Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: James Rumbaugh, Field Dependence, Nim Chimpsky

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Dr.Mike

Document Summary

Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological aspects of language such as how people understand, produce, and acquire language. Human cognitive and linguistic skills may still evolve even if the physical structure of the brain does not. Language evolved as social environments became more complex and new survival problems emerged, the development of language helped humans adapt to these new demands. Language allows us to learn customs and knowledge accrued over generations. Language: turning thoughts into words, combining symbols to generate messages and meanings. Properties of language: symbolic: some sort of system of symbols (ex. Surface structure: symbols that are used and their order. Deep structure: underlying meaning of the combined symbols. Sentences can have different surface structure but the same deep structure. One surface structure can give rise to more than one deep structure. Phonemes = smallest unit of speech, letter or combination of letters that do not have specific meanings (100 possible, english about 40)