Entries from Group 4 Language Blog tagged with 'Psych 440-Andrea'
Homesign
Chapter 13 talks about homesigning. I am completely amazed and really confused how these deaf children were able to invent their own language. But even more, how is it possible that even though they had absolutely no exposure or knowledge...
Arbitrariness vs iconicity in ASL
This article talks about how American Sign Language has shifted from being more iconic to consisting of more arbitrary gestures. It disproves many myths about ASL, for example that it is universal. But if this were the case, than the...
Black vs white
In chapter 5, it is explained that Bedouin Sign Language (and many other languages for that matter) only have two different color words. It is simply black or white. I understand grouping all the dark colors together under the name...
Language vs Speech
Saussure stated that there is a difference between language and speech. He said that speech is what we do with language, which is filled with variations and mistakes. "Speech is a mess," he stated. On the other hand, "pure, clean,...
lacking a language?
In the Difference vs. Deficit heading, Romaine states that it was argued that children of low-income families did not have a language becuase they didn't speak the same as middle-class children. How is it possible to not have a language?...
Critical Period for Language Acquisition
In a study done by Catherine E. Snow and Marian Hoefnagel-Hohle, the critical period for language acquisition was studied by looking at second language acquistion. The researchers expected that second language acquisition would be relatively fast, successful, and similar to...
Professionals purposely using disfluencies.
On page 246, Erard states "doctors add words like "well," "anyway," and "now" when giving previously published remarks at medical conferences. Even though these disfluencies are planned in order to seem more approachable, this fact still unnerves me. I guess...
Sign language and language development
This article starts off by comparing the acquisition of sign language to the acquisition of spoken language. Both, even though most would think differently, sign language and spoken language have similar structures and acquisitions. Both types of language even have...
Uh...
In chapter 3, Erard talks about people using the phrases "um" or "uh" to fill iin gaps in communication while they are figuring out what they would like to say next. But why does that fraction of a second have...
Response to Amy's blog
I completely understand where you are coming from with not being able to understand sarcasm. I wasn't able to understand it either until a few years ago. For me, I was able to tell if someone was being sarcastic by...
Adding to the New York possee..
Hey guys, my name is Andrea Testa, and like most of the rest of the group, I am also from New York. I'm from Buffalo, so I am obviously a HUGE Sabres and Bills fan. I'm a junior psych major...
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