Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Deep Structure And Surface Structure, Surface Roughness, Phoneme

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Mark Holden

Document Summary

Through human evolutionary history, formed larger and larger social groups: bigger groups helped us survive and reproduce, but they also posed problems: Teaching: language was an adaptation to these new demands. Phonemes: most basic unit of speech sounds: specific sets of phonemes in each language, changing a phoneme changes meaning of the word, some are words, some are suffixes/prefixes. Morphemes: smallest units of meaning in a language. Syntax: grammatical rules that govern how we organize words into sentences: related to the fact that language is structured. Pragmatics: knowledge of the practical application of language: the social rules (and context) that can affect understanding and word choice. Give an example of two sentences/phrases with the same words, but different syntax. The boy kicked the ball to the girl. The girl kicked the ball to the boy. Surface structure: the words that are actually spoken (or written/signed) Deep structure: the underlying meaning of the sentence.