Quiz 2 (W4,5)

• How many languages in the world

  • 7100
• What is languages family?

  • Related languages that are descendents from a common ancestor language
• Protolanguages:

  • Ancestor of languages
• Language family tree divided into:

  • Protolanguages
  • Branch
  • Sub-branch
• Language family's importance:

  • Explain how and why languages evolve
  • Important piece of history - fall of empire, mass migration, trade routes
  • Understand geographic and social ties between countries that speak different languages
• What makes language family?

  • Significant number of common features -
  • Phonology
  • Morphology
  • Syntax
• Isolates:

  • a language which has not been shown to be a descendent of any ancestral language
  • Example - Basque
  • Korean is sometimes classified as a language isolate
• How languages evolve?

  • migration
  • trading
  • colonization
• Endangered languages:

  • Languages at risk of extinction due to declining numbers of speakers.
  • because of -
  • Cultures blending
  • globalization
  • favoring dominant languages
• • impact of language extinction
  • Loss of cultural heritage
  • knowledge
  • diversity
• solution for language extinction:

  • education
  • documenting
  • support
• Neurolinguistics:

  • the study of the neural and electrochemical bases of language development and use
• Brain Lateralization:

  • the division of functions between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
• left Hemisphere:

  • controls fine movements such as those to produce speech
• Frontal lobe:

  • planning
  • thinking about what to say next
  • production
• Parietal lobe:

  • movement
  • using tongue, lips, throat
  • sign language (signing)
• Occipital lobe:

  • visual processing
  • reading and writing
  • sign language (view)
  • facial cues, body language
• Brain stem & Cerebellum:

  • breathing
  • inhaling and exhaling
• Temporal lobe:

  • Listening
  • taking in sound
  • comprehension
• Lobe's location:

  
• Broca's area:

  • frontal lobe
  • affects motor function associated with speech production
  • if damaged affects speech production
• Wernicke's area:

  • Temporal lobe
  • responsible for the understanding of language
  • if damaged affects comprehension of language generally
• aphasia:

  • term used to refer to several types of speech impairment
  • patients have difficulty producing and/or comprehending speech
  • can also affect reading and writing
• Broca's aphasia patients:

  • have difficulty producing grammatical sentences
  • limited speech mainly short utterances of a few words
  • difficulty speaking fluently
  • comprehension relatively preserved
  • producing right sound or word is often slow and can be challenging
  • can also affect writing
• Wernicke's aphasia patients:

  • the ability to grasp the meaning of words and sentences is impaired
  • ability to produce connected speech is not very affected
  • speak fluently with normal intonation
  • often speech makes no sense
  • sentences may contain irrelevant or non-existing words
  • affects reading and writing
• first language acquisition:

  • refers to how a child develops its ability to speak and use the language of its environment (native language/s)
  • universal process
  • language is a part of a child's environment even before birth
• theories about first language acquisition:

  • innateness - nativists hypothesis
  • social interaction theory
  • active construction of grammar
• innateness - Nativist hypothesis:

  • babies are born with the natural ability to seek out and identify language patterns
  • humans do not have to be explicitly taught language to acquire it
• social interaction theory:

  • children are naturally predisposed to learn languages and develop their own rules while learning
  • social interaction with adults is essential for a child's language development
• active construction of grammar theory:

  • ability to develop rules about language is innate
  • A child uses the input of the language around them  and analyzes it to determine if a language patterns exists
  • when discovering a new language pattern they hypothesize a rule to account for it
  • They add the new rule  to their growing grammar
• Key stages in first language acquisition :

  • prelinguistic
  • babbling
  • first words
  • Two-word
  • Telegraphic
  • Beyond telegraphic
• Prelinguistic:

  • Birth to 6 months
  • noises - crying, whimpering, cooing
  • not language but involuntary responses to stimuli
  • eye contact
  • pointing or reaching for things
  • facial expressions and body language
  • turn taking and social sequences
• babbling:

  • 6 to 12 months
  • child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels
  • some believe babies babble to practice the muscle coordination to produce language
  • in the case of spoken language:
  • opening and closing movement of jaw
  • manipulating other articulators
  • in the case of signed language:
  • hand and finger coordination
• first words:

  • 12 and 18 months
  • first stage of morphological acquisition - child producing single words in isolation
  • names of - people, objects, pets, family, important parts of their environment
  • usually nouns first
  • soon come to include verbs - no, gimme, mine
• two words:

  • 18 to 24 months
  • adopt a consistent set of word orders to convey an important part of the meaning of their utterances
  • the utterance lack full syntactic markings
  • the limited vocabulary size is sufficient to capture an adult perspective of the world
• telegraphic:

  • 24 to 30 months
  • more than two words at a time - 3, 4 or 5
  • includes only contact morphemes and words
  • soon include function morphemes
  • reflects the system of grammar that children are in the process of constructing for themselves (morphological overgeneralization)
• Beyond Telegraphic:

  • 3 years +
  • known as complex stage - no fixed endpoint
  • continues vocabulary development
  • sentence structure a lot more complex and varied - expanded syntax
  • have concrete sense of time, quantity, and the ability to engage in simple reasoning - they can talk confidently in different tenses
  • explain why and how they think or feel things and may ask others
• the acquisition of signed language:

  • deaf babies acquire sign language in the same way hearing babies acquire spoken language
  • when deaf babies arent exposed to sign language they will create their own signs, complete with systematic rules
• childhood bilingualism:

  • the acquisition of 2 languages simultaneously from infancy