1. Language
Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

2. Fun Facts About Language
How many languages exist in the world today?
6800
How many languages are spoken by more than 1 million people?
250 (Chinese, Hindi, English, Spanish, Arabic)
How many languages will likely survive the century?
600
What % of children throughout the world are raised bilingual?
66%
What % of U.S. children are raised bilingual?
6.3%

3. Language can be…..

4. We need 3 building blocks for SPOKEN language:
Phonemes
Morphemes
The smallest units of sound in language
Ex: Bat= b, a, & t (3)
Ex: Chat= ch, a, t (3)
English has about 40 phonemes
Sometimes difficult to learn new language
Let’s Practice
Love
Pitch
Throat
Platypus
The smallest unit of meaningful sound
Can be a word or part of a word
Can also be parts of words like prefixes or suffixes…”s” means plural
How many morphemes does cats have?

5. Grammar Is this the White House or the House White?
Grammar: the rules that enable us to communicate with & understand others
Semantics: study of meaning
-ex: ”ed” at the end of a word means past tense
Syntax: the rules for combining words into sentences that make sense
Is this the White House or the House White?

6. Language Development Stages that we learn language…
Babbling Stage: 4 months, baby starts making various sounds
Holophrastic Stage (one word stage): around 1 year old
-begin to use sounds to communicate meaning
-“ball” “dog”
3. Telegraphic Speech Stage (two word stage): around 2 yrs
- “big doggy” “hit ball”

7. How do we learn language?

8. Operant Learning Theory
B.F.Skinner & Behaviorism
Imitation & Reinforcement
Kid may imitate a parent
Ex: your mom says a curse word and your little sister does
If they are reinforced they keep saying a word
Ex: your little sister says curse word and your mom laughs
If they are punished, they stop saying the word
Ex: your mom spanks your little sister for says the curse word

9. Noam Chomsky’s Theory (nativist theory)
We learn language too quickly for it to be only through reinforcement & punishment
Children acquire language more quickly than other skills
Language acquisition device
People have a natural tendency to acquire language
Enables us to turn ideas into sentences, etc…
Language is a brain function, not a social phenomenon
Cognitive Psychology

10. Linguistic Determinism
Linguistic Determinism: WHORF HYPOTHESIS that language determines how we think
Different languages create different concepts of reality & worldviews
Ex: Hopi tribe have no past tense to they cannot think about the past
Ex: Norwegians have many different words for snow (meaningless to us in southern ca)

11. Critical Period
Many researchers believe that childhood is the critical period for learning language
After age 7, children gradually lose the ability to master any language
“Genie”