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Language Paper

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Submitted By kica1234
Words 1113
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Language Paper
Eric Vasquez
University of Phoenix
Psy 360
Melissa Jackson
07/25/11

Language Paper
Communication starts as young as infancy, babies cry when they need to be changed, feed, or when something is bothering them, and each cry is different. The cry for when they’re hungry might be louder with fewer pauses in between than that of a cry for when he wants to be changed. Some people call this baby language, but can their cries be constituted as language? According to the Oxford English Dictionary the definition for language (n.d) is “the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way” Communication must be communicative, arbitrary, structured, generative and dynamic to be deemed language (Willingham, 2007). Although a baby’s cry is arbitrary, dynamic, and communicative, it’s not structured or generative. While it is a form of communication it is not a reasonable form of language.
Along with cognitive functions and language assimilation we all need to have a mental dictionary, which contains all of the stored representations of words, this is called the lexicon. The Oxford English Dictionary defines lexicon (n.d) as “ the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge” These lexical entries store the pronunciation, spelling, and part of speech for every word that has been assimilated. As humans we recognize words by comparing them to what we audio perceive them to be. So when a baby cries we compare the sounds that the baby makes to the stored lexicon and determine if the sound the baby is making constitutes language. Understanding language is more complicated than just its lexicon and definition, we also have to come to understand its key features, its four levels of structure and processing as well as its role in cognitive psychology.
Key Features of Language

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