第六章：语言与认知

23
Motivation



Define cognition, psycholinguistics and language acquisition. What does psycholinguistics study and what are the six subjects of research? Describe the stages of first language acquisition.
22
Language aptitude

Definition: a natural ability for learning a
second language. It is believed to be related to a learner’s general intelligence. Components: Phonemic coding ability Grammatical sensitivity Inductive language learning ability Rote learning ability

18
An interactionist view

Viewpoint: language develops as a result of the
complex interplay between the human characteristics of the child（儿童身上的人类特点） and the environment in which the child develops.
the interactionist description is convincing
in understanding how children learn and use the language appropriately from their environment
20
Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

the systematic study of how one person acquires a second language subsequent to this native language
21
Individual Differences



Language aptitude Motivation Learning strategies Age of Acquisition Personality
2
6.1 What is Cognition?
The various mental processes used in thinking, remembering, perceiving, recognizing, classifying, etc. 思维、记忆、感知、识别、 归类等所运用的各种心理过程。
16
A behaviorist view

Traditional behaviorists view language as behavior（把语言看作是行为）and believe that language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation.
12
Another View of Language Development


Phonological development Vocabulary development Grammatical development Pragmatic development
13
Exercises for today:
19
Summary of these three theories

The behaviorist view sounds reasonable in
explaining the routine aspects
the innatist accounts most plausible in
explaining children’s acquiring complex system
Language comprehension
Language production
Language disorders
Language and Thought Neurocognition
7
6.2.1 Language Acquisition

Holophrastic stage

Language‘s sound patterns Phonetic distinctions in parents‘ language. One-word stage: objects, actions, motions, routines.
Give me the candy
Informing
Request
10

Three-word-utterance stage

Give doggie paper. Put truck window. Tractor go floor.
11
Fluent grammatical conversation stage
Chapter 6 Language and Cognition
Background (or Development)

1950s Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures 1960s Jean Piaget(皮亚杰)’ attention 1970s&1980s Two tendencies Cognitive linguistics Psycholinguistics
My cup
Mommy chair
This is my cup
This chair belongs to M
Warning
Warning
Big boy
Red car That car
I am a big boy
That car is red That is a car
Bragging
Naming Naming

3



The formal approach: structural patterns, including the study of morphological, syntactic, and lexical structure. The psychological approach: language from the view of general systems ranging from perception, memory, attention, and reasoning. The conceptual approach: how language structures (processes & patterns) conceptual content.
4
2. Psycholinguistics


Psychological aspects of language. Psychological states and mental activity with the use of language. Language acquisition, language production & comprehension.
9
Child utterance Mature speaker
No sleep Not tired Where doll? Truck table I don‘t want to go to sleep I am not tired Where is the doll? The truck is on the table
14
Thanks, goodbye!
15
Theories of language acquisition



A behaviorist view of language acquisition （行为主义者的语言习得观） An innatist view of language acquisition （天赋说的语言习得观） An interactionist view of language acquisition（互动主义者的语言习得观）
8
Two-word stage: around 18m
Child utterance Mature speaker
Want cookie More milk Joe see I want a cookie I want some more milk I (Joe) see you
Purpose
Request Request Informing
Stimulus—Response—Reinforcement Preliminary—imitation & practice Key—discrimination & generalization
17
An innatist view
Language Acquisition Device (LAD) an imaginary ―black box‖ existing somewhere in the human brain. The “black box” is said to contain principles that are universal to all human languages. Children need access to the samples of a natural language to activate the LAD, which enables them to discover his language’s structure by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical system to that particular language Universal Grammar (UG)
Purpose
Refusal Refusal Question Informing
Daddy run
Joe push
Daddy is running
I (Joe) pushed (the cat)
Informing
Informing
Push cat
Give candy
I pushed the car

Embed one constituent inside another:


Give doggie paper. Give big doggie paper.


Use more function words: missing function words and inflection in the beginning but good use (90%) by the age of 3, with a full range of sentence types. All parts of all language are acquired before the child turns four.

Suggestion: modified language — slow rate of
speech（语速慢）, high pitch（音调高）, rich intonation, shorter and simpler sentence structures, frequent repetition, paraphrasing and limited vocabulary; the appropriate topic — “now & here”
5
Related fields


wk.baidu.com
Structural linguistics Cognitive psychology Anthropology Neurosciences
6
Six subjects of research

Language acquisition (L1 / L2)