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The Relationship between Language and Cognition - Coggle Diagram
The Relationship between Language and Cognition
Background context
speakers of different languages have dfferent ways of thinking, viewing or perceiving the world (Whorf 1956).
In relation to language acquisition, cognition was considered to be the driving force behind language acquisition.
locative terms were found to emerge in a remarkably consistent order both within and across languages,
All children initially adhere to a universal and uniform starting organisation of semantic space and only later, after more linguistic experience, diverge in the direction of the semantic system of the input language
It is not just a one-way mapping from pre-existing concepts in linguistic expression as was previously thought, but rather there is an interaction between nonlinguistic cognition and semantic categories of the input language on language development
Thinking for speaking
type of thinking “that is carried out on-line in the process of speaking” as the linguistic categories of the language that one speaks shapes or fiters the way that aspects of the world are expressed
Children learn from an early age to attend to and encode aspects of the world using grammatical or obligatory language specific categories available in their language.
**obligatory means: the dimension in question cannot be regularly referred to without the expression in question
It means that children learn a specific language patterns of thinking for speaking from early in language development, that suits their particular language
Some languages encode a domain on a regular basis whereas other languages do not
Distinction in rules will require the children to access more frequently or habitually till it become automated in learning
eg: a concept expressed by a single verb is more codable
Resurgence in interest in linguistic relativity
a speaker’s language can have an influence on cognition comes from relative VS. absolute orientation for describing the location of objects
Relative System
locate objects by reference to the position and orientation of the speaker e.g. to the left of the house, in front of the tree.
Absolute System
- reference is made to a xed, external bearing, such as compass points or landscape features,
west of the house, north of the tree (about a third of languages in the world use this type of reference)
using a number of spatial tasks, that this difference be-tween the two language types has additional cognitive consequences
The temporal domain
In the temporal domain, two distinct language typologies have been identified, based on whether languages have a grammatical marking of both poles of the imperfective-perfective aspectual contrast or not
Imperfective aspect
views an event from within and without beginning and end points
plays an impor-tant function in backgrounding events and gives an unbounded or durative mean-ing to the even
plays an important role in the expression of simultaneity or the overlap of events or actions
perfective aspect
views a situation as a single whole with initial and terminal points
Typological and language-specifc patterns
the range of linguistic strategies used to express temporal relations in Thai was examined for the overall frog story and for Pictures 2 and 12.
The youngest age group used imperfective aspect markers the most
imperfective morphemes were also used the most by the youngest children,
In contrast, the 9-year-olds did not use aspect markers for either Picture 2 or 12, but used “compensatory” temporal connectives the most.
the older narrators, 9-year-olds and adults, use additional linguistic strategies such as relative clauses and causal connectives that imply the occurrence of two overlapping actions.
narrators from languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use “compensatory” temporal connectives and additional linguistic devices to encode temporal relations.
distinctive patterns emerged in the way that speakers refer to the temporal distinctions depicted in the frog story dependent on the “obligatoriness” of aspectual marking in the two language
Thai narrators use a range of rhetorical options, both explicit and implicit for expressing overlapping temporal relations which varies with age
Even when languages offer the same set of options for encoding an event, speakers may differ in the patterns or frequency of use of these options. Clearly, further research is needed to investigate or tease apart shared typological patterns and intra-typological differences or language specific patterns
Conclusion
Early caretaker-child interactions, and the input that the child is exposed to, is critical in the formation of language-specific semantic categories and the rhetorical style unique to the particular language
Child-directed utterances provide clues about the typological characteristics of the specific input
language to the young language learner
Language does influence cognition to some extent
It may be effective only during the actual process of thinking-for-speaking (Slobin 1996), or it could have longer-term effects on non-linguistic cognition as demonstrated by Levinson and colleagues in the spatial domain
Recent research indicates that the child, from an early age, tunes in and acquires the characteristic style or pattern of usage specic to the language they are exposed to.