Tutorial 1 1003

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1003

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Linguistics

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Apr 3, 2024

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TUTORIAL SESSION #1 CHAPTER 9 – LANGUAGE AND THINKING DISCUSSION: Discuss the difference between the Language acquisition device (LAD) and the Language Acquisition Support system (LASS). How do they both impact language development? - The language acquisition device is an innate biological mechanism that contains the general grammatical rules common to all languages. - And the language acquisition support system represents factors in the social environment that facilitate the learning of a language. - While LAD impacts biologically and LASS impacts socially, both LAD and LASS interact in a mutually supportive fashion to help normal language development to occur. Discuss the properties of language. - Displacement: Allows language users to communicate about events or things that are absent from the current environment (what you did last week, your friend who is not with you, what you will do on vacation, etc.). This allows humans to make up stories and to think about the future. - Arbitrariness: The words and symbols used to denote objects are not inherently related to the objects they symbolize. - Productivity: The potential unique sentences/word combinations/sounds is infinite. - Discreteness: The sounds within the language are considered their own, discrete sounds with their own distinct meanings. - Duality: At one level of language there are discrete sounds, and at another, there are discrete meanings. You can combine the letters g, o and d in two different ways: god and dog, and those two words mean different things/sound differently even though they are comprised of the same three sounds. - Cultural Transmission: Language is acquired through culture. B. QUESTIONS: Next ask particular students to answer the following questions. If the student you randomly select cannot answer the question, open it up to the group for an answer. Differentiate between surface structure and deep structure. - The terms deep structure and surface structure were introduced by Noam Chomsky as a part of his work on transformational grammar. As per Chomsky, deep structure refers to concepts, thoughts, ideas & feelings and they are the underlying meaning of the combined symbols. On the other hand, surface structure refers to the words or language we use to represent the deep structure. The surface structure consists of the symbols that are used and their order is important.
Discuss the different types of heuristics. - There are many different kinds of heuristics, including the availability heuristic, the representativeness heuristic, and the affect heuristic. While each type plays a role in decision-making, they occur in different contexts. - The availability heuristic involves making decisions based on how easy it is to bring something to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, you might quickly remember a number of relevant examples. Since these are more readily available in your memory, you will likely judge these outcomes as being more common or frequently occurring. - The representativeness heuristic involves making a decision by comparing the present situation to the most representative mental prototype. When you are trying to decide if someone is trustworthy, you might compare aspects of the individual to other mental examples you hold. - The third one is one that I found on the internet, called the affect heuristic, which involves making choices that are influenced by the emotions that an individual is experiencing at that moment. Differentiate between the following terms: phonemes, morpehemes, and semantics. - A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that may cause a change of meaning within a language but that doesn't have meaning by itself. - A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that provides a specific meaning to a string of letters. - And semantics is the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form. Discuss the difference between “bottom-up” and “top-down“ processing. - In bottom-up processing, individual elements of a stimulus are analyzed and then combined to form a unified perception. Analyzing the hierarchical structure of spoken language as a set of building blocks that involve the use of honemes to create morphemes and the combination of morphemes to create words reflects a bottom-up approach. - On the other hand, in top-down processing, sensory information is interpreted in light of existing knowledge, concepts, ideas, and expectations. Language by its very nature involves top-down processing, because the words you write, read, speak, or hear activate and draw on your knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and other linguistic rules that are stored in your long-term memory. Discuss the areas of the brain that are important in language. - The first one is the Broca’s area, located in the front part of the left hemisphere of the brain. It has an important role in turning ideas and thoughts into actual spoken words. Broca’s area has been found to be most active right before speaking. - Other than this, Broca’s area also helps to pass the information to the motor cortex, which stimulates the speech production muscles, like controlling the movements of the mouth.
- Wernicke’s area is mainly involved in the understanding and processing of speech and written language. Wernicke’s area was first discovered by Karl Wernicke in 1876. It’s located in the temporal lobe, where it is also the region where sound is processed. - The cerebellum is also associated with speech comprehension. It is usually involved in coordinating voluntary muscle movements like opening and closing your mouth, moving your arms and legs, standing upright, and maintaining balance. But it also controls language processing. Discuss the biological theory of language acquisition. - This is an approach to explaining the mechanisms and processes involved in language acquisition, and it was proffered by Noam Chomsky, a distinguished linguist. Chomsky believed that language learning is facilitated by biological influences, particularly, innate mechanisms and capacities that emerge due to maturation. He further hypothesized that the brain of humans has a neural system which he termed the language-acquisition device (LAD) which allows the individual to understand the structure of language and develop strategies and techniques for learning characteristics that are- unique to certain languages. - It is further proposed that all children are equipped with a universal grammar at birth, which predisposes them to be receptive to the general features of all languages, thereby facilitating the natural acquisition of language. How does social learning impact language development? - A language is a tool humans use to communicate, connect to, influence and inform others. When a child who incessantly babbles happens to utter a meaningful word, such as ‘mama’, he is immediately rewarded with squeals of delight, applause and even a tight hug. Such responses make it more likely that the child will repeat the pleasure- invoking word. Through this highly interactive process of imitation, shaping and reinforcement, the child develops language that more and more resembles adult speech. - Psychologist Jerome Burner proposed the term language acquisition support system (LASS) to represent factors in the social environment that facilitate the learning of a language, and LASS and LAD (which is a language acquisition device) interact in a mutually supportive fashion to cause normal language development to occur. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of bilingual language development. - The pros of being bilingual are improved cognitive skills, delay of cognitive damage, and advantage in learning foreign languages. - The brain of a bilingual speaker quickly gets used to managing two languages at the same time. This helps to develop skills for functions ranging from inhibition, working memory and switching attention. Second, it can also delay the onset of symptoms in people suffering from dementia and other cognitive degenerative diseases. And some scientists claim that bilinguals have a better chance to easily learn other languages in future, but this insight still needs research and testing. - There are also disadvantage to bilingual language development.
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