Language General Features

Equality in
1. Acquisition
2. Complex structure
  1. complex rules for phonology (sounds), morphology(word formation), syntax (sentence formation)
    1. languages vary in complexity of each level exL English has little morphology
3. expressiveness
  1. capable of expressing complex thoughts
    1. vocabulary closely linked to culture. complex culture = complex vocabulary
    2. all languages add new words when culture changes. rules of language change more slowly
Pidgin emerges when lacking common language
1. no fleshed out grammatical system
  1. children exposed to pidgin make it into creole, fully fleshed out grammatical system
NSL
1. deaf children isolated, had own rudimentary signing systems within families
  1. schools for the deaf made, younger children evolved language into ISN with syntactic system
Poverty of the Stimulus argument: children's linguistic knowledge couldn't possibly be derived entirely from their linguistic experience. Language acquisition generally involves reinvention of the language
dialects are their own languages.
languages with high proportions of adult learners may simplify ex: dying languages.
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language ABSL: lots of deafness in village, sign language emerged. similar to NSL but unlike NSL onyl now after several generations, developing a phonology

Resource summary

	Created by abbymarie.mcdona about 8 years ago