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Language Week 7
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Psychology and the Brain: Week 7The elements of language
What is language?
it is a system of spoken and written communication with communication involving both
speech production and comprehension - The Oxford English Dictionary
• but not all language is verbal in fact not all language is human
• The system of spoken or written communication used by a particular country,
people, community, etc., typically consisting of words used within a regular
grammatical and syntactic structure; (also) a formal system of communication by
gesture, esp. as used by the deaf.
• The vocal sounds by which mammals and birds communicate; (in extended use) any
other signals used by animals to communicate.
• An unsystematic or informal means of communicating other than by the use of
words, as gesture, facial expression, etc.; non-verbal communication.
• Computing. Any of numerous systems of precisely defined symbols and rules devised
for writing programs or representing instructions and data that can be processed and
executed by a computer.
Different animals have various ways of and reasons for communicating with other members
of their species. They have even found to have accents.
• Honeybee dancing
• Bird song
• Dolphin and Humpback whale vocalisation
• Vervet monkey calls
• Pepperberg (2006; 2007) - Alex, African Grey Parrot
- whilst these animals can communicate in a way that is essential and meaningful to
them
- their communication is not as complex and nuanced as ours
- they do not have grammar or language in the wider context of cognition
- for example, the processing and verbalisation of memories
• Speech and language are one of the hallmarks of humanity.
• Enables us to formulate thoughts, exchange ideas, alert each other to danger, make
requests, express feelings, expand our knowledge and essentially function within a
society.
• The remarkable ease with which babies learn to understand verbal language and
transform mental representations of the surrounding environment into a sequence
of sounds suggests that throughout the course of evolution, the human brain has
developed an expertise for its processing.
- Body language
- Verbal language – unique to us
o Spoken
o Visual (sign language)
, Psychology and the Brain: Week 7
o Written
- Speaking, understanding, reading, and writing are the end results of very complex
and intricate processes
• Verbal language travels from the speaker to the hearer.
• Written language travels from a paper/screen to our eyes.
The speech chain:
- Communication in and of itself is a complex process
- as I am speaking into the microphone, I am actively thinking about what I am hoping
to say
- I use the muscles in my mouth and face to articulate the linguistic representations of
those thoughts
- the sound I produce then creates an acoustic wave which is received by my ears
- this allows me to monitor whether what I am saying makes sense
- I also receive haptic feedback regarding the quality of the sound I produce
- of course, the wave also travels to your ears which feed information to your brain
- in a lecture hall you would also see my facial movements
Phonemes:
- Human language is made up of many elements the most fundamental elements are
phonemes or language sounds
- for example, the letter c can be associated with a different sound depending on its
positioning in a word as in the case of ace a sz sound and cat a k sound
- /p/ or /b/ vs. ‘c’ in ace/cat
- English has 46 phonemes
- Each phoneme has certain unique characteristics, which distinguish it from others.
- Changing even one of these features can change the meaning of a word (e.g., /bat/
and /pat/)
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