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1. The structure of language
2. Milestones in the process of language development
3. Theories of language acquisition
4. Culture, language, and thought
5. Learning more than 1 language: Bilingualism
6. Does learning 2 languages in childhood slow down language development?
7. Can animals develop language
→ Language follows a hierarchal structure
- - - - - Language Structure - - - - -
Medium of transmission Grammar Semantics (meaning)
1. The Structure of Language
→ Language has the following characteristics:
○ Highly symbolic
System of signs and purposeful symbols that represent something
○ Infinitely generative
Can be rearranged and combined limitlessly to communicate ideas
○ Rule governed
Enables people to produce and interpret meaning universally
○ Send and receive information
Allows for communication and socialisation
Phonetics and Phonology
→ Phonetics: the study of sounds in human speech
○ Looks at physical production, sound transmission, and perception of the sound of speech
→ Phonology: the methodological organisation of sounds in languages
○ Describes the way sound functions within a given language to translate meaning
→ Unit of speech = “phone”
○ Can be seen as the smallest contrastive linguistic unit, used to bring about a change of meaning
→ Set of phones / sound features = “phonemes”
→ Phonological differences between languages play important role in learning to read and write different
languages
○ Esp. when certain phonemes are specific to a particular language
2
Grammar
→ Morphology: looks at the systems of meaningful forms in words
○ Identification, analysis, and description of the language system’s morphemes
○ Morphemes: smallest meaningful units of language that includes root words, prefixes, and suffixes
Made up of phonemes
→ Syntax: the order in which words are put together to form a sentence
○ Sentences are combined using specific or fixed rules
Sentence always has a subject and predicate
Meaning
→ Also known as semantics
→ Looks at the way in which words and their fundamental
meanings relate to each other
→ Lexicon:
○ A language’s word stock (language’s dictionary)
→ Discourse:
○ Signifies written and spoken communication
→ Phonology, morphology, and syntax are important to derive a word’s meaning
○ Meaning is also created in a context understood by both speaker and hearer
→ Pragmatics:
○ The study of how people use language in different contexts
○ Includes sociolinguistics (such as gestures and vocal inflections)
○ We modify our use of language based on the person we are talking to
2. Milestones in the Process of Language Development
→ Different stages of speech:
Stage Description
→ Attending to talking, hearing changes in sound, rhythm, and tone
Precursors of speech
→ Screams and cries still convey the emotion of the baby (therefore seen as
New-borns the early stages of language development)
→ Characterised by cooing and babbling
Vocalisation
○ Babbling: production of a wide variety of sounds that correspond to
3-4 months of age to
phonemes, and eventually, many repetitive consonant-vowel
9-12 months
combinations (such as “lalalalalalalalalal”)
3
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