Noam Chomsky

1
Noam Chomsky

• Adlyn Perez
• Psych 452
• February 26, 2008

2
What is Language?

• Language a set of symbolic elements
• Properties
• Communicative
• Arbitrary
• Structured
• Generative
• Dynamic

3
Rules of Language

• Phase structure the hierarchical organization of
  a sentence
• Phase structure grammar limitations on how a
  legitimate sentence can be put together

4
Rules of Language

• Grammar tells us how language is organized
• but it doesnt tell us anything about how we
  acquire language or how we can use it to express
  new meanings.

5
Chomskys Theory (Structure of Language)

• Transformational grammar a set of rules for
  modifying a sentence into a closely related one.
• The man read the book
• The book was read by the man
• Surface Structure form of a sentence
• Deep Structure the underlying meaning
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.

6
Chomskys Theory (Structure of Language)

• Why are these concepts important?
• They explain the generative property of language,
  which sets human language apart from any other
  form of animal communication
• Only human beings can understand syntax and use
  language to express completely new ideas.

7
Chomskys Theory (Origin of Language)

• Universal grammar features present in the
  grammatical structures of all natural languages
• Grammar is an innate ability that is genetically
  based and present at birth
• Examples
• Maximal onset principle consonants usually
  precede vowels in all languages
• In 98 of the worlds languages the subject
  precedes the object in a sentence.
• Suzie kicked the ball A ball Suzie kicked

8
Chomskys Theory (Origin of Language)

• Evaluation
• Languages across the world to appear to have
  similar grammatical qualities
• Little evidence for language genes
• However, we do have brain areas specific to
  language
• Brocas area (speech production)
• Wernickes area (speech comprehension)

9
Language in Primates

• Animals can communicate. So do they have
  language?
• Primate language abilities
• Some displacement the ability to refer to
  something not present
• Limited arbitrariness
• Understand very little syntax
• Not generative cant express novel meanings
• Failed to teach language skills to other primates
• Answer No.

10
Language Acquisition

• Stages of language acquisition
• Cooing stage infants spontaneously produce
  sounds to exercise vocal chords
• Babbling stage at six months babies begin to
  use phenomes, or sound pairs (gaga, baba)
• One-word stage babies begin to use morphemes,
  or sounds that have meaning (mama)
• Two-word stage rudimentary syntactical skills
  begin to develop (see kitty, want milk)
• These stages indicate that many aspects of
  language are innate.

11
Language Acquisition

• Cases of language deprivation indicate that there
  is a sensitive period for the development of
  language
• Victor, wild boy of Aveyron 1797
• Genie 1974 Tori chew glove
• These individuals were able to learn basic
  grammatical skills after their discovery, but
  their language skills were severely impaired

12
Other principles of Language

• Would you think differently if you spoke Chinese?
• Linguistic relativity hypothesis it is
  impossible to express the thoughts generated in
  one language in another language
• Strong version language determines the scope and
  boundaries of thought
• Weak version language can influence thought, but
  doesnt necessarily determine the way we think

13
Research (Zhang Schmitt, 1998)

• One bed yi-zhang-chuang
• yi (one), chuang (bed)
• Zhang a classifier used for flat, extended
  objects such as beds, tables, desks, photos, and
  paper.
• That Journal nei-ben-zazhi
• Nei (that), zazhi (journal)
• Ben is a classifier for bound materials, such as
  books, dictionaries, and magazines
• These have no equivalent in English.

14
(Zhang Schmitt, 1998)

• Chinese and English-speaking participants were
  presented with pairs of words and asked to rate
  them as similar or not (1-7 scale).
• Chinese speakers gave higher similarity ratings
  for objects that shared classifiers
• English speakers gave nearly the same rating for
  every pair
• Language does appear to influence thought,
  particularly in how we classify and group objects
  in the world.
• This provides some evidence for the weak version
  of the linguistic relativity hypothesis

15
References

• Chomsky, N. (1968). Syntactic Structures. The
  Hague Mouton.
• Friedenberg, J. Silverman, G. (2006). Cognitive
  Science. Thousand Oaks Sage Publications.
• Zhang, S., Schmitt, B. (1998). Language-
  dependent classification The mental
  representation of classifiers in cognition,
  memory, and ad evaluations. Journal of
  Experimental Psychology Applied, 4(4), 375-385.