Class notes

Class notes 336 (PSYC336)

3 views 0 purchase

Course
(PSYC336)

Institution
University Of British Columbia (UBC )

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

[Show more]

Preview 4 out of 42 pages

View example

Uploaded on November 7, 2023
Number of pages 42
Written in 2021/2022
Type Class notes
Professor(s) N/a
Contains All classes

psychology
psychology of language
psyc336
psyc 336
psychology of language 336

Institution University of British Columbia (UBC )
Education Psychology
Course (PSYC336)

CA$11.60

Added

Add to cart Add to wishlist

100% satisfaction guarantee
Immediately available after payment
Both online and in PDF
No strings attached

Week 2A: Origins of Language

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

The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.

Quick and easy check-out

You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.

Focus on what matters

Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!

Frequently asked questions

What do I get when I buy this document?

You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.

Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?

Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.

Who am I buying these notes from?

Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller areenashrestha. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.

Will I be stuck with a subscription?

No, you only buy these notes for CA$11.60. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.

Can Stuvia be trusted?

4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)

75632 documents were sold in the last 30 days

Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now

Start selling