PSYC 335 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Feral Child, Language Processing In The Brain, Human Brain
19 Jun 2018
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Language Development
Symbols
Systems for representing thoughts, feelings, and knowledge, and communicating them
to others.
Symbols use
the creative and flexible capacity that most sets humans apart from other species.
Children master basic structure of their native language, whether spoken or manually signed
by age five.
Language requires comprehension and production.
comprehension: understanding what one says
production: output
o Comprehension precedes production.
Components of Language
Generativist
Through use of the finite set of words and morphemes in humans' vocabulary, people
can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of
ideas.
Required Competencies for Learning Language
o Phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic development and
metalinguistic knowledge are entailed in language learning.
Phonological Development
o phonemes (the elementary units that distinguish meaning)
eg. "b,r,l"
Semantic Development
o system for expressing meaning in language
o morphemes (smallest unit of meaning in language)
eg. the bicycle talked the boy intoo buying a candy bar
Syntactic Development
o syntax or rules for combining words
eg. adjectives proceed a noun "blue sky"
Pragmatic Development
o how language is used
o includes understanding of conversational conventions
Metalinguistic Knowledge
Adults, unlike young children, also have some understanding of the properties and
functions of language (metalinguistic knowledge).
An example of metalinguistic knowledge is knowing that only certain word combinations
are acceptable as sentences.
Requirements of Language
Human brain and a human environment
Language is a species-specific behaviour
o Only humans acquire a communication system with the complexity, structure,
and generativity of language.
Language is species-universal (also)
o Virtually all humans develop language.
Brain-language relations
Language processing involves a substantial degree of functional localization in the
brain.
