Please read the article on your desk titled
“The Girl in the Window”.

Note- the chapter 2 assignment should be on pg. 56, not 57 as stated on NiceNet. I would like the Critical Thinking 1 and 2 on pg. 56.

INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 3

Language
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Language is a form of communication in which sounds and symbols are combined according to formal rules
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Phonemes are the basic speech sounds (English has 40-50 phonemes)
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of language Grammar provides rules for a language
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Syntax refers to the rules for word order in a sentence
Semantics refers to a system of using words to create meanings © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

What is a morpheme, for real? 

morpheme: a combination of sounds that have a meaning. A morpheme does not necessarily have to be a word.

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Example: the word cats has two morphemes. Cat is a morpheme, and s is a morpheme. Every morpheme is either a base or an affix. An affix can be either a prefix or a suffix.
Cat is the base morpheme, and s is a suffix.

Language and Thought
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Benjamin Lee Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis theorizes that language determines our perceptions of reality

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This states that language is not simply a way of voicing ideas, but is the very thing which shapes those ideas. One cannot think outside the confines of their language. The result of this process is many different world views by speakers of different languages.

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Researchers suggest that language influences thought
© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

Language Development
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Prelinguistic stage- begins with reflexive cry, then crying becomes more purposeful
Cooing- producing vowel-like sounds
Babbling- adding consonants to vowels
Linguistic stage- babbling begins to sound more like the language in the child’s home
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Overextension
Telegraphic speech
Overgeneralization

© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

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Overextension- Children in their second and third years sometimes use words as overextensions; “doggie,” for instance, may refer to a variety of four-legged animals as well as to dogs, and the word
“daddy” may be used in reference to all men. © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

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Telegraphic Speech: At approximately age 2, children enter the Two-Word Stage of language development.

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During this stage they exhibit telegraphic speech, which is speech that sounds very much like a telegram, has words arranged in an order that makes sense, and contains almost all nouns and verbs. For example, a child at this stage of development who wants to get milk may say "get milk", as opposed to saying just
"milk". As you can see, there are only two words, they are in an order that makes sense, there is one verb and one noun, and it sounds like a telegram.
© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

Overgeneralizations
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the process of extending the application of a rule to items that are excluded from it in the language norm, as when a child uses the regular past tense verb ending
-ed of forms like I walked to produce forms like *I goed or *I rided.

© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

Theories of Language
Development
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Is language capability innate or learned?
Most researchers believe that language acquisition is a combination of nature and nurture.
Language Acquisition Device- an innate mechanism, hypothesized by Chomsky, that enables a child to analyze language and extract the basic rules of grammar

© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

Noam Chomsky: Language Acquisition Device

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humans are born with a special biological brain mechanism, called a Language Acquisition Device (LAD).

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This theory supposes that the ability to learn language is inborn, that nature is more important than nurture and that experience using language