AP PSYCH 5.11 Components of Language and Language Acquisition

Language Acquisition

William James, the first American psychologist, was a proponent of functionalism
- He believed that everything the mind did had a function and was interested in finding out what those functions were
That purpose of language is not only to communicate, but also a structure or scaffolding for thoughts to grow around
Babies have thoughts before they understand speech, but learning language may be what allows them to have more complex ones

An unconscious process
Infants are not consciously aware of learning how to speak or how to apply grammar rules
- It just happens through an unimpaginably complex neural process

Noam Chomsky proposed that humans will learn language no matter what, even if they have to develop their own
- Infants are neurologically wired to learn language
- Deaf babies babble sound they’ve never heard
He calls this ability or process the language acquisition device
- He was considered a nativist, as related to the nature/nurture debate

Edward Sapir theorized that the language we are born into shapes or determines what kinds of thought we think in an unalterable way
Think of a situation where something does not translate well
- Like a single word in another language having to be converted into a long phrase in english
This idea is called linguistic determinism
Linguistic relativism suggests that thoughts can be altered if a person not only learns to speak a new language but if they can think in that new language
These two theories are called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Learning a second language, especially after childhood, is very hard to do
It is purposeful, conscious activity to try and encode rules, conventions, and patterns of another language

Eye contact is a type of communication that can show intent or connectedness
Babbling, usually consonants paired with a vowel
- Ma, Da, Pa, etc.
Holophrase, a single word with a complete thought behind it
- “Juice,” is probably a request or identification
Telegraphic speech is two-word phrases
- In english, this implies the beginning of an understanding of grammar
Fast mapping is when toddlers being to use context and what they’ve heard from others to lean the meaning of new words
Overgeneralization is misapplying grammar words after having identified a pattern
- “I runned really fast"
Critical Period is when a child must learn something, after which plasticity is severely limited
- This is the point at which language pathways close off, and learning a new language is much harder from this point on
Sensitive Period is when the brain is best able to do something
- Language is best learned when young, before the language-learning pathways have closed