Lecture #1
The three ways modern psychology categorizes mental processes:
Cognitive (thought processes)
Conative (actions driven by will)
Emotive (feelings and emotions)
Mention and explain the three fundamentals arguments according to Ray Jackendoff
The argument for mental grammar
The argument for innate knowledge
The argument for the Construction of Experience
Explain the concept of Universal Grammar
Our biological, genetically-transmitted capacity to pick up just any language
What is the modular theory?
That there is a CENTRAL FORMAT (Jackendoff)And MODULES responsible for more or less specialized cognitive task
What is SLI (Specific language impairment)?
Deficit in spoken language ability with no obvious accompanying disorder such as:
-Mental retardation
-Neurological damage
-Hearing disorder
Who started the cognitive revolution and in what decade?
Noam Chomsky, in t he 60s
What does the expressive variety of language refer to?
The ability to create infinite number of sentences from a finite set of patterns and words
What elements are present in the conversion of thought into language?
Phonology, syntax and semantics
What is recursion?
Sentences can have sentences within.
Mention two "feral" children.
What are the types of signs according to Pierce?
Indexes: Sings with a cause-effect relationship
Symbols: Arbitrary signs with no inherent connection or meaning
Define mental grammar
capacity to combine words into acceptable patterns and create a limitless number of novel sentences
An approach to cognitive mechanisms (such as phonological and syntactic structures in our mind) that does not necessarily have to know much about how these are encoded in the brain in the form of neural firings.
WHAT IS THE PARADOX OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITON?
children learn mental grammar unconsciously and quickly, while linguists struggle to fully explain the process.
What is "Home sign"?
children, profoundly deaf, born to hearing parents
nUsed their own system of signs
Define language and linguistics
Language: a symbolic means of communication
Linguistics: the scientific study of language
"What a child is exposed to is usually less than perfect language. To say the least." What concept is this sentence referring to?
Poverty of the stimulus
What are the three types of experiments in linguistics?
Native speaker's institution
Psycholinguistics
Neurolinguistics experiments
What are the phases for language acquisiton?
Prelinguistic phase
Holophrastic phase
Two-word phase
Telegraphic phase
Explain difference between pidgin and creole?
Pidgin:grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common
Creole:fully grammatical native language out of Pidgin
Mention the subsiduary branches of linguistics
Phonetics*, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics*
What are the main approaches to language acquisition?
Empiricism, Nativism, Constructivism
What is ambiguity?
one stimulus which we seem to perceive in at least two ways…
Name two figures in rationalism/nativism
Chomsky and Pinker
What do the "feral" children tell us about LATE language acquisiton?
Vocabulary may develop, but grammar mastery becomes difficult.