CH. 10 | Language
organization of language
words
biological roots
- Sentence - sequences of words
- Word - smallest free form
- Morpheme - smallest unit of meaning
- Phoneme - smallest unit of sound
phonology:
- voicing
- manner of production
- place of articulation
Coarticulation - the blending of phonemes
at word boundaries
Generativity - words that take on new meaning
referent is the actual object, action, or
event in the world to which a word refer.
syntax
Descriptive rules: “To boldly go where no
one has gone before.”
Prescriptive rules: “To go boldly where no
one has gone before.”
sentence parsing - Process of assigning words to a phrase
structure
Garden-path sentences
Minimal attachment - simplest phrase structure
Extralinguistic context
Prosody - the patterns of pauses
and pitch changes that characterize speech production
Children learn language even with no
exposure
Limits on biological preparation for
language
Linguistic relativity is the hypothesis that
people who speak different languages think differently
Children raised in bilingual homes learn
both languages as quickly as monolingual children learn one language