Chapter 9

Key Terms

Receptive language: the comprehension or understanding of language (e.g., the speech of others).

Productive language: language expression in the form of speaking or writing.

Phonology: the system of sounds within any given language.

Semantics: the meanings expressed by words and sentences.

Syntax: grammatical rules governing sentence structure and word order within sentences.

Pragmatics: the rules involved in ensuring that what is said fits the current situation.

Telegraphic speech: children’s early speech resembling a telegram in that much information is contained in two (or less often) three words.

Grammatical morphemes: prepositions, suffixes, and so on that help to indicate the grammatical structure of sentences.

Over-regularisation: the application of a grammatical rule to situations in which it is incorrect.

Linguistic universals: features (e.g., preferred word orders; the distinction between nouns and verbs) found in the great majority of the world’s languages.

Recursion: turning simple sentences into longer and more complex ones by placing one or more additional clauses within them.

Child-directed speech: the short, simple, slowly-spoken sentences used by mothers, fathers, or other caregivers when talking to young children.

Lexigrams: symbols used to represent words in studies on communication.

Expansions? In blue in chapter but not then included as a key term

Weblinks

The Noam Chomsky website
http://www.chomsky.info/

A lecture by Noam Chomsky: What is special about language?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v6XFkSwVys

An interview with Professor Michael Tomasello about his research on language acquisition and the basic difference between human and apes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtf2btmfPgw

A discussion on the ethics of animal experiments
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/experiments_1.shtml

Washoe, Dr R. Allen Gardner and Dr Beatrix T. Gardner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JRgiwPqwnM

Friends of Washoe website
http://www.friendsofwashoe.org/

An interesting article summarising Terrace et al’s work with Nim Chimpsky
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jul/24/project-nim-chimpsky-chimpanzee-language

A Tedtalk with Susan Savage-Rumbaugh on the gentle genius of bonobo chimps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8nDJaH-fVE

Kanzi with the lexigram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRM7vTrIIis

Documentary: A conversation with Koko the gorilla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oh1uhrdc6w