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Language and Thought

Module 24Language is so powerful that is has “…produced a species that transcends apehood to the same degree by which life transcends mundane chemistry and physics.”

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran The Tell Tale Brain pg. xv

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Thinking, Language, & Intelligence Overview

Language and Thought Language Development

Thinking and Language

Animal Thinking and Language

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Language and Thought

Language, our spoken, written, or gestured work, is the way we communicate

meaning to ourselves and others.

Language transmits culture.

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AM Language development #6

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Language Structure

Phonemes: The smallest distinct sound unit in a spoken language. For example:

bat, has three phonemes b · a · t

chat, has three phonemes ch · a · t

Languages have these sounds in common

She has mastered the Phonemes but not the meaning…Ken Lee vid 1:14

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Language Structure

Morpheme: The smallest unit that carries a meaning. It may be a word or part of a word. For example:

Milk = milk

Pumpkin = pump . kin

Unforgettable = un · for · get · table

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Grammar

Grammar is the system of rules in a language that enable us to communicate

with and understand others.

Grammar

SyntaxSemantics

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Language

Semantics the set of rules by which we derive meaning

from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language

also, the study of meaning

Syntax - Grammar the rules for combining words into

grammatically sensible sentences in a given language

• Rapid bouquets deter sudden neighbors.

• …syntactically correct but not semantically correct.

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In all the 6,000 languages in the world, only about 14 different syntaxes are employed and the vast majority fit within 4 styles, again supporting Chomsky's views.

Dr. Sapolsky Stanford University

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Language Development

Children learn much of their native

languages before learning to add 2+2.We learn, on average (after age 1), 3,500

words a year, amassing 60,000

words by the time we graduate from high

school.

Tim

e Life Pictures/ G

etty Images

Deb Roy Birth of a word at TED 19:52

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Words in English?

• With variants ~750,000• Smart and educated people may use

as many as 60,000 English words, or about 7.5% of the entire English vocabulary.

• We use remarkably little of it…– Ten simple words account for 25

percent of all English speech– 50 words account for 60 percent– 1,500 to 2,000 words account for 99

percent of all that Americans say

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Language We are all born to recognize speech sounds

from all the world’s languages

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Percentage ableto discriminateHindi t’s

Hindi-speaking

adults

6-8 months

8-10months

10-12months

English-speaking

adultsInfants from English-speaking homes

Infant speech sound discrimination

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Language Babbling Stage (pre-linguistic event)

beginning at 3 to 4 months the stage of speech development in which

the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language Linguistic Genius of babies at TED 10:18

One-Word Stage from about age 1 to 2 the stage in speech development during

which a child speaks mostly in single words

Babbling twins

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Language Two-Word Stage

beginning about age 2 the stage in speech development during

which a child speaks in mostly two-word statements

Telegraphic Speech early speech stage in which the child

speaks like a telegram-–“go car”--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting “auxiliary” words

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LanguageSummary of Language Development

Month(approximate)

Stage

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Babbles many speech sounds.

Babbling reveals households language.

One-word stage.

Two-word, telegraphic speech.

Language develops rapidly into

complete sentences.

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Explaining Language Development

1. Operant Learning: Skinner (1957, 1985) believed that language development may be explained on the basis of learning principles such as association, imitation, and reinforcement.

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Explaining Language Development cont.

2. Inborn Universal Grammar: Chomsky (1959, 1987) opposed Skinner’s ideas and suggested that the rate of language acquisition is so fast that it cannot be explained through learning principles, and thus most of it is inborn.

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Explaining Language Development

Childhood is a critical period for fully developing certain aspects of language.

Children never exposed to any language (spoken or signed) by about age 7 gradually lose their ability to master any language.

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Critical Period

Learning new languages gets harder with age.

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Genes, Brain, & Language

Genes design the mechanisms for a language, and experience modifies the

brain.

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Language Influences Thinking

Linguistic Determinism (Whorf hypothesis): language determines the way we think.

For example, he noted that the Hopi people do not have the past tense for verbs. Therefore, the Hopi cannot think readily about the past.Link

“….It turns out that people in southern Africa, the cradle of humanity, not only have richer DNA than anyone else but richer languages, with up to one hundred distinct sounds,…”

-Sam Kean

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Language Influences Thinking

When a language provides words for objects or events, we can think about these objects more

clearly and remember them. It is easier to think about two colors with two different names (A) than colors with the same name (B) (Özgen,

2004).

"While we think ourselves the masters of language, precisely the opposite is true. Language is the master of us, a tyranny from which no escape can be imagined.“

-Pesce

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Adjectives and Taste

• Studies show that flowery modifiers not only tempt people to order the lyrically described foods but also lead them to rate those foods as tasting better than the identical foods given only a generic listing.

• “Salad” vs. “A Melange of Local Greens”

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Try it…

Sketch this picture into your notes.

• The girl pushes the boy.

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Word Power

Increasing word power pays its dividends. It helps explain the

bilingual advantage of bilingual children to inhibit one language

while using another.

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Thinking in Images

To a large extent thinking is language-based. When alone, we may talk to ourselves.

However, we also think in images.

2. When we are riding our bicycle.

1. When we open the hot water tap.

We don’t think in words, when:

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Images and Brain

Imagining a physical activity activates the same brain regions as when actually

performing the activity.

Jean Duffy D

ecety, Septem

ber 2003

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Language and Thinking

Thinking effects language, language effects thinking

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Do Animals Exhibit Language?

There is no doubt that animals

communicate.

Vervet monkeys, whales and even

honey bees communicate with members of their species and other

species. Rico (collie) has a200-word vocabulary

Copyright B

aus/ Kreslow

ski

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Animal Culture

Animals display customs and culture that are learned and transmitted over generations.

Dolphins using sponges asforging tools.

Chimpanzee mother using andteaching a young how to use

a stone hammer. Link

Copyright A

manda K

Coakes

Michael N

ichols/ National G

eographic Society

Tickle me!

• All those chimps who get trained in American Sign Language, one of the first words they master is "tickle" and one of the first sentences is "tickle me.”

• Dr. Robert Sapolsky• Link Tickle me at 1:25

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Conclusions

If we say that animals can use meaningful sequences of signs to communicate a capability for language, our understanding would be

naive…

Steven Pinker (1995) concludes, “chimps do not develop language.”

“Asking whether language is mainly nurture is as silly as asking whether the saltiness of table salt comes mainly from chlorine or

mainly from sodium.” Vilayanur S. Ramachandran The Tell Tale Brain pg. 170

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EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY(7th Edition in Modules)

David MyersPowerPoint Slides

Aneeq AhmadHenderson State

University

Worth Publishers, © 2008

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Pinker on language and thought

• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_pinker_on_language_and_thought.html

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English is a weird language

• How about potato:

ghowghteighteough

Gh/ow/ght/eigh/te/ough

p as in hiccough

o as in snowt as in thoughta as in sleight as in biteo as in although

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“ghoti” spells what?

• FISH

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Language

• “The limits of your language mean the limits of your world.”