Factors influencing second language acquisition: age, native-like mastery, vocabulary comprehension, and fluency
Dialect: regional variety of a language distinguished by features like vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation
Graymatter increases as one learns a second language
Speech errors:
Slipsofthetongue: inadvertent linguistic errors in speech
Spoonerisms: initial sounds of two words are reversed to create different words
Malapropism: one word is replaced by a similar-sounding word with a different meaning
Metaphors juxtapose two nouns to assert their similarities, while similes use "like" or "as" in comparisons
Pragmatics is the study of how people use language, and proxemics studies interpersonal distance or proximity
Speech acts address what can be accomplished with speech and fall into five basic categories
Aphasia is an impairment of language functioning caused by brain damage
Characteristics of successful conversation:
Maxim ofquantity: give enough information but not too much
Maxim of quality: be truthful
Maxim of relation: answers should be related and relevant
Maximofmanner: avoid obscurity, ambiguity, be brief and orderly
Communication encompasses aspects beyond language, including nonverbal communication like gestures or facial expressions
Psycholinguistics is the psychology of language interacting with the human mind, considering both language production and comprehension
Four areas contributing to understanding psycholinguistics are:
Linguistics: study of language structure and change
Neurolinguistics: study of brain, cognition, and language relationships
Sociolinguistics: study of the relationship between social behavior and language
Computationallinguisticsandpsycholinguistics: study of language using computational methods
Properties of language:
Communicative: allows communication with others who share the same language
Arbitrarily symbolic: creates an arbitrary relationship between symbols and their representations
Regularly structured: has a structure where specific patterned arrangements of symbols convey meaning
Structuredatmultiple levels: can be analyzed in sounds, meaning units, words, and phrases
Generative, productive: within linguistic structure, users can create novel utterances
Dynamic: languages constantly evolve with new words added to the dictionary each year
Components of words:
Phone: smallest unit of speech sound
Phoneme: smallest unit of speech sound distinguishing utterances in a language
Phonetics: study of producing or combining speech sounds
Phonemics: study of specific phonemes in a language
Morpheme: smallest unit of meaning in a language
Phonemicrestorationeffect: integrating knowledge with what is heard in speech perception
Basic components of words:
Contentmorpheme: conveys the bulk of meaning in language
Functionmorpheme: adds detail or nuance to content morpheme meaning or fits the grammatical context
Lexicon: entire set of morphemes in a given language
Language comprehension involves understanding what someone says and perceiving speech through ordinary speech perception, including categorical perception
Brain areas important for language:
Wernicke'sarea: language comprehension
Broca's area: language production
Expressive aphasia (Broca's aphasia): difficulty producing language but understanding others
Receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia): trouble understanding language but fluent in speech
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:
Linguistic relativity: speakers of different languages have differing cognitive systems influencing how they think
Linguistic determinism: language spoken determines how the world is perceived
Bilingualism types:
Additive: second language acquired in addition to a well-developed first language
Subtractive: elements of a second language replace elements of the first language
Simultaneous: learning two languages from birth
Sequential: learning one language first, then another
Factors influencing second language acquisition: age, native-like mastery, vocabulary comprehension, and fluency
Dialect: regional variety of a language distinguished by features like vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation
Gray matter increases when learning a second language
Speech errors:
Slips of the tongue: inadvertent linguistic errors in speech
Spoonerisms: initial sounds of two words are reversed, creating different words
Malapropism: one word replaced by a similar-sounding word with a different meaning
Metaphors juxtapose two nouns to assert their similarities, while similes use "like" or "as" in comparisons
Pragmatics studies how people use language, while proxemics focuses on interpersonal distance