Lecture 2 Language

Outline What is language? Animals and language The brain and language First language acquisition

What is Language? Communication is the process of exchanging messages and creating meaning. Language is a symbol system. It includes rules regarding the combination of sounds into meaning units, meaning units into words, words into sentences, along with the rules for using that language.

The vet examines the dog. Levels of Language semantic syntactic The vet examines the dog. the vet examine s the dog morphological phonological Th+e+v+e+t+e+ks+a+m+i+n+s+th+e+d+o+g

Symbols Symbols are arbitrarily assigned representations that stand for something else; conventional labels used by participants in a language community to arouse standardized aspects of reality.

Some Design Features of Language Arbitrary Conventional Discrete Displacement Productivity

Animals, Language and Communication The birds and the bees Primates

Language and the Brain Speech centers Speech production: Broca’s area and Broca’s aphasia Speech comprehension: Wernicke’s area and Wernicke’s aphasia

First Language Acquisition: Nature vs. Nurture Nature: Language is “acquired”. Language Acquisition Device (LAD) Speed Regularity: Stages of language development Nonrandom mistakes

First Language Acquisition: Nature vs. Nurture Nurture: Language is “learned”. Children raised without language input Child-directed speech (a.k.a. “motherese”, “parentese”, “care-giver speech”)

First Language Acquisition: Nature vs. Nurture Nature and Nurture: Language is both “acquired” and “learned”.