The Psychology of Language: Psychological abilities underlying human language; language processing, lexical representation, and principles of online conversation; animal versus human communication.
PSYC 336 section 101
Language as a Human Instinct
● Charles Darwin; babies in all cultures have the intensity to speak
● Nativist view:
○ our genes provide us with a general capacity or language
● Anti-nativist view:
○ language is not an innate instinct but a by-product of our cognitive abilities
Comparative Method
● Approach to investigating language evolution
● Evolution of language looking at species that are close to us genetically = achieve
human language
● Primate Vocalization
○ Recording observation of 1500 hrs of calls in the wild from the monkeys
○ Made calls that are acoustic to the kind of predators in the wild
○ Confirming test: recording the calls and playing them and see how they acted
○ Evidence of semanticity & arbitrariness
■ One vocalization means snake = other means lion, etc
○ LACKING displacements, the duality of patterning, and productivity
■ They don’t produce sounds that they haven’t heard before
○ Fixed from birth = instinctively
Teaching Language to Apes
● Exp; 1 Bunch of buttons that are symbolic to them to something to the world
○ Exp: video of banana = he presses a banana button
● Kanzi ( monkey), a bonobo, with lexigram
● Exp; 2
○ Washoe (monkey) taught American Sign Language
○ Knows how to combine water + bird = swan
■ Shows comparative
○ Understands grammatical structure
Challenges to Ape Language Learning Studies
● Not about what animals do in the wild
○ Shows comparative work
● Apes may mimic signs for rewards, not to communicate
○ Exp: Kanzi giving a reward a banana = operative conditioning
Language Related Abilities
1. Ability to understand communicative intent
,Human Communication with Gestures
● Micheal Tomasello: pointing as a key transition in the evolution of human linguistic
communication
○ Argues that intense meaning behind pointing = humans understand
● Depends on species-specific abilities
○ Pointing understands communicative intentions
○ Cooperation
● Linguistic conventions are built on this infrastructure
● Research :
○ Chimpanzees understand intention and goals: but can not understand that
pointing is an intention to communicate
○ They understand the goal of pointing = getting the nuts
○ Find: they pick the cup without knowing human is trying to show something
○ They don’t have the cognitive infrastructure to understand where the food is
hidden when pointing
● Experiment : Krehmn et al. 2014
○ Whether 9-12 month old understand the goal of pointing in language
○ The person repeatedly reach for an object = show she likes it
○ Result: Violation of expectation, understand the point than the first
■ Understand that pointing is communicative
Ability to Understand Social Ces
● Advancement in social cognition allowed humans to develop rich communication
systems
● Joint Attention: Infants who are better able to engage in joint attention at 6 months of
age go on to develop larger vocabularies
, ● ^ anti-nativist views for social cues
Language Related Abilities
2. Grasp Linguistic Structure
Universal Grammar Theory
● Humans are prepackaged with knowledge of the kinds of structures that make up human
languages
○ Switches get turned on depending on which language they are born into
● ^ this is a nativist view
● It’s NOT saying, infants :
○ Are born with the language they are going to speak
○ Are born knowing specific grammar in the language
Arguments FOR Universal Grammar
● Similar Theories in other domains
● There are similar structures across all languages
● The poverty of stimulus argument
○ Children are not exposed to linguistic but they are still able to innately learn the
language without making too many mistakes
Arguments AGAINST Universal Grammar
● Nativists underestimate the quantity and quality of linguistic input that kids hear
● Human languages are not as similar to each other as they may have believed
● Lack of testable hypotheses
3. Ability to Control voice and Gestures
● Use vocalization to express emotional excitement
Evolution of Speech
● In humans, the tongue has a circular contour, ….
● Human togues are shorter and thinner: produce a variety of sounds within the oral
capacity
● Respiratory control is enhanced in humans
○ Allows us to emphasize or stress speech
○ Allows for longer speech utterances
● Human Larynx is Deeper in the throat
○ Increase range and clarity of speech sounds
○ Increase choking
● Infants are similar to chimpanzees = have the same difficulties as them to make certain
sounds
, Week 2B: How Humans Invent Languages
● Humans have the capacity and motivation to come up with language
Language origins
● “Proto-words”
○ Word-like units must be present before complex sequences emerge
○ When we gain that we do intentionally = ancestors using vocalize
● Step 1: Possible proto-words:
○ Imitating animal calls
○ Exertion noises or grunts
○ lip-smacking / hooting
● Step 2: “Pidgin”
○ Simplified means of communication between groups that don’t share a common
language
○ Two communities that don’t have a shared language = come up with one
○ Restricted to vocab and grammar
○ Emerge in modern humans due to language-mixing
● Step 3: Language: Creoles
○ Creoles evolve from a pidgin
○ The second generation of kids that parents
○ - Haitian creole
○ Have more extensive vocab and more complex grammar structures than pidgin
Nicaraguan Sign Language
● 7s scattered across communities, members of their own communities
● 1977: central school for deaf = brought together students and adults in a formal setting
○ Children communicating in a different situation (ex: bus)
● 1rst cohort: standardized vocab, grammatically improvised
● Later cohorts: spontaneous addition of grammatical features
● Cohort 1
○ 2
○ 3
○ Use more effectively and efficiently with their neutral space ( chest level), speed
● Evidence:
○ Nicaragua sign Language ( exp: second cohort developed spatial modulation)
○ Notice: second use special maturation MORE
Languages and genes
● Nativist: Language is in the genes
○ Investigate where people have genetical makeup show difficulty in language or
general cognitive description
○ “Thinking is sub-vocal talking” - J.B Watson
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