4 Babbles all human phonemes

10 Babbling reveals household language

12 One-word stage

24 Two-word, telegraphic speech

24+ Language develops rapidly into complete sentences

Two theories on language acquisition

BF SkinnerNoam Chomsky

Nature Nurture

Chomsky

• Inborn Universal Grammar

• Children’s errors come from overgeneralizing a rule

• “I petted the rabbit”

• “Granma holded me tightly”

• Nicaraguan Sign Language

Skinner

• Operant Learning

• Association: sights of things with sounds of words

• Imitation: copying words & syntax

• Reinforcement: success, smiles & hugs when child is correct

• “Genie”

Thinking & Language

Linguistic Relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis): a culture’s linguistic concepts affect the perception and cognition of members of that culture

In the extreme: linguistic determinism

• Thinking in nonlinguistic animals

• Thinking in nonlinguistic adults

• Nonlinguistic thinking in linguistic adults

Do not read the word, just say the name of the color . . .

Stroop Effect

BLUE GREEN YELLOW

PINK RED ORANGE

GREY BLACK PURPLE

TAN WHITE BROWN

Animal Thinking & Language

So, do animals have/ use “Language”?

Language: our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Conveys meaningArbitraryFlexible

Allows us to name objectsEnables us to talk about something not presentGenerative; we generate, not repeat sentences

Steven Pinker