Communication & Language (College Board AP® Psychology): Study Guide

Key components of language and communication

• Language is the arrangement of sounds, written symbols, or gestures used to communicate ideas

  • It is the primary means by which humans share thoughts, feelings, and knowledge with one another

• Language has five defining features:

  • Arbitrary: words rarely sound like the ideas they represent

    • The connection between a word and its meaning is agreed upon by convention, not derived from the sound itself

      • E.g. the word "dog" sounds nothing like a dog. Speakers of any language simply agree that this sound refers to that animal

  • Structured: language has a structure that is additive

    • Words are combined to form sentences, sentences form paragraphs, and so on

  • Multiplex: language can be analyzed and understood in multiple ways simultaneously

  • Productive (generative): language is capable of producing a nearly infinite number of ideas from a finite set of sounds and rules

    • New sentences that have never been spoken before can be understood immediately

  • Dynamic: language is constantly changing and evolving over time

• Language can be broken down into several key components:

  • Phonemes: the smallest units of sound in a language. The individual sounds that combine to form words

    • E.g. the word "cat" contains three phonemes: /k/, /æ/, /t/

    • English uses approximately 44 phonemes; different languages use different sets

  • Morphemes: the smallest units of meaningful sound . They combine phonemes into meaningful units

    • E.g. the word "unhappy" contains two morphemes: "un" (meaning not) and "happy"; prefixes and suffixes such as "-ing," "-ed," and "pre-" are all morphemes

  • Grammar: the set of rules by which language is constructed

    • Grammar governs how words and phrases are arranged

  • Syntax: the rules governing word order within sentences

    • The arrangement of morphemes into meaningful sentences

      • E.g. "The dog chased the cat" and "The cat chased the dog" contain the same words but have different meanings because of syntax

  • Semantics: the study of meaning. The meanings of individual words and how combinations of words construct meaning in context

Language acquisition

• Across all cultures, language development follows the same sequence of stages

  • This provides strong evidence for a biological basis for language acquisition

• Before formal language begins, infants communicate through nonverbal gestures such as:

  • pointing

  • reaching, and

  • facial expressions

• Pointing is particularly significant as it represents a child's first intentional communicative act and typically emerges around 9–12 months

Nativist theory of language acquisition

• A key debate in language development concerns whether language is primarily learned or innately predisposed

• Noam Chomsky proposed the nativist theory of language acquisition

  • This is the idea that humans are born with an innate capacity to acquire language

• Chomsky called this innate capacity the language acquisition device (LAD)

  • The LAD is a built-in predisposition to learn language rapidly and naturally

• Evidence for this view includes the fact that children across all cultures acquire language through the same stages in the same order

  • This is regardless of the specific language they are learning

• Chomsky also pointed to the critical period for language acquisition

  • The critical period is the window during which language must be learned if it is to be fully acquired

• The opposing view, associated with behaviorists, is that language is learned through operant conditioning

  • Children are rewarded with smiles and attention for correct language use and gradually shape their speech through reinforcement

• More recently, cognitive psychologists argue that children actively work out language rules for themselves, rather than just copying what they hear or learning through rewards

  • Evidence for this comes from overgeneralization errors

    • Children make mistakes they have never heard adults say (e.g. “goed” instead of “went”)

  • This shows they are applying rules they have worked out, not just imitating others

Stages of language development

• By age 3, children typically know more than 1,000 words

• By age 5, most grammatical errors have disappeared and vocabulary has expanded dramatically

• By age 10, a child's language is essentially the same as an adult's

Overgeneralization

• As children learn language, they frequently make overgeneralization errors

  • This is where they apply grammatical rules too broadly to cases where the rule does not apply

• Overgeneralization occurs because children have correctly identified a grammatical rule but have not yet learned its exceptions

  • E.g., a child who has learned that past tense is formed by adding "-ed" may say "I goed to the store" or "she runned away"

    • They are applying the rule correctly but not yet knowing that "go" and "run" are irregular verbs

• Overgeneralization is significant because it demonstrates that children are not simply imitating adult speech, but they are actively constructing and applying grammatical rules