Language and Thought

Language is defined as spoken, written, or signed words combined to convey meaning.
It transmits civilization's knowledge across generations, connecting people to one another and their pasts.

Building Blocks of Language:
- Language is complex, built from simple elements.
- Three key components include:
- Phonemes: The smallest distinctive sound units in language.
- Morphemes: The smallest units in language that carry meaning.
- Grammar: The system of rules that enables effective communication.
  - Semantics: Deriving meaning from sounds.
  - Syntax: The ordering of words into sentences.

Noam Chomsky's Contributions:
- Not a psychologist but a linguistic expert who posits that all languages share basic elements termed universal grammar.
- Claims humans are predisposed to learn the rules of grammar, not specific languages, accounting for the diversity of over 6,000 languages worldwide.
- Chomsky's universal grammar stands opposed to the idea that language learning purely depends on exposure to spoken language in one's environment.

Language evolves from social interactions, shown through:
- Nicaraguan Sign Language: Developed by young deaf children who combined gestures from home to create a complete sign language complete with grammar.
Nature vs. Nurture: Language development emerges from both inherent abilities and environmental factors.

Receptive Language: The ability to understand language, present from an early age.
- Infants can recognize speech sounds as early as four months, showing the capacity to discern word breaks and pattern recognition.
Productive Language: The emergence of spoken language begins after initial receptive capabilities.
- Stages of Language Development:
- Babbling Stage: Infants experiment with sounds, not yet related to household language.
- One-Word Stage: Around age one, recognizable words emerge (e.g., "more," "no").
- Two-Word Stage: Begins around two years old, combining words to form basic sentences (e.g., "go potty," "more cookie").
- Telegraphic Speech: Early speech resembling telegrams; omits less meaningful words, focusing on nouns and verbs (e.g., "more cookie" without articles).

Between the first birthday and high school graduation, individuals learn an estimated 60,000 words:
- Daily usage averages about 150 words; many are known but not frequently used.

Childhood as a Critical Period:
- Mastery of language aspects requires exposure to spoken or signed language by age seven.
- Late exposure (e.g., due to cochlear implants or adoption) affects language success but follows a similar developmental path.
Bilingualism and Age:
- Younger individuals are better positioned to learn a second language, as demonstrated through proficiency metrics based on age upon arrival in a new language environment, such as among Asian immigrants in the US.

Deaf children from hearing, non-signing parents may lack early language exposure.
Learning sign language after age nine leads to less fluency compared to native signers.
Deafness statistics: Over 466 million people live with significant hearing loss globally.
Debate over cochlear implants: While these devices convert sound into signals for the auditory nerve, activists argue against viewing deafness as a disability, emphasizing native signing as a natural linguistic capability.

Aphasia: Damage to specific brain areas can hinder language functions:
- Broca's Area: Located in the frontal lobe and responsible for language expression; damage results in difficulty speaking.
- Wernicke's Area: Located in the left temporal lobe; responsible for language comprehension; damage leads to challenges in understanding.

Linguistic Determinism: Hypothesis put forth by Wharf that language shapes thought processes (e.g., absence of past tense in some languages leads to a diminished concept of the past).
Linguistic Relativism: Suggests that language influences thought processes but does not strictly determine them.
- Examples include how native language influences perception, such as color recognition among speakers of different languages.

Pronoun usage can shape personal identity.
Respect for preferred pronouns is significant for gender non-conforming individuals.

Bilingual education programs (e.g., French immersion in Canada) foster natural fluency in second languages.
Potential cognitive advantages observed in bilingual individuals include enhanced planning and attention-switching skills.
Ongoing debate regarding the overall cognitive performance advantages of bilingualism; some research questions the reliability of these findings.

While some animals communicate and hold comprehensible signal systems, most psychologists agree that humans uniquely possess complex language systems that encompass grammatical structures.
Examples of animal communication:
- Apes and certain birds can engage in meaningful interactions but lack the complex grammar that characterizes human language.
- Washoe the chimp learned basic sign language, yet gaps exist compared to human linguistic capacities.