Language and Thought

Its all about communication!!!

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinevtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoiately cllaed Typoglycemia.(Actually, no such research was carried out at Cambridge University. It all started with a letter to the New Scientist magazine from Graham Rawlinson in which he discusses his Ph.D. thesis)

In a puiltacibon of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon. Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work.The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang.

Language

•Our spoken written or gestured words and the way we combine them to communicate meaning.

Believe it or not, this communication is a form of language!!!

Phonemes

• In a spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

•Chug has three phonemes, ch, u, g.

How many phonemes does 'cat' have?

Morphemes

• In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning.

•Can be a word or part of a word (prefix or suffix).

Grammar

•A system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate and understand others.

Semantics

•The set of rules by which we derive meaning in a language.

•Adding ed at the end of words means past tense.

The Chinese languages do not have expansive semantic rules. They usually have totally different symbols for different tenses.

Syntax

•The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

• In English, adjectives come before nouns, but not in Spanish!!

Is this the White House of the House White?

Language development

•How many words do you think you know now?

Probably around 80,000.

After age 1 you average about 13 new words a day.

Language Development

• Babbling Stage: starting at 3-4 months, the infant makes spontaneous sounds. Not limited to the phonemes of the infant’s household language.

•One-word stage: 1-2 years old, uses one word to communicate big meanings.

•Two word stage: at age 2, uses two words to communicate meanings- called telegraphic speech.

How do we explain language development?

Skinner

•Skinner thought that we can explain language development through social learning theory (which is?). The young boy imitates

his dad, then gets a reward.

ChomskyInborn Universal Grammar

• We acquire language too quickly for it to be learned.

• We have this “learning box”-language acquisition device- inside our heads that enable us to learn any human language.

Does language influence our thinking?

Whorf’s Linguistic Relativity• The idea that

language determines the way we think (not vive versa).

•The Hopi tribe has no past tense in their language, so Whorf says they rarely think of the past.

Do people that speak more than one language think differently

depending on their language at that time?

Thinking without Language• We can think in words.

• But more often we think in mental pictures.

In 1977, Reggie Jackson hit 3 HR’s against the Dodgers. He has stated that before each at bat, he visualizes crushing a home run. Do you think visualization helps?

Do Animals think?

Kohler’s Chimpanzees•Kohler

exhibited that Chimps can problem solve.

Honeybees seem to communicate

Apes and Signing

Can Apes Really Talk?Apes gain their vocabulary with great difficulty;children soak up

dozens of new words effortlessly. Saying apes can learn language because they can sign words is like saying humans can fly because

they can jump.

Chimps can make signs or push buttons in sequence to get a reward, but pigeons can peck a sequence of keys to get grain.

Apes can certainly use symbols meaningfully but “ Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange--” is a far cry from the exquisite syntax of a 3 year old. To a child “you tickle and “me tickle”

communicate different ideas; a chimp uses them interchangeably.(Myers, 2004)