Mod 36

• Language: our spoken, written or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning
• Phoneme: In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.
• Morpheme: in a language the smallest unit that carries meaning. May be a word or a part of a word. (such as prefix)
• Grammar: in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language's set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.
• babbling stage: beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.
• One-Word Stage: the stage in speech development from about age 1 - 2 during which a child speaks mostly in single words.
• Two - Word stage: beginning about age 2 the stage in speech development where a child speaks in two-word phrases.
• Telegraphic speech: early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram. Mostly nouns and verbs.
• Broca's area: helps control language expression, an area of the frontal lobe usually in the left hemisphere that directs the muscle movements involved in speech
• Wernicke's Area: a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression, usually in the left temporal lobe
• Linguistic Determinism - the idea that language is the primary determinant of thought and behavior
• Linguistic Influence: the weaker form of 'linguistic relativity" the idea that language affects thought