PSY 302 Chapter : Language
15 Dec 2011
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Document Summary
Human language is amazingly flexible, productive and novel (ability to produce things) Language is a small number of individually meaningless symbols (sounds, gestures, letters) that can be combined according to agreed-on rules to produce messages. Rather than language, other species have communication systems. Communication is the process by which one organism transmits information to and influences another. Those who study the structure and development of children"s language are called psycholinguists. Some of the knowledge that underlie the growth of linguistic proficiency are: The order of the words or symbols; grammar. Phonology - basic units of sound (phonemes) that are used in language and the rules for combining these sounds. Morphology - how words are formed from sound. Pragmatics knowledge of how to use language to communicate effectively. Also involves sociolinguistic knowledge - culturally specified rules that dictate how the language should be used in particular social contexts.
