Chapter 8 Cognition – Language & Thought

1. Chapter 8 Cognition – Language & Thought Its all about communication!!!

2. Chapter 8 Cognition – Language & Thought Its all about communication!!!

3. DO NOW QUESTION: At what level is this statement ambiguous? "Curious blue ideas sleep furiously."

5. DO NOW QUESTION: Famous statement by a linguist to argue that sentences can be proper but still make no sense. At what level is this sentence ambiguous?SEMANTICALLY AMBIGUOUS "Curious blue ideas sleep furiously"

6. What is cognition? David John Chalmers (born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is also Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University. His book, The Conscious Mind (1996), is widely considered (by both advocates and opponents) to be an essential work on consciousness and its relation to the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind. In the book, Chalmers argues that all forms of physicalism (whether reductive or non-reductive) that have dominated modern philosophy and science fail to account for the existence (that is, presence in reality) of consciousness itself. He proposes an alternative dualistic view he calls naturalistic dualism (but which might also be characterized by more traditional formulations such as property dualism, neutral monism, or double-aspect theory). The book was described by The Sunday Times as "one of the best science books of the year". Video clip (2:32) David Chalmers “The Hard Problem”

7. LANGUAGEcomplex communication system that involves the use of abstract symbols to convey unlimited messages. Human language can conveymeaning about things that haven't happened yet, things that happened in the past, and things that may never happen. Because we can transcend time and space with language, we have unlimited ability to communicate ideas. In a spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit. Chug has three phonemes, ch, u, g. Phonemes Morphemes In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning. Can be a word or part of a word (prefix or suffix).

8. Structure of Language. Multi-layered process. Phonemes: smallest unit of sound in a language. All the letters of the alphabet are phonemes. In English we produce all the unique sounds that we are able to make by combining about 40-50 unique phonemes. Other languages make due with less. Hawaiian = 30 phonemes.

9. Morphemes:smallest unit of meaning in a language. Small words, such as cat or walk, are morphemes. If we add the letter s to cat, we now have two morphemes (cat(s)), and if we add-ing to walk, we have two morphemes (walk(ing)). "Unbreakable" comprises 3 morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying "not"), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a bound morpheme signifying "doable").

10. Grammar: system of rules used in a language. One of those rules is semantics, which is the way we understand meaning from words by their morphemes and from their context. We know that adding an -s to the end of a word means that we are referring to more than one, or we know that words can have different meanings depending on the placement in a sentence or on the context. "I'm dying!" has a very different meaning when said by a person who is bleeding on the ground versus an adolescent preparing for her first middle school dance.

16. Syntax: rules that refers to the way we order words to create meaning. "Your new please away shoes put" …makes us confused, whereas “Please put away your new shoes" …is quite clear. Learning Language. Behaviorists believe being "exposed" to things in the environment, reinforcement, and repetition is correct. Nativists, however argue that we are "hardwired" to learn language & that humans are unique in that respect. Both sides have supporters, evidence isn't clear which is correct.

19. ACQUISITION. Noam Chomsky, MIT (Father of Modern Linguistics) believed that language is learned by exposure to language, but the ability to speak is hardwired. He believed there is a critical period of language acquisition, and if we do not learn language during that time, we will not learn language well. There is overwhelming evidence to support this theory.

20. ChomskyInborn Universal Grammar We acquire language too quickly for it to be learned. “learning box” inside our heads that enable us to learn any human language.

21. Noam Chomsky’s offices at MIT. Boston Globe architecture columnist Robert Campbell wrote a glowing appraisal of the building on April 25, 2004. According to Campbell, "the Stata is always going to look unfinished. It also looks as if it's about to collapse. Columns tilt at scary angles. Walls teeter, swerve, and collide in random curves and angles. Materials change wherever you look: brick, mirror-surface steel, brushed aluminum, brightly colored paint, corrugated metal. Everything looks improvised, as if thrown up at the last moment. That's the point. The Stata's appearance is a metaphor for the freedom, daring, and creativity of the research that's supposed to occur inside it."

22. Milestones in Language Acquisition Age --> Milestone Birth to 2 months --> Cooing 2 months to 12 months --> Babbling Approx. 12 months --> First word(typically matching a simple sound: "da") Approx. 16 months --> 2-word utterances (telegraphic speech) 2-6 years --> Add 6-10 new words a day; learn grammar. Overextension.("doggie" for ever 4-legged animal) Age 5 --> Over-regularization: "I goed to the store." From Age 5 on --> Add words to vocabulary; learn subtleties of language. Other languages show the same pattern of acquisition (not just English).

23. A 40-year-old couple emigrate from Venezuela to the Untied States. They have an 18-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter. Based on research that has investigated mastery of English as a second language, which child will master English more quickly? 9-year-old daughter will master English more quickly than her parents and her brother

24. According to learning theory, children's vocabularies increase and their pronunciation improves as parents insist on closer and closer approximations of the correct word before they provide reinforcement

26. Language Development Probably around 80,000. How many words do you think you know now? After age 1 you average about 13 words a day.

27. What made these Super Bowl commercials funny? The joke was “language acquisition” – funny/odd to see a baby talk like a trader.

28. LANGUAGE & THOUGHT. Do our words shape the way we think, or do we have ideas first and then look for ways to articulate them? Linguist Benjamin Whorf believed in… linguistic determinism: our words shape & restrict our thinking. Whorfian hypothesis, proposed that language affects thought, and the structure of the language itself affects cognition. Not THAT Worf!

29. Does language influence our thinking?

30. Whorf’s Linguistic Relativity The Hopi tribe has no past tense in their language, so Whorf says they rarely think of the past. The idea that language determines the way we think (not vive versa). Whorf said: Our language controls or limits what we can know and think.  The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis also stated that language is not merely a way to express ideas, but it also determines the range of ideas we can have. If there’s no word or term for a concept, it’s hard even to conceive of it. For example, we might discover new things, but if we don’t have term or word to call or describe it, we cannot proclaim our findings.

31. In particular, Whorf announced,Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts,like the flow of time or the distinction between objects (like “stone”) and actions (like “fall”). For decades, Whorf’s theory dazzled both academics and the general public alike. In his shadow, others made a whole range of imaginative claims about the supposed power of language. Ranged from the assertion that Native American languages instill in their speakers an intuitive understanding of Einstein’s concept of time as a fourth dimension to the theory that the nature of the Jewish religion was determined by the tense system of ancient Hebrew.

32. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,language determines our experience of reality, and we can see and think only what our language allows us to see and think. For example, the Inuit are said to have many different words for snow, and their sophisticated snow vocabulary make it easy for them to communicate and understand each other.  Therefore, they see and experience ‘snow-covered landscapes’ quite differently from the rest of us. However, some people are not convinced by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Although the Inuit have many different words for snow, it does does not show that language determines reality, but instead suggests that reality determines language. The reason the Inuit have many words for snow is because of their environment, they live in snow. In contrast with, the reason there are not many words for ‘snow’ in Australia is that it doesn’t snow very often in Australia.

33. Do people that speak more than one language think differently depending on their language at that time?

34. Do people that speak more than one language think differently depending on their language at that time? The bilingual person is primed, in a way that monolinguals are not, to seek out and, at times separate, the meaning that a person is trying to convey from the words they are using to do so. The message becomes an abstraction embedded within the words -- their setting.

35. Do people that speak more than one language think differently depending on their language at that time? • Eventually, Whorf’s theory crash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims. • The reaction was so severe that for decades, any attempts to explore the influence of the mother tongue on our thoughts were relegated to the loony fringes of disrepute. • But 70 years on, it is surely time to put the trauma of Whorf behind us. And in the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways.

36. Do people that speak more than one language think differently depending on their language at that time? If the inventory of ready-made words in your language determined which concepts you were able to understand, how would you ever learn anything new? Roman Jackobson,“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about.

37. Pinker and Bloom (1992) suggest that human language may be a result of evolutionary processes because language allows humans to … acquire information about the world secondhand

38. Thinking without Language In 1977, Reggie Jackson hit 3 HR’s against the Dodgers. He has stated that before each at bat, he visualizes crushing a home run. Do you think visualization helps? We can think in words. But more often we think in mental pictures.

40. LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS. Arbitrariness: words are not inherently imbued with meaning. They are selected and stand for objects in the world in an arbitrary manner. Dog in English is chien in French. Displacement: language allows us to talk about events that have already happened, events that will happen, and events that may not happen at all. No other form of communication allows for this. Vocal-Auditory Channel: All languages in all cultures rely on this as the primary form of communication using language.

43. Honeybees seem to communicate

44. Kohler’s Chimpanzees Kohler exhibited that Chimps can problem solve. It has been observed that the manner in which chimpanzees solve problems, such as that of retrieving bananas positioned out of reach, is not through trial-and-error. Instead, they were observed to proceed in a manner that was unwaveringly purposeful. Animals of quite a range of species are capable of solving a range of problems that are argued to involve abstract reasoning; Modern research has tended to show that the performances of Wolfgang Köhler's chimpanzees, who could achieve spontaneous solutions to problems without training, were by no means unique to that species, and that apparently similar behavior can be found in animals usually thought of as much less intelligent, if appropriate training is given. Do Animals think?

46. Apes and Signing

48. 4 STRATEGIES TO PROBLEM SOLVING 1. ALGORITHMS (step-by-step approach) 2. HEURISTICS (a procedure that has worked in the past and is seen as likely to work in the future.) 3. MEANS-END ANALYSIS (keeps in mind the final goal when setting sub-goals.) 4. WORKING BACKWARD (start with the goal state and work backward until you reach the present state.)

49. 4 STRATEGIES TO PROBLEM SOLVING ALGORITHMS (step-by-step approach) Some algorithms involve simple trial and error. If X is a possible solution to a problem, the algorithm for a solution might be stated: "Try X; if X works, then X = solution; if X doesn't work, then try next X." Clearly, this could go on as many times as there is another possible X. Algorithms guarantee a solution but can be very time consuming.