How much harder would it be to communicate without

language?

• Need two volunteers from the class• One will need to leave the class for a

minute

• Goal is to communicate a term without the use of verbal language

Communication ActivityCommunication Activity

How much harder would it be to communicate without

language?

• Need two volunteers from the class• One will need to leave the class for a

minute• Goal is to communicate a term without the

use of verbal language Cat War Seduction Spectacular Global Warming

Communication ActivityCommunication Activity

Building Blocks of Language

• The smallest sound unit in a language• to say “bat,” we utter the

phonemes b, a, and t• to say “that,” we utter the

phonemes th, a, and t• how many phonemes does

“dolphin” have?• D, o, l, ph, i, n = 6

• about 40 phonemes in the English language

• we have trouble pronouncing phonemes of other languages

Phonemes

• The smallest unit of meaning in a language

• One morpheme: boy

• Two morphemes: boy-ish

• Three morphemes: boy-ish-ness

• What would be a four morpheme word?

Gentle + man + li + ness / Un + desire + able + ity

• How many morphemes are in “bats”?

• How many morphemes are in “hunters”?

Morphemes

Building Blocks of Language

1

2

3

• The meaning of words, morphemes, and sentences created by the grammar system• Example: adding “-ing” to

the end of a word means it’s currently happening

• “barking” vs. “barked”

• The order for combing words in a given grammar system• Example: all adjectives come

before nouns, so we say “log cabin” not “cabin log”

• “white house” = English“casa blanca” = Spanish

Grammar A convention system that enables us to correspond with other people

Semantics Syntax

Building Blocks of Language

• Language is complexity built out of simplicity• 40 phonemes can combine to create more

than 100,000 morphemes, which can combine to produce 616,500 words, which can combine to create a relative infinite amount of sentences

• No two speeches or poems are likely to be alike!

Building Blocks of Language

• The average high school graduate knows about 60,000 words

• This breaks down into learning:• 3,500 words per year• 10 words per day• A new word approximately every

one and a half waking hours

Stages of Language Development

Babbling Stage

• First occurs around 4 months of age• The infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first

unrelated to the household language• NOT an imitation of adult speech• Deaf infants will babble audibly

and with hands• Babbling begins to resemble household

language around 10 months at which point phoneme sounds outside the infant’s native tongue disappear

• Infants first start learning language by reading lips and discerning speech sounds (ah from wide open lips, ee from a mouth with corners pulled back). Their ability to understand speech establishes before their ability to create words.

• First occurs around 12 months of age• The child speaks mostly in single words

• “Doggy” may mean “look at the dog out there!”

One-Word Stage

Stages of Language Development

Two-Word Stage

• First occurs around 24 months of age• The child speaks mostly two-word statements

• Characterized by telegraphic speech: child speaks like a telegram (“bee sting”)

• After this, the child will rapidly beginformulating sentences

• Noam Chomsky’s theory of Inborn Universal Grammar• Believed humans had a “language acquisition device”

(biological predisposition) to develop language (NATURE)

• B.F. Skinner’s theory of Operant Learning• Believed humans learn language through operant

conditioning and social learning (NURTURE)

Explaining Language Development

• Whorf’s Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (otherwise known as linguistic determinism): the idea that language establishes our cognition = our way of thinking• The Hopi tribe has no past tense in their language, so Whorf says

they rarely think of the past.• The Penan people, who live in Borneo, have one word for he, one

word for she, but six words for we in their language. What would this indicate about their culture and how they think?

• Do the following similar phrases have different connotations?• “Girls’ night out” vs. “Ladies’ night out”• “Fireman/woman” vs. “Fire Fighter”• “Sportsmanship” vs. “Sportspersonship”• “Stewardess” vs. “Flight Attendant”• “Housewife” vs. “Homemaker”

• Research shows bilingual children have a more accurate sense of self why do you think this?

Explaining Language Development