1. Unit 9: Memory, Thinking, & Language Lesson 3: Language
DAILY COMMENTARY:
How many languages to do speak? How did you learn to speak?
Is language acquisition effortful or automatic?
READINGS / Assignments:
READ:
Myers
Chomsky Handout
NYT Language Gap Study
Piraha handout
DO / DUE:
Vocab cards
Review packet
Reflective writing: Language Gap & creative thought (see performance task)
Lesson Essential Question
What is the relationship between cognition and language development?
Key Lesson Vocabulary:
Chomsky, Inborn language acquisition device; Critical periods; Phonemes; Morphemes; Syntax; Grammar; Semantics; Whorf’s Reciprocal determinism thesis

2. Language
Language, our spoken, written, or gestured work, is the way we communicate meaning to ourselves and others.
M. & E. Bernheim/ Woodfin Camp & Associates
Language transmits culture.

3. Children learn their native languages much before learning to add 2+2.
Language Development
Children learn their native languages much before learning to add 2+2.
We learn, on average (after age 1), 3,500 words a year, amassing 60,000 words by the time we graduate from high school.
Time Life Pictures/ Getty Images

4. When do we learn language?
Babbling Stage: Beginning at 4 months, the infant spontaneously utters various sounds, like ah-goo. Babbling is not imitation of adult speech.
OBJECTIVE 12| Trace the course of language acquisition from the babbling stage through two-word stage.

5. When do we learn language?
One-Word Stage: Beginning at or around his first birthday, a child starts to speak one word at a time and is able to make family members understand him. The word doggy may mean look at the dog out there.

6. When do we learn language?
Two-Word Stage: Before the 2nd year a child starts to speak in two-word sentences. This form of speech is called telegraphic speech because the child speaks like a telegram: “Go car,” means I would like to go for a ride in the car.

7. When do we learn language?
Longer phrases: After telegraphic speech, children begin uttering longer phrases (Mommy get ball) with syntactical sense, and by early elementary school they are employing humor.
You never starve in the desert because of all the sand-which-is there.

8. Stage & Age of Language Development

9. Count off: 1s & 2s 1s will read article about Piraha tribe
2s will read article about Noam Chomsky

10. Discussion & Report Outs
Ones tell Twos:
Describe the Piraha tribe
What can we learn from the Piraha about the relationship between thinking and language?
Twos Tell Ones:
Describe Chomsky’s theory
Why does Chomsky say there are critical periods for language development?
Two’s report out on Piraha Tribe
One’s report out on Chomsky

11. Explaining Language Development
Operant Learning: Skinner (1957, 1985) believed that language development may be explained on the basis of learning principles such as association, imitation, and reinforcement.
OBJECTIVE 13| Discuss Skinner’s and Chomsky’s contributions to the nature-nurture debate over how children acquire language, and explain why statistical learning and critical periods are important concepts in children’s language learning.

12. Explaining Language Development
Inborn Universal Grammar: Chomsky (1959, 1987) opposed Skinner’s ideas and suggested that the rate of language acquisition is so fast that it cannot be explained through learning principles, and thus most of it is inborn.
Chomsky says everyone has a “Language Acquisition Device”

13. Explaining Language Development
3. Statistical Learning and Critical Periods: Well before our first birthday, our brains are discerning word breaks by statistically analyzing which syllables in hap-py-ba-by go together. These statistical analyses are learned during critical periods of child development.

14. Genes, Brain, & Language
Genes design the mechanisms for a language, and experience modifies the brain.
Michael Newman/ Photo Edit, Inc.
David Hume Kennerly/ Getty Images
Eye of Science/ Photo Researchers, Inc.

15. Learning new languages gets harder with age.
Language & Age
Learning new languages gets harder with age.

16. Language Structure
Phonemes: The smallest distinct sound unit in a spoken language. For example:
bat, has three phonemes b · a · t
chat, has three phonemes ch · a · t
OBJECTIVE 11| Describe the basic structural units of language.

17. Unforgettable = un · for · get · table
Language Structure
Morpheme: The smallest unit that carries a meaning. It may be a word or part of a word. For example:
Milk = milk
Pumpkin = pump . kin
Unforgettable = un · for · get · table

18. Structuring Language Phonemes Morphemes Words Phrase Sentence
Basic sounds (about 40) … ea, sh.
Morphemes
Smallest meaningful units (100,000) … un, for.
Words
Meaningful units (290,500) … meat, pumpkin.
Phrase
Composed of two or more words (326,000) … meat eater.
Sentence
Composed of many words (infinite) … She opened the jewelry box.

19. Grammar
Grammar is the system of rules in a language that enable us to communicate with and understand others.
Grammar
Semantics
Syntax

20. Semantics
Semantics is the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences. For example:
Semantic rule tells us that adding –ed to the word laugh means that it happened in the past.

21. Syntax
Syntax consists of the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences. For example:
In English, syntactical rule says that adjectives come before nouns; white house. In Spanish, it is reversed; casa blanca.

22. Identify the level of language acquired
Koko the gorilla was trained by Francine Patterson to use sign language. The Gorilla Language Project reports that Koko can use 1000 different signs, and can understand 2000 words. Koko is now creating statements by blending three to six words.
Comprehension?
Phonology?
Morphology?
Syntax?

23. Identify the level of language acquired
In 1952, researcheres Hayes and Hayes tried to teach their chimpanzee, named Vickie, to speak the English language. Vickie learned how to make four sounds, and never did produce anything that sounded much like language.

24. Identify the level of language acquired
Alex, an African grey parrot, was trained by Irene Pepperberg. Alex can say 70 words, including nouns, verbs and adjectives. Alex can also identify colors and textures, can use numbers from one to five, and can report if objects are the same or different.

25. Identify the level of language acquired
Herman, Richards, and Woltz (1984) trained dolphings to undestand hand commands. Their dolphins can understand five=sign strings, as well as some rules of language. For instance, their dolphins Phoenix and Akeakamie, understand the order words have to be in to perform a certain command.

26. Identify the level of language acquired
Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee, was trained by Herbert Terrance to understand sign language. Terrance was skeptical of many former chimp experiments. Nim learned 125 signs, but Terrance realized that Nim seemed to simply be responding to signs that the researchers prseented rather than understanding their meaning.

27. Do animals have a language?
Animals & Language
Do animals have a language?
Honey bees communicate by dancing. The dance
moves clearly indicate the direction of the nectar.

28. Do Animals Think? Concept formation. Insight Problem Solving Culture
Common cognitive skills in humans and apes include the following:
Concept formation.
Insight
Problem Solving
Culture
Mind?
William Munoz
OBJECTIVE 16| List five cognitive skills shared by the great apes and humans.
African grey parrot assorts red
blocks from green balls.

29. Chimpanzees show insightful behavior when solving problems.
Sultan uses sticks to get food.

30. Apes are famous, much like us, for solving problems.
Problem Solving
Apes are famous, much like us, for solving problems.
Courtesy of Jennifer Byrne, c/o Richard Byrne,
Department of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, Scotland
Chimpanzee fishing for ants.

31. Animal Culture
Animals display customs and culture that are learned and transmitted over generations.
Michael Nichols/ National Geographic Society
Copyright Amanda K Coakes
Dolphins using sponges as
forging tools.
Chimpanzee mother using and
teaching a young how to use
a stone hammer.

32. Can animals infer mental states in themselves and others?
To some extent. Chimps and orangutans (and dolphins) used mirrors to inspect themselves when a researcher put paint spots on their faces or bodies.

33. Do Animals Exhibit Language?
There is no doubt that animals communicate.
Vervet monkeys, whales and even honey bees communicate with members of their species and other species.
OBJECTIVE 17| Outline the arguments for and against the idea that animals and humans share the capacity for language.
Copyright Baus/ Kreslowski
Rico (collie) has a
200-word vocabulary

34. The Case of Apes
Chimps do not have a vocal apparatus for human-like speech (Hayes & Hayes,1951). Therefore, Gardner and Gardner (1969) used American Sign Language (ASL) to train Washoe, a chimp, who learned 182 signs by the age of 32.

35. Gestured Communication
Animals, like humans, exhibit communication through gestures. It is possible that vocal speech developed from gestures during the course of evolution.

36. When asked, this chimpanzee uses
Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is instrumental in teaching chimpanzees a form of communication.
Paul Fusco/ Magnum Photos
When asked, this chimpanzee uses
a sign to say it is a baby.

37. Computer Assisted Language
Others have shown that bonobo pygmy chimpanzees can develop even greater vocabularies and perhaps semantic nuances in learning a language (Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991). Kanzi and Panbanish developed vocabulary for hundreds of words and phrases.
Copyright of Great Ape Trust of Iowa

38. Criticism
Apes acquire their limited vocabularies with a great deal of difficulty, unlike children who develop vocabularies at amazing rates.
Chimpanzees can make signs to receive a reward, just as a pigeon who pecks at the key receives a reward. However, pigeons have not learned a language.
Chimpanzees use signs meaningfully but lack syntax.
Presented with ambiguous information, people tend to see what they want to see.

39. Conclusions
If we say that animals can use meaningful sequences of signs to communicate a capability for language, our understanding would be naive… Steven Pinker (1995) concludes, “chimps do not develop language.”

42. Unit 9: Memory, Thinking, & Language Lesson 3: Language
DAILY COMMENTARY:
How many languages to do speak? How did you learn to speak?
Is language acquisition effortful or automatic?
READINGS / Assignments:
READ:
Myers
Chomsky Handout
NYT Language Gap Study
Piraha handout
DO / DUE:
Vocab cards
Review packet
Lesson Essential Question
What is the relationship between cognition and language development?
Key Lesson Vocabulary:
Chomsky, Inborn language acquisition device; Critical periods; Phonemes; Morphemes; Syntax; Grammar; Semantics; Whorf’s Reciprocal determinism thesis

43. Problem Solving
A giant inverted steel pyramid is perfectly balanced on its point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it to topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill.
How would you remove the bill without disturbing the pyramid?

44. Write down your thought process
Write down everything you considered doing to solve the problem.

45. Does Language deter thought?
In one set of studies, the subjects who were asked to verbalize their thought process solved 30% fewer puzzles.

46. Language and thinking intricately intertwine.
Language & Thinking
Language and thinking intricately intertwine.
Rubber Ball/ Almay

47. Language Influences Thinking
Linguistic Determinism: Whorf (1956) suggested that language determines the way we think. For example, he noted that the Hopi people do not have the past tense for verbs. Therefore, the Hopi cannot think readily about the past.
OBJECTIVE 14| Summarize Whorf’s linguistic determinism hypothesis, and comment on its standing in contemporary psychology.

48. Language Influences Thinking
When a language provides words for objects or events, we can think about these objects more clearly and remember them. It is easier to think about two colors with two different names (A) than colors with the same name (B) (Özgen, 2004).

49. Word Power
Increasing word power pays its dividends. It pays for speakers and deaf individuals who learn sign language.

50. Linguistic Determinism Questioned
Although people from Papua New Guinea do not use our words for colors and shapes, they still perceive them as we do (Rosch, 1974).

51. We don’t think in words, when:
Thinking in Images
To a large extent thinking is language-based. When alone, we may talk to ourselves. However, we also think in images.
We don’t think in words, when:
OBJECTIVE 15| Discuss the value of thinking in images.
1. When we open the hot water tap.
2. When we are riding our bicycle.

52. Images and Brain
Imagining a physical activity activates the same brain regions as when actually performing the activity.
Jean Duffy Decety, September 2003

53. Traffic runs both ways between language and thinking.

54. Thinking in Shapes

55. Reading & Reflection First Read: THEN WRITE (in online notebooks)
NYT Language Gap Study
THEN WRITE (in online notebooks)
Based on the NYT article, your understanding of Chomsky’s theory, and Whorf’s concept of reciprocal determinism, evaluate how educational background of parents and vocabulary use in the home environment influences the ability of children to think creatively.