The Science of Language Flashcards

Flashcards covering the science of language, including historical debates, linguistics properties, speech perception, brain regions, and language acquisition.

B. F. Skinner

A proponent of operant conditioning who argued that all human behavior, including language, could be explained through principles of reinforcement and shaping.

Alfred North Whitehead

The philosopher who challenged Skinner's behaviorist explanation of language by uttering the sentence, "No black scorpion shall fall upon this table."

Verbal Behavior (1957)

The book by Skinner that applied concepts like shaping and reinforcement to explain linguistic interactions, published over twenty years after his meeting with Whitehead.

Syntactic Structures (1957)

Noam Chomsky's influential work arguing that language is based on arbitrary symbols and rules that allow for infinite combination and recombination.

Faculty for Language

A universal human attribute, different from specific instantiations like English, German, or Bahasa Indonesia.

Mutually Unintelligible

The criterion used to define separate languages; for example, German and English are no longer mutually intelligible despite sharing words like finger, hand, and arm.

Dialects

Mutually intelligible versions of a language that differ in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, often tied to region, social class, or race.

Accents

Different ways of pronouncing the same words without differences in vocabulary or grammar.

Language Extinction

The phenomenon where an estimated $90\%$ of current languages may be extinct within $100$ years as people opt for dominant languages for commerce and assimilation.

Universal Grammar

Chomsky's theory that the underlying deep structure of language is an innate organizing principle of human cognition.

Arbitrary Symbols

The concept that there is no inherent connection between a sound and its meaning, such as the word "walking" being "gin" in German and "jalan jalan" in Bahasa.

Discrete Infinity

Using a finite set of symbols to create an open-ended or infinite set of meanings.

Recursion

The ability to embed phrases within phrases or clauses within clauses, making it impossible for a "longest sentence" to exist.

Snoligosta

An archaic English term meaning intelligence without principles.

Fudgling

An archaic English term meaning to appear to work while doing nothing.

Trumpery

An archaic English term meaning showy but worthless.

Phonemes

The smallest units of speech that change meaning, such as $/k/$ in "cat" vs. $/b/$ in "bat."

Phonology

The study of how sounds (phonemes) are put together to form language.

Ikong (Kalahari Bushmen)

A group that uses over $150$ phonemes, including click sounds.

Motor Theory of Speech Perception

Lieberman's theory proposing that humans hear language by mapping sounds onto the invariant motor production of the vocal apparatus.

McGurk Effect

An effect demonstrating that speech perception integrates auditory and visual cues, such as perceiving "da" when hearing "ba" but seeing the lip movements for "ga."

Fuzzy Logical Model of Speech Perception

Massaro's model where listeners map acoustic inputs onto brain-stored prototypes with probability values.

Morphemes

The smallest units of meaning, which include roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

Content Morphemes

Morphemes that carry primary meaning, including stems like "dog" and prefixes/suffixes like "anti-" or "-able."

Functional Morphemes (Inflections)

Grammatical tools like "-s" for plural, "-ed" for past tense, and "-ing" for progressive tense.

Syntax

Rules for ordering words into phrases and phrases into sentences, independent of semantics (meaning).

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

An innate mechanism proposed by Chomsky that allows children to learn the rules of a particular language from their social environment.

Deep Structure

The underlying similarities in rule-governed organization shared across all languages.

Surface Structure

The specific word order (e.g., SVO in English vs. SOV in Japanese) that varies based on environmental parameter settings.

Over-regularization

A linguistic stage where children apply general grammar rules to exceptions, such as saying "two foots" instead of "feet."

Pragmatics

The study of how context and socially understood scripts influence language use.

Maxim of Quantity

A Gricean Maxim stating one should provide the required amount of information—not too little and not too much.

Maxim of Quality

A Gricean Maxim stating one should be truthful and only say what they believe to be true.

Maxim of Manner

A Gricean Maxim stating one should be clear and avoid obscurity or jargon.

Broca’s Area

The brain region situated above the left ear responsible for language production.

Wernicke’s Area

The brain region at the back of the brain responsible for language comprehension.

Aphasia

A language disorder; damage to Broca's area results in production/grammar deficits (agrammatism), while damage to Wernicke's results in receptive deficits (inability to understand).

Poverty of the Stimulus

Chomsky's argument that environmental input is too thin/erratic for children to learn complex grammar solely via reinforcement.

Critical Period

The window during childhood when language must be acquired; learning a second language without an accent is extremely difficult after puberty.

Kanzi

A bonobo that showed comprehension of novel sentences comparable to a $2.5$-year-old human but lacked generative production.

Cuneiform

An early system of writing consisting of wedge marks on flat clay tablets, evolved from Sumerian accounting methods.