Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Phoneme, Pragmatics, Belief Bias

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Terry Biggs

Document Summary

Language: combination of symbols to generate possible messages/meanings. Psycholinguistics: scientific study of the psychological aspects of language. How people understand, produce, and acquire language. Symbols, sounds, or characters used to represent something: ex. Words have the same meaning to people within a certain language: structure. Grammar rules used to determine how symbols can be combined to create meaning: wejajebg is not a word because it violates rules of grammar. Syntax rules used to determine the proper order of words: meaning. Semantics the meaning of words and sentences: ex. Knowing when to take someone literally or figuratively: generativity. The symbols of language can be combined infinitely to create meanings: ex. Using the alphabet to create infinite sentences even if never heard before: displacement. Allows us to discuss events/objects that are not physically present: ex. Surface structure: reading, listening, or producing a sentence. Deep structure: underlying meaning of the combined symbols (semantics)