PSY 2105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: B. F. Skinner, Noam Chomsky, Language Development
6 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
Productivity=property of language that allows humans to produce and comprehend infinite number of statements. Nature plays role in language (children produce and understand sentences they have not encountered before, parents don"t teach them all grammar rules-pick up on some themselves. ) Kids learn language rapidly even when their other cognitive abilities are slow: reasoning: no use of punishment or reward for learning to talk, children don"t learn all speech through imitation, kids make up statements on their own. Surface (term for the way words are arranged in spoken languages) and. Deep (term for inborn knowledge of rules about properties of language. ) Language acquisition device/lad=brain mechanism that lets kids quickly learn a language. Transformational grammar=set of rules developed by lad that translates surface structure to deep structure that kid can innately understand: ex: deaf child study, american vs chinese created their own sign language. Differences in languages spoken but similarities in signs used by kids.
