Aug
28
2008
by admin on August 28, 2008
Before we get into the thick of things I think we need just a little bit of definition so let’s first define morpho-phonological… “Morpho” is derived from the term morpheme which refers to the smallest linguistic unit that still maintains some meaning. For instance the term “a” can refer to “singular” or to the beginning of “apple”. A morpheme is made up of phonemes, which as a refresher are the smallest linguistic unit and are simply sounds that do not necessarily carry any meaning on their own. Phonological is derived from the term phoneme which is the smallest unit of [...]
Aug
23
2008
by admin on August 23, 2008
Grammatical encoding is the process of taking in a pre-verbal message (the “mental concept” as it exists prior to describing it with words) and producing surface structures as output based on the activation and usage of singular and syntactic words and their “rules” as are held in the mental lexicon (the mental vocabulary). Each and every word that we use has syntactic rules attached to it that determine how it interacts with other words. The rule are interactive in themselves, meaning that they can change depending on what rules they are presently attached to as a result of being placed [...]
Aug
19
2008
by admin on August 19, 2008
When two people are communicating with each other, it is very safe to say that there is a joint action taking place. What this means is that the two or more parties are aware of some goal of the joint activity and of some form of common ground. Now what that common ground may be is anything from trying to sleep with each other to trying to move outside to a parking lot to fist fight. Never the less it is important to realize that communication is a two-sided transaction based on mutually shared information. Now you may be saying [...]
Aug
17
2008
by admin on August 17, 2008
What is speech? What’s the big deal about being able to talk? Very rarely do we stop to think about how amazing the ability to speak to someone really is. Could you imagine a world where there were no language, no writing and no other form of communication outside of grunts and yelling and cooing at each other? Life as we know it would not exist… Our world would literally be exactly like that of our primate neighbors. There are some significant differences between “us” and “them” and we as a species have developed into the amazing creatures we are [...]
