PSYCH 1X03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Pragmatics, Noam Chomsky, Social Learning Theory
11 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Language is a uniquely human form of communication that involves arbitrary associations, is productive, and is rule-governed. If the sounds used to identify items and concepts were associated with their inherent meaning, all languages would use the same sound to identify a given item. Each oral language has its own set of rules about which phonemes can occur in succession. The symbols of language used to transmit information are called morphemes. In oral languages, morphemes are the smallest units of sound that contain information. In sign language, morphemes are units of signs, rather than units of sounds. Often words but a single word can be made up of more than one morpheme. A morpheme can be broken apart into its constituent sounds, which are called phonemes. Each language has rules about how many phonemes can be combined. In english, some letters can represent more than one phoneme. Combinations of letters can make new phonemes.
