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Language Chapter Summary
Summary of Chapter 9
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Chapter 9 – Language and thinkingMental representations: images, ideas, concepts and principles; helps form ideas from what is
around us, so what we read and then infer into our own imaginations.
Language
Consists of a system that involves using symbols appropriately and generating an infinite number of
possible messages and meanings by following the rules of the specific language.
Psycholinguistics: Scientific study of the psychological aspects of language.
Adaptive functions of language: being social helps to reproduce and survive. There is not just labour
work like from the olden days, but there is a mix of primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary jobs.
So, without being social, there is no effective communication between the sectors.
Language makes moving around easier, since you can talk about what you want and where you want
to go; observational learning is when someone leads you somewhere and trying to figure out where
to go yourself if trial-and-error learning – it is easier to talk to someone and ask where to go.
Properties of language:
These properties are shared across cultures; therefore, they act as significant and specific features
that language must follow.
Language is symbolic and structured: Any word could have been used to reference a dog, but we
use the word dog. This is a culturally developed structure, which helps other people understand
what we are talking about. Arbitrary words are random and hold no real grammatical sense, yet can
convey onomatopoeic meanings, like ‘BANG.’
Grammar: set of rules that dictate how symbols can be combined to create meaningful units of
communication.
Syntax: order of words that makes them effective to communicate through.
Ziopdghtey violates the rules of grammar, due to the words following the z being odd and out of
sync, and there being too many consonants. Banana I have a has a poor syntax.
We put adjectives before the noun, but other languages put the verb after the noun, like salade
verte.
Semantics: meaning of words must be understood; sometimes words are metaphorical, like ‘I nailed
it’ – we need to learn that these phrases have actual positive meanings.
Generativity: words can be combined into an infinite number of possible messages, with meaning or
with random, novel meaning. So, ‘why is that eagle eating my daughter’s chocolate cake’ is an odd
sentence that we will never hear, but we still understand it.
Displacement: allows us to discuss items from the past and future, so anything not physically
happening right now. Also allows us to ponder hypothetical situations or abstract ideas.
, Surface structures and deep structures: what we read on the surface and can easily understand due
to the order of words and codes, is understandable due to the surface structure. Anything with an
underlying meaning or something understood even without grammatical sense has a deep structure.
Hierarchical structure of language
Phonemes are the smallest units of sound recognised as a separate part of a language. They help to
form words that can then be broken down into separate syllables. So, ‘th’ is a phoneme. These
phonemes are useless without follow up phoneme, so og after d or l forms different words.
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning. They are usually syllables, but if the word is plural,
then the word can have one extra morpheme, the s being a morpheme but not a syllable. So, eggs is
one syllable, but has two morphemes.
Morphemes form words, which forms phrases and sentences and finally, discourse, which is
conversation.
Discourse
Sentence The players talked to the fans
Phrases Talked to the fans
The players
Words The Players talked to the fans
Morphemes to the fan s
The play er s talk ed
Phonemes
ð pley ar z tak t tuw ð f a n z
ð is the voiced dental fricative, where breathy sounds are produced before the letter or sound of
the phoneme is produced, so phonetically, th and f are vocal dental fricatives. Turbulent air flow
produced by narrow opening.
Understanding and producing language
Context, meaning and timing are all necessary to pick up the right morphemes of a word, as
sometimes when we make phone calls, we can never hear what the person is saying due to not
knowing the context and we often miss calls for family because we don’t know who pressgrits were,
even though it was for express scripts.
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