Ch. 8.11-13 - Language, From Morphemes to Semantics, Syntax

syntax

the rules for combining words and morphemes into meaningful phrases and sentences

Garden Path Sentences

• Sentence syntax evaluated on a word-by-word basis rather than once all the information is available

• Garden path sentences lead you to one misleading or unintended interpretation based on early words in the sentence

ex of garden path sentences

‘The old man the boats’

‘Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a short distance’

morphemes

the smallest meaningful units of a language

how many morphemes are there in english

50,000

semantics

Often words are ambiguous and their meaning needs to be considered in the context of how they are being used

ex of semantics

crash/accident vs crash/sound

Properties of Language

-            Communication that involves spoken, written, or gestural symbols that are combined in a rule-based form

unique features of langauge

-            Semanticity

-            Productivity

-            Displacement

-            Socially learned

Phonemes

the most basic unit of speech sounds

ex of phonemes

/B/ /A/ /T/

how many phonemes can the vocal tract make

200

Experience-dependent plasticity

Young infants capable of discriminating all 200 phonemes, but lose this ability around 10 months

if someone grew up speaking arabic, then later learned english as a 2nd language at 12 yrs old, why would they have trouble speaking english without an accent

english and arabic have some phonemes in common, but some are different so a native arabic speaker wouldn’t be able to discriminate the different english phoneme