...Language Essay Ryan Butler Psychology 360 August 29, 2011 Professor Newlin LANGUAGE Have you ever wondered how we speak? How about why our communication is considered a language and other animal’s communication is not considered language? A wide range of beliefs exist on what defines language. Thus, by exploring the definition of language and lexicon, evaluating language’s key features, the four levels of language structure and processing, and the role of language in Cognitive Psychology, an understanding of what language is becomes clear. Let us begin by defining language and a term named lexicon. LANGUAGE AND LEXICON DEFINITION One big question, when the subject of language comes up, is exactly what language is. What constitutes something as a language? By explaining one definition of a language, and a term associated with language, called a lexicon, a definition of language transpires. Thus, the Willingham (2007) text mentions four certain characteristics communication must possess to, officially, be considered a language. One of these characteristics is that language must be communicative, and thus be communication between individuals in some form or another. Secondly, the symbols standing for words must be arbitrary, and thus have no reason for representing a word. Third, a language must be structured, and not arbitrary. For example, if I say a dog was walking on a sidewalk I cannot say a sidewalk was walking on a dog. etc. Fourth, a language must be...
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...Definition: (1) The collection of words--the internalized dictionary--that every speaker of the language has. (2) A stock of terms used in a particular profession, subject, or style. Etymology: From the Greek, "word, speech" Examples and Observations: • The lexicon of soccer ("football" outside the U.S.) includes terms such as linesman, friendly match, yellow card, penalty shootout, pitch, result, and draw. • Words by the Numbers - "[T]here are currently about 600,000 words in the English language, with educated adults using about 2,000 words in daily conversation. For the 500 most frequently used words, there are some 14,000 dictionary meanings." (Wallace V. Schmidt et al., Communicating Globally. Sage, 2007) - "The English lexicon grew by 70 percent from 1950 to 2000, with roughly 8,500 new words entering the language each year. Dictionaries don't reflect a lot of those words." (Marc Parry, "Scholars Elicit a 'Cultural Genome' From 5.2 Million Google-Digitized Books." The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 16, 2010) • Myths of Word Learning "If you attend a class on language acquisition, or read any good introductory chapter on the subject, you are likely to learn the following facts about word learning. Children's first words are odd; they have funny meanings that violate certain semantic principles that hold for adult language and are learned in a slow and haphazard way. Then, at about 16 months, or after learning about fifty words, there is a sudden...
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...Defining Language Dameka Towner PSY/360 10/14/13 Steve Weiss Languages are spoken all over the world by different cultures people. Some individuals may speak Spanish, English, Laos, Chinese, or other languages depending on their nationality or culture and what language they were raised to speak. Language starts as early as infancy. Babies tend to cry if they are hungry, wet, or something is hurting them, yet the cry has its own distinction. For example, a cry when a baby is wet may be softer than a cry from a baby being hungry. This form a communication from the baby is considered as “baby language,” but it is la questionable if this really a form of Language? According Willingham, (2007), Communication must be communicative, arbitrary, structured, generative and dynamic to be deemed language. Although a baby cry is a form of communication, and it is arbitrary, it is not structured it only composes a single sound, and it is not generative. Because the baby’s cry lacks those two components it is not considered a reasonable form of communication. Furthermore, human cognitive functions and language assimilation is the mental dictionary that contains all stored representation of words. This is called the lexicon. When people speak about the lexicon they are literally talking about someone’s vocabulary. According to Oxford dictionary lexicon is the vocabulary of a person language, or branch of knowledge. Lexicon is more along the lines of what speech sounds, or written...
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... The current graduation paper is devoted to the detailed study of the neologisms in the American press. The latter is observed via examining the cases of neologisms brought forward by B. Obama. In this paper an attempt was made to throw light upon many words and phrases that are used in modern American political lexicon, as well as to examine some political neologisms that help to cover the 2008 Presidental Election Campaign. The graduation paper consists of an introduction, two chapters, conclusion and bibliography. The introduction manifests the main topic of the research, the major phenomenon related to the investigation and to basic structure of the paper. In throws light upon the development of the political language which promotes the creation of neologisms. Chapter One analyzes the political language in general as well as the four main political styles that the political language is...
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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...
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...Language PSY 360 June 17, 2015 Melissa Jackson ------------------------------------------------- Language An intense association exists between cognitive abilities and language. Thought processes have the capability of altering communication methods; however, methods of communication can very easily do the same to an individual’s way of thinking. New ideas are communicated in which thought can be generated simply by thinking of the name of a certain stimulus. Language can be defined by several different key components. A reciprocated attempt at a considerate conversation between individuals can be anything from arbitrary to unsubstantial, yet likely to be configured and orderly through numerous manners in which general ideas are configured through the different parts of a language (Papafragou, Li, Choi, & Han 2007). In addition, language can also be dynamic and constantly developing, therefore leading to the conclusion that such an intricate topic, such as language, is challenging to undertake, especially in explaining in more depth how it works in its entirety through the key components toward a better understanding. The main purpose of the key features of language, including arbitrariness, communications, and dynamics, as well as generative and structured divergences, is to facilitate the comprehension and translation of language itself. Associating words to stimuli is unsystematic in its development and is groundless in an unconscious attempt to form...
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...explain the three Knowledge Sources of the Unified Medical Language System. There are three UMLS Knowledge Sources: the Metathesaurus®, the Semantic Network, and the SPECIALIST Lexicon. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) creates the Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS®) to facilitate the development of computer systems that act as if they "understand" the meaning of the language of biomedicine and health. This system is modernized twice a year in May and November. The Metathesaurus®, is a customizable, multi-purpose, and multi-lingual vocabulary database that is organized by concept, or meaning. It connects alternative names and views of the same concepts from different source vocabularies and identifies useful relationships between different concepts The Semantic Network consists of a set of broad subject categories, or semantic types, that provide a consistent categorization of all concepts represented in the UMLS. Also incorporated in this network is a set of practical and significant relationships, or semantic relations, that exist between semantic types, e.g., treats, diagnoses, and contains. The scope of the Semantic Network is broad, allowing for the semantic categorization of a wide range of expressions in multiple domains. The SPECIALIST Lexicon supplies the word usage information needed for the SPECIALIST Natural Language Processing (NLP) System. The Lexicon is a general English language dictionary that includes many biomedical terms. Coverage...
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...English9(RJ) Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of a given language's morphemes and other linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context (words in a lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology). Morphological typology represents a method for classifying languages according to the ways by which morphemes are used in a language—from the analytic that use only isolated morphemes, through the agglutinative ("stuck-together") and fusional languages that use bound morphemes (affixes), up to the polysynthetic, which compress many separate morphemes into single words.(One of the definitions for Morphology) While words are generally accepted as being (with clitics) the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, if not all, words can be related to other words by rules (grammars). For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog and dogs are closely related—differentiated only by the plurality morpheme "-s", which is only found bound to nouns, and is never separate. Speakers of English (a fusional language) recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of the rules of word formation in English. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; similarly, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher, in one sense. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog, dogs and dog-catcher are closely related. English speakers recognize...
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...Language: Many Facets Communications comes in all kinds of sounds and symbols. A creature communicates in various ways, whether it is by sounds of voices, sounds of animals, signs, or symbols very existence of creatures on this planets attempt to communicate in some facet. According to the typical definition of language the response is simple. Willingham, 2007 states that “communication must be communicative, arbitrary, structured, generative and dynamic to be deemed a language.” The sound of animals is a part of communication, but these sounds are arbitrary, they might even be regarded as dynamic; however it is not structured, but it is original, so it makes a particular sound, even though it is not generative. The mental dictionary is of interest to the cognitive functions, and language assimilation of an individual because of the stored images of the speech, and the lexicon. The lexical doorway accrue the spelling, pieces of sounds, and pronunciation for every single word that has been incorporate into a person’s vocabulary. Furthermore, it is amazing how an individual can selectively distinguish the words by cross-referencing these forms of speech with things that they have identified with that is perceptible. Human beings attempt to associate certain sounds that animals make with precise lexicons to see if those specific sounds can formulate a specific language. According Willingham, 2007 he states in the text that language is hard to define. The standard definition and...
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...Jr, Meyer, A. S., & Wurm, L. H. (2003). Language comprehension and production. Comprehensive Handbook of Psychology, Volume 4: Experimental Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pages 527-548. Copyright John Wiley & Sons. Psycholinguistics: Language comprehension and production Rebecca Treiman Wayne State University Charles Clifton, Jr. University of Massachusetts Antje S. Meyer University of Birmingham Lee H. Wurm Wayne State University Acknowledgments: Preparation of this chapter was supported by NSF Grant SBR-9807736 to R.T. and NIH Grant HD18708 to the University of Massachusetts. To appear in A.F. Healy & R.W. Proctor (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of psychology, Vol. 4: Experimental Psychology. New York: Wiley. Treiman et al., Psycholinguistics, 2 Introduction Language comprehension Spoken word recognition Printed word recognition The mental lexicon Comprehension of sentences and discourse Phenomena common to reading and listening comprehension Phenomena specific to the comprehension of spoken language Phenomena specific to the comprehension of written language Language production Access to single words in spoken language production Generation of sentences in spoken language production Written language production Conclusions INTRODUCTION Psychologists have long been interested in language, but psycholinguistics as a field of study...
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...What is language and how does the process of language affect everyone on a daily basis. Language has different levels and key features of the language. Language affects his or her cognitive thinking skills. Language will be discussed in many forms. Language is his or her way of communicating with people. Language can be broken down in steps and the process of communication. Lexicon is in the vocabulary and is part of a particular language, field social class and person. Dictonary. Com (2013) Lexicon is individuals own words his or her vocabulary. Lexicon is individual’s way of communicating through his or her vocabulary. The four levels of language include phonemes, words, sentences, text and grammar. Phonemes are how individual speak sounds in the alphabet. There are forty-six different phonemes in the English language. Words and phonemes are connected. The forty-six English phonemes are combined in varies ways to produce all of the approximately 600,000 words in the English Language. Willingham, (2007) the words individuals use is what processes are speaking abilities. When individuals use language he or she will speak in sentences, individuals will process his or her language skills on paper when writing sentences. When writing sentences individuals, have to follow rules when, speaking and writing sentences. The text in a paragraph is in regarded to the paragraph he or she is in. Individuals will have a different text for another paragraph connecting the...
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...What can It Tell Us about Vocabulary Acquisition ? Robin Russ Introduction Vocabulary is central to communicating in a foreign language. Without sufficient words to express a wide variety of meanings, communicating in a foreign language cannot happen in a meaningful way (McCarthy, 1990). As such, vocabulary acquisition is a primary concern for Japanese foreign language learners, and it is a main focus of their interest and attention. A casual survey of what Japanese university students find most difficult about sustaining even short conversations in English often elicits responses such as “I can't express my ideas” and “I don't have the words”, or self admonishments such as “I was stuck for a word many times” or “I should know more English words”. In spite of having acquired a large English lexis for high school examination purposes, when students are “off the page” and speaking extemporaneously, even about familiar everyday topics, they experience firsthand the limitations of their productive vocabulary. Engaged by a class activity yet restricted by insufficient vocabulary, a common expedient is to revert to speaking in Japanese. How is language organized and what are the mechanisms that allow us to retrieve the words we know immediately and correctly? Psycholinguistic studies have shown that words are not stored in the mental lexicon as single independent items but form clusters or webs with other related concepts so that words acquire their full meaning in reference...
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...The Linguistics Assessment of a Young Child’s Language Melissa Ozuna California State University, Los Angeles Questions: 1, 5, 7, 8, 12 The Linguistic Assessment of a Young Child’s Language Introduction “The child begins to perceive the world not only through his eyes but also through his speech.” Like Lev Vygotsky, Holmes speaks about one of the everyday behavior we use and that’s language. Communication is done by engaging our brains and bodies to make sounds and transfer one person’s thoughts to another. No matter how many languages there are, language can still be broken down into the same building blocks of communication. Specifically, linguistics is analyzed with one of the smallest building blocks like phonology, to lexicon, to syntax, to morphology, and communicative competence. Just how small these building blocks of linguistics come together at its own pace, is exactly how small it is to learn language. Language learning can be done at its own pace, but with the help of assessments there are common turning points, procedures, and phases one can follow to truly understand an individual’s language development over time. Method Participants Rita is a 3 year and two month old female. She is the second child of the family living under the roof with both parents. Father works at a Police station and mother’s occupation is at a office profession. From her beginning till her present days she has spoken 100% English. Procedure The interview was conducted in the living room/...
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...are no studies that provide a comprehensive analysis of them. Also, it is due to the characteristics that will be described below. They are against the logical structure of the discourse in which “the meanings of the utterances depend on the meanings of their parts and on the syntactic relation among those parts” (Johnson-Laird 1993). This factor gives idioms a heterogeneous character, and describes them as very complex linguistic configurations. Since some expressions have both a literal and an idiomatic meaning, for instance, it's better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick, and others have only an idiomatic interpretation, such as pull the strings, idioms are transparent to native speakers but are a great complication for second language learners. Idioms are flexible because they can be substantially modified if they suffer lexical substitutions, syntactic operations and semantic productivity. This depends on their degree of compositionality as, the more compositional an idiom, the more willing it is to be altered. Considering a non-compositional idiom like pull the strings, it is possible to say that if their lexical constituents are modified the idiomatic meaning is lost, for instance, the idiomatic meaning was ‘to be in control’ but if the second constituent is changed by rope, such as pull the rope, this phrase loses its idiomatic meaning and remains only its literal meaning. In conclusion, word substitution is not acceptable. The main reason that causes the failure...
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...communicate in two languages. Bilingualism can be acquired in two different ways. Children usually acquire bilingualism from being exposed to two separate languages from a parent, nanny, or caregiver. Simultaneous bilingualism occurs when a child acquires two languages at the same time (simultaneously), before the age of three (Otto and Hall, 2010). Ideally, the child will have equal experiences with each language. Sequential bilingualism is when a child has had sufficient exposure, usually after the age of three and after the first language is mastered. (asha.org, 2004). Sequential bilingualism is when the child acquires their second language after they have mastered a primary language. This usually occurs when they have parents who speak a different language from that of the community. When they enter school, they are introduced to their second language. There are two main hypotheses that explain how children acquire secondary language. They are the unitary system hypothesis and the separate system hypothesis. In the unitary system hypothesis, it is the belief that children fuse together words from both languages into one lexicon. After around three years of age, they will start to split the words into two separate lexicons, but use the one set of grammar rules. In the separate system hypothesis, it is believed that the child separates the languages in the beginning, creating two different lexicons. Studies indicate that the vocabulary in each language of the bilingual...
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