1. Lecture 2
Language

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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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.

6. Some Design Features of Language
Arbitrary
Conventional
Discrete
Displacement
Productivity

7. Animals, Language and Communication
The birds and the bees
Primates

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

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

10. 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”)

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