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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