Language

To have further information about how a child acquire a language, go check the TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html

1. In the TED talk, the real life situation is made in Deb Roy's house. It is an observation that has been made on his baby boy to understand how fast he could learn a word, a language. It created the idea that language connected to events to provide commun ground for language. He began five years ago to place cameras all around his house that would create a bird view of each room and that would capture every moments of his child's life. It is quite fascinating to be able to understand the condition in which a child is able to learn a word. 

2. What are the knowledge claims being made?

Roy claims that he discovered new ways of thinking about language acquisition.

One of the knowledge claim being made by Deb Roy is that we learn from our linguistic environment, our surrounding basically. He is also claiming that the media is influencing us with the situation a word is in and we that we most of the time relate that specific word to the situation the media is showing us. He also claims that child learn faster the word that relates to a movement.

3. For those claims being made, multiple ways of knowing are uses. We use our body language to define a word and to have a better understanding of its meaning. We also use communication as a way of knowing because the more we tell a word, the more we remember it and we associate it to the situation that the word has been told. 

4. The shared knowledge was mostly used because their knowledge of the language got transmitted to the child. The words said to their kid where the ones that he then was able to pronounce, like the word water. It then gave the kid personal knowledge of the language. It created personal knowledge to the child who assimilated those words to the place in the house or depending on the situation the words were place in, which enlightened him to more conclusion of their meanings.

5. To what extend are our senses essential to learn a language?

To what extend is the methodology of the experiment accurate in terms of validity?

6. To what extend can the observation made on Deb's child could be accurate in terms of generalization?

130-140 of the packet

To what extent does Chomsky and Skinner play a role in language?

- Chomsky and Skinner play a role in language because they both created a theory that contribute to our shared knowledge and how we learn language. Skinner theory made the assumption that language was learn trough reinforcement. He categorized language as a form of behaviour emphasizing on imitation, practice, and correction, according to the packet. Chromsky developed his idea on an explanation of language learning that opposed to Skinner's idea. He said that human's capacity of learning a language is something that is instinctively in us humans. He argued that children do not imitate an adult, but construct the language with grammatical patterns that he have heard. Those two theory implicated humans into more profound thinking about how a child learn a language.

Do you think animals have a language? Why or why not?

- I do think animals have their own way of communicating but is simply in a different form then humans. We as humans are able to communicate with sound and gesture which is similar to the way animals communicate. Animals use different behavior that describe certain thing instead of saying it in words. For example, a dog will mark his territory with their urine, according to the packet. Animal still don't have the same capacities of communication that humans have so their way of communicating stays pretty simple and limited.

How is language ambiguous?

- Language is ambiguous because some word has connotative and denotative meanings. Some words simply have different meanings then what we could think. A denotative word would be rose, meaning the flower, but its connotative meaning would be the colour rose. Ambiguity is the complexity of words and explains how we can mislead the meaning of a word.

According to your reading what is the importance of signs?

- A sign is essential to communicate something without talking. For example, a sign on the road that tells you to stop. The only bad thing about signs is that to understand it, we have to know what it represents and its meaning. We can easily be mislead with a sign. A sign is something that we learn to know its meaning. Signs are an easy way to communicate even though humans cannot know what they mean before they actually learn them. When we talk about sign language for deaf people, we realize how important signs are. They become a new way of communication with humans.

What is the relationship between words and symbols?

- Words are essential to recognize a symbol because if there is rocks on a symbol and you don't know what a rock is, then it is impossible to know the meaning of this particular symbol. The connection between words and symbols gives us a larger possibilities of meanings. A word can have different meanings, but a symbols goes pretty strait forwards.

Is Sign Language an actual language? Why or why not?

- Sign language is an actual language because it is recognize as a way of communication within individuals. We use movement to express a word. If it makes humans understand each other, then it is consider as a language.