Language
Sunday, October 6, 2024 4:35 PM
Communication
- There's many different forms of communication
- Language is the most complex form of communication
- Psychologists use human communication to outline language
- They agreed on criteria for a language:
○ Language is regular (governed by rules of grammar)
○ Language is arbitrary (there's a lack of resemblance between words and what they mean
§ Exceptions: onomatopoeia
○ Language is productive (limitless ways to combine words to describe objects, situations, and actions)
§ Evident when looking at native language development
§ Infants explore novel combinations even if they weren't taught
How do humans develop language?
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:
○ Language influences our thoughts and the way we perceive and experience the world
○ Study of the Piraha tribe (hunter gatherers in Brazil) proves the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
§ Their language only has 3 counting words: 1, 2, many
§ According to the hypothesis, members of this tribes should have trouble understanding fine
numerical concepts because their language lacks words for these fine distinctions
§ Peter Gordon from Columbia University asked them to divide a given number of objects into 1,
2, or many
□ They struggled when it came to more than 2 objects
○ There's also evidence that counteracts the hypothesis
§ Ex: cultures that lack specific words to differentiate relatives
§ Mother-in-law and stepmother both are "belle-mere" in French
§ Despite this, French people know the difference between the 2 and know how they are related
to each one
○ Many researchers continue to debate the influence of language on our thoughts
○ Key question: can you have abstract thought without language?
The Structure of Language
- Grammar forms the structure of human language and thought
- 3000+ active languages, but they all have similar features
- Morpheme: the smallest unit of sound that contains information
○ For sign languages, morphemes would be identified in units of sign
○ Can form complete words or combined to form words
○ Each morpheme provides a piece of information about the whole word
○ Some morphemes are words themselves
§ Ex: table is one morpheme, while table-cloth is 2 morphemes that make a different meaning
○ Not all morphemes can be used as an individual word
§ Ex: table-s is 2 morphemes, s needed to be added to another to make sense
○ Some morphemes indicate the presence of another
§ Ex: clean-ing, clean identifies the action, while ing identifies that it's in the present
§ Ing could be replaced with ed to show that it occurred in the past
○ Morphemes are not the smallest units of sound in language, they're just the smallest units that give
information
- Phonemes: the smallest unit of sound in speech
○
§ Ex: table-s is 2 morphemes, s needed to be added to another to make sense
○ Some morphemes indicate the presence of another
§ Ex: clean-ing, clean identifies the action, while ing identifies that it's in the present
§ Ing could be replaced with ed to show that it occurred in the past
○ Morphemes are not the smallest units of sound in language, they're just the smallest units that give
information
- Phonemes: the smallest unit of sound in speech
○ Ex: dog has 3 phonemes: d-o-g, chair has 3: ch-ai-r
○ A combination of phonemes may be allowed in one language and not allowed in another
- Syntax: the rules that govern how words in a sentence are put together
○ Also known as grammar
○ Relates to the idea of regularity, one of the criteria of languages
○ Ex: French gives objects grammatical gender
- Semantics: the meaning of each individual word
○ A sentence can have perfect syntaxial structure but no semantical meaning
§ Things can have right grammatical structure but not make any sense
○ Ex: The colourless green ideas sleep furiously beside the kwijibo.
Development of Language in Infants
- Infants are limited in how they can communicate their desires
- They can only communicate their basic needs only by crying
- As they grow older, they can then ask for things more than basic needs
- Even very young infants show language skills by responding to the presence of another and smiling socially
- These early activities are followed by Babbling
○ Characterized by drawn-out sounds made up of a variety of combinations of vowels and consonants
○ May sound like a real sentence or question because of the use of rhythm and inflection in the
production of the babble
○ Combinations eventually progress to become real words
- Language "explodes" in complexity between 1.5 to 6 years of age
- Syntax complexity continues to improve
The Segmentation Problem
- Separating or segmenting individual words is difficult in the speech of a foreign language
- This is why someone who speaks a different language sounds like they're speaking very quickly or speaking
one long word
- Syntax complexity continues to improve
The Segmentation Problem
- Separating or segmenting individual words is difficult in the speech of a foreign language
- This is why someone who speaks a different language sounds like they're speaking very quickly or speaking
one long word
- The sentence stream has no breaks in our head
- Newman wanted to test if early proficiency at speech segmentation can result in language proficiency later
in life
- Infants from 7.5 to 12 months were taught a target word, and they wanted to see if the infant could detect
the target word in the speech stream
- When those infants reached 2 years of age, parents recorded the total number of words said by the child
- The results concluded that there is a strong positive correlation between infant segmentation ability and
expressive vocabulary at 2 years
- At a theoretical level, these findings help us understand how language develops
- At a clinical level, these findings help us develop infant screening tests to predict later problems in language
develop
○ Which also leads to early treatment interventions
Universal Phoneme Sensitivity
- Research at University of British Columbia showed that infants can distinguish between more phonemes
than adults
- If you're a Native English speaker, you can discriminate between the "Raw" &"Law" phonemes, like radio vs
ladio
- But if you had to discriminate between jada & Jjada phonemes, you would struggle
○ If you can speak Korean you wouldn't struggle
- However, an infant would be able to discriminate between 2 very similar phonemes no matter where they
come from
- Infants display Universal Phoneme Sensitivity
○ The ability of infants to discriminate between any sounds they're tested on
○ Includes sounds from non-native languages
- Researchers relied on the head-turn procedure to indirectly measure perception of phonemes
○ During training, an infant learns to discriminate 2 different phonemes and turn their head towards the
speaker
○ When they do, they are rewarded with a toy doll
○ In phase 2, the infant becomes used to a specific phoneme by hearing it be played over and over until
they stop looking
○ A new test phoneme is then presented
§ If the infant turns to speaker = they can discriminate the 2 sounds
- Infants are just as good as native speakers in distinguishing between foreign phonemes
○ In one experiment, researchers compares 3 groups of participants on their ability to discriminate 2
different phonemes, which are present in Hindi but not in English
§ English adults
§ English infants
they stop looking
○ A new test phoneme is then presented
§ If the infant turns to speaker = they can discriminate the 2 sounds
- Infants are just as good as native speakers in distinguishing between foreign phonemes
○ In one experiment, researchers compares 3 groups of participants on their ability to discriminate 2
different phonemes, which are present in Hindi but not in English
§ English adults
§ English infants
§ Hindi adults
- When does this ability disappear?
○ By the end of their first year, they lose that ability
- Adults require more practice to distinguish phonemes in a new language than infants do
○ This is why it's easier and better to learn a new language at a young age
Theories of Language Development
- Social Learning Theory:
○ Children learn language through a combination of imitation and instrumental conditioning
○ Ex: when a baby is babbling and accidentally says mama
§ The mama gets happy and gives attention (positive reinforcement)
○ Support of the social learning theory comes from how lack of early social interaction leads to an
inability to develop language skills
○ A really tragic example: Genie
§ A young girl who was locked in a small room and had no socials interactions
§ She was removed from the abusive situation at 13
§ When she was rescued, she had no language skills
§ For the rest of her life, Genie struggled to fully learn and develop language
§ This case study shows that without exposure to adequate sources of language, children will fail
to develop language skills
- Ideas against the social learning theory
○ Some people say that children's language development is far too rapid and complex to be driven by
imitation and reinforcement alone
§ This is because once children learn to produce words, they combine them in new ways that
were never modeled and could not possibly have been reinforced
§ Ex: young children make language errors that would never be heard in adults, like over and
under extensions
□ Overextensions: when kids apply a rule too broadly
® Can occur at level of meaning
◊ Family dog = dougie, therefore all 4-legged animals = dougie
imitation and reinforcement alone
§ This is because once children learn to produce words, they combine them in new ways that
were never modeled and could not possibly have been reinforced
§ Ex: young children make language errors that would never be heard in adults, like over and
under extensions
□ Overextensions: when kids apply a rule too broadly
® Can occur at level of meaning
◊ Family dog = dougie, therefore all 4-legged animals = dougie
® Can occur at level of syntax
◊ I played = past tense of play, therefore I runned = past tense of run, instead of
ran
◊ This is specifically an over regularization
} When a child makes a syntactical error by applying a grammatical rule
too broadly
□ Underextensions: when kids apply a rule to a specific object only
® Ex: only family dog is named dougie, only toy duck is called duck but not a real one
- Language Acquisition Device/ Innate Mechanism Theory:
○ An innate mechanism, present only in humans, that helps language develop rapidly according to
universal rules
○ Nome Chomsky argued that language develops rapidly due to an innate mechanism (not learned)
called a language acquisition device
○ All languages follow the same fundamental grammar rules
- Evidence of the Language Acquisition Device (innate language learning mechanisms)
○ This is supported by the cases where parents taught their deaf children lip reading instead of sign
language in China and the US
§ Congenitally deaf children develop a universal sign language without formally learning it
§ They were never formally exposed to sign language, but they still used signs consistently that
followed grammatical rules
§ The grammar rules for their spontaneous signing did not match the grammar of their parents'
native language
□ This suggests that these children were not using a learned grammar, but an innate or
automatic one
○ Neurological data also supports it
§ Very young infants show neurophysiological responses to the first language they are exposed to
and prefer listening to speech rather than non-speech sounds
□ This suggests that infants brains are pre-wired to adapt to the sounds and their associated
meanings presented in their environment
§ Infants prefer speech sounds over non-speech sounds
Comparing the 2 Theories
- When looking at Social Learning Theory vs Language Acquisition Device Theory, support for one can act as
evidence against the other
○ Ex: when looking at Genie, innate mechanism theory would suggest that even in her extreme
circumstances, language would naturally develop
§ Because this did not happen, it shows the importance of socialization when learning language
§ It supports social learning theory
○ Ex: language errors, like over and under generalizations/ extensions are not predicted by social
learning theory
§ These errors could not have been reinforced
§ Socialization has no influence in this aspect of language
§ It supports innate learning mechanisms
- Since both theories contradict each other, you need both theories to explain language
Animal Communication
- Examples of animal communication
○ The Waggle Dance in bees
§ Communicates the location of food sources
§ When a bee finds a source of food, it returns to the hive and performs a waggle dance to
- Since both theories contradict each other, you need both theories to explain language
Animal Communication
- Examples of animal communication
○ The Waggle Dance in bees
§ Communicates the location of food sources
§ When a bee finds a source of food, it returns to the hive and performs a waggle dance to
communication the location of the food to other bees
§ Has 2 phases
□ The waggle phase
® Distance of waggle = distance of food
® Angle of waggle = direction of food
◊ The bee moves forward with the direction of the food source
◊ A food source directly in line with the sun is shown by a waggle in a straight
upward direction
◊ The farther away the angle is from the sun, the farther away the angle at
which the bee will waggle
□ The return phase
® After each waggle, the bee returns to its starting position in a loop to the left or
right forming a figure 8 pattern
§ Each waggle can have as many as 100 repetitions
○ Bird songs for attraction and competition
§ More complex than waggle dance and are more flexible
Human vs Animal Communication
- The differences are best understood in experiments where researchers tried to teach animals to use human
language
- Early experiments relied on instrumental conditioning
- Ex: Washoe the Chimp
○ Raised by scientists
○ Taught how to communicate via American Sign Language (ASL)
○ Washoe could use signs to communicate simple requests and combine them for more complex
requests
○ However, researchers have suggested that Washoe's impressive demonstrations are not good enough
to be language because she did not use systemic grammar
- Ex: Sarah the Chimp
○ Raised in the lab
○ Taught to communicate using symbols made of plastic
○ Used a large vocabulary
- Ex: Sarah the Chimp
○ Raised in the lab
○ Taught to communicate using symbols made of plastic
○ Used a large vocabulary
○ Was able to answer questions
○ Therefore, she could use complex symbols to communicate
○ However, she was not able to combine them in novel combinations
- Ex: Kanzi the Chimp
○ Taught to use lexigrams (a set of geometric figures arranged on a keyboard) to communicate
○ This experiment was different because the trainers did not use instrumental conditioning to teach the
language
○ Instead, they used complete immersion in the language, hoping that Kanzi would learn through
observation
○ Kanzi used all the lexigrams correctly and could combine them
○ He was able to communication novel requests that were never seen before
○ However, his grammar was still limited with no understanding of concepts like nouns, verbs, or plurals
- All these examples fall short to be true language due to limited flexibility
- True language requires the ability to combine words, meanings, or behaviours to express new ideas
○ Something that other animals, such as bees, birds, and chimpanzees can't do as well as us
- Therefore, language is a defining characteristic of human cognition
