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interactions)• --no development: small adults!• --progressive differentiation• --instinct (maturation alone --> devel.)• --readiness (maturation is a pre-req for
learning)• --critical period (maturation is a pre-req but
opportunity disappears)• --stages and waves
Development:Why study?
• Child is father to the man
• Analysis of complex system
• Heredity --environment issues
• Heritability = Vg/Vt (variance)
• Why difficult? --right experiment
• Role of culture & socialization: Rosseau/Victor of Aveyron
Language
• The Premise of this lecture is that Language is what distinguishes humans from animals. All of us have it, none of them do. Is this just species-centrism, or is it accurate? In order to answer that question, we need to look at what language is.
Animal Signaling systems
• Animal signaling systems. White tailed deer, Monkeys, Bees etc. Characteristics of signal system: invariant-fixed mapping, unstructured, uncreative, unproductive....
Behavioral View of Language
• Language as sets of words: Simple behavior, responses to stimuli. Not so.Skinner: (de)mands & (con)tacts. control via echo, text, intraverbal or autoclitics (descriptive or functional--frames "the x's car". Chomsky's scathing attack led to alternative view
Language Can be Described as Complex Heirarchy of RulesStart with phonology: Phoneme (40 out of
200 sounds)Made up of distinctive features (8) ex.
-place (7) [bl, ld, d, a, p, v g] -manner (6) of artic. stop, fric,
affric, nas, lat, semivowelexample: /p/ /t/ /k/:: /b/ /d/ /g/ + VOT experiment 20msec
Word/Morpheme Level (Meaning)
• 50,000 Morphemes
• 200,000 Words
• You can say a lot….but still limited
Syntactic Level
• Rules of ordering/inflection convey meaning. (“Dog bites cat” and “Cat bites dog” mean different things while using same words!
• Language as “packaging” job is to convey underlying propositions
Pragmatic Level
• Language in social use within a community
• It’s all automatic and mostly effortless despite its complexity
• Enormous complexity and rapid online processing!
Hockett’s Defining Characteristics
A. displacement: bees do it vy limited (flagpole ex).B. productivity: say anything "palimony" bees cant' do
flagpole-no vertC. creativity: (cont. of above?) (not one of Hockett's)D. interchangeability: any speaker can understand any
messageE. discreteness: small separable units of soundF. duality of patterning: small set of building blocks--
>infinite wordsG. traditional transmission: knowledge passed onH. arbitrariness: no natural relationship necessary
between word & ref.I. semanticity: (cont. of above) ie. arbitrary
assignment of word--ref.J. vocal=auditory channel, specialization: unimp.K.
broadcast xmission, direct. reception, rapid fading, total feedback
Animals Learning Human Lang.
• Porpoises/whales/
• chimps/gorillas
• parrots!
Language/thought/impact
• Whorf/Sapir hypothesis
• Roesh and the Dani (BW-R-GYB-BR-PPOG-L)
• Why is language so important? --Cultural cumulation (and not oysters on rocks or termites on sticks!)
• Schactel
Language Development
• Taught? -not an easy issue• Course of development--
– infant conversations– babbling (back to front, front to back)– one word– two word– Then syntax, and off and running– vocab. learning plus nuances (5000+ by
age 5)
Arguments for Innateness• semi-dedicated brain tissue (Broca's,
Wernicke's)• critical period• early start and early development +
difficulty of task (complexity of rules, 5000+ words by age 5 + semi-complete set of rules
• overgeneralization: not mimicry • syntactic uniqueness (numerous issues)