Chapter 1

Language is a "socially shared code that uses a conventional

system of arbitrary symbols to represent ideas about the world that
are meaningful to others who know the same code."
1. Language Is Sociallv Shared.
2. Language Is a· CodeThat Uses a System of Arbitrary Symbols.
Morphemes are the smallest units of language that carry
meaning; they are combined to create words.
Referent (the aspect of the world to which the word refers)
3. The Language Code Is Conventional.
4. Language is a Representational Tool.

Modularity is a cognitive science theory about how the human

mind is organized within the brain structures
The brain seems to contain “a large number of relatively small but
tightly clustered and interconnected modules with unique
contributions to language processing."

Speech involves the precise activation of muscles in four

systems: respiration (a breath of air that is
inspired into and then expired from the lungs), phonation (over
the vocal cords), resonation (into the oral and nasal cavities), and
articulation (The breath of air is then manipulated
by the oral articulator).

A model is a way to represent an unknown event on the basis of

the best current evidence governing the event.

Speech production has three stages:

1. The speech production process is initiated with a mental,
abstract representation of the speech stream to be produced
(language code).
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can signal a
difference in meaning, and in the production of syllables and
words, a series of phonemes are strung together. Conventionally,
phonemes are represented by the symbols of the International
Phonetic Alphabet
2. Development of a motor schema to represent the perceptual
language-based representation. The motor schema is a
rough motor plan based on the abstract representation of the
perceptual target (speech output).

Audition = hearing.
Speech perception (word)
Auditory perception (sound)

Symbolic communication, also called referential communication,

occurs when an individual communicates about a specific entity
(an object or event), and the relationship between the entity and its
referent (e.g., a word) is arbitrary.
Example: “bottle” to mean “drink.”
Preintentlonal communication is communication in which other
people assume the relationship between a communicative behavior
and its referent.
Example: infant cry can mean “I’m hungry” or “I’m wet”
Intentional/Iconic Communication more precise but the
relationship between the communicative intent and its referent is
not arbitrary.
Example: infant pointing to a bottle.

Three-Domain System
1. Content refers to the meaning of language-the words used and
the meaning behind them.
2. Form is how words, sentences, and sounds are organized and
arranged to convey content.
3. Use pertains to how people draw on language functionally to
meet personal and social needs. When you examine this domain of
language, you are asking about the intentions behind the utterances
and how well the utterances achieve these intentions.
Five-Component System
1. Semantics (content) refers to the rules of language governing
the meaning of individual words and word combinations.
2. Syntax (form) refers to the rules of language governing the
internal organization of sentences.
3. Morphology (form) pertains to the rules of language governing
the internal organization of words.
4. Phonology (form) refers to the rules of language governing the
sounds used to make syllables and words (we have 39 phenomes).
5. Pragmatics (use) pertains to the rules of language governing
how language is used for social purposes. Pragmatics comprises
the set of rules that govern three important aspects of the social use
of language: (a) using language for different functions or intentions
(communication intentions), (b) organizing language for discourse,
and (c) knowing what to say and when and how to say it (social
conventions).

Language Development
Dialects are the natural variations of a language that evolve within
specific cultural or geographic boundaries. These variations affect
form, content, and use.
Children raised bilingually often show language differences not
seen in children who are raised monolingually, such as
interchanges between the syntax and the vocabulary of the two
languages they are learning. This phenomenon is referred to as
code switching.
Gender. One relatively well-known fact is that girls haVe an
advantage over boys in language development. Girls usually begin
talking earlier than boys do.
Genetic Predisposition.
Language-Learning Environment.

Chapter 3
s
Five components of the three domains:

Semantics – individual’s learning and storage of the meaning of words.

Pragmatics
Syntax
^content and use^
Morphology
Phonology
^form^

Building blocks of semantic development:

Developing a lexicon, l
earning new words, and
organizing the lexicon for efficient retrieval.

Building blocks of morphological development:

Acquiring grammatical (inflectional) and
derivational morphemes.

Building blocks of syntactic development:

Increasing utterance length,
Using different sentence modalities, and
Developing complex syntax.

Building blocks of phonological development:

Becoming sensitive to prosodic and phonotactic cues in streams of
speech,
Developing internal representations of the phonemes of the native
language, and
Becoming phonologically aware.

Building blocks of pragmatic development:

Acquiring communication functions,
developing conversational skills, and
gaining sensitivity to extralinguistic cues.