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Wouldn’t nationalization of the auto industry produce
better and lower-cost cars? And if we nationalize auto mechanics, wouldn’t we get better
and less expensive repairs?”
These words were spoken in rebuttal after Senator Kennedy had called for national health
insurance in a speech at a meeting of the United Auto Workers. Does the speaker’s argument make
sense? It represents the questionable-analogy fallacy. In a questionable analogy, an attempt is made to
make two situations seem more similar than they actually are. A state senator, using the Crucifixion
as a rationale for capital punishment, gives another example, “Where would Christianity be if Jesus
got 8 to 15 years, with time off for good behavior?”
The underlying issue in the fallacies detailed above is the need for critical thinking on the part of
the listener. Think about what was said. This is one of the most important lessons of this course.
Does it make sense, or does it just sound impressive? What motivation could the speaker or writer
have? What would the writer or speaker like you to do based on their message? Fallacies are not
necessarily bad, but they require far greater scrutiny than they generally receive. Again, think
critically and use your abilities for processing information.
The Structure, Hierarchy, and Criterion of Language
Criterion 1: Phonemes
Phonemes are the perceptual units of which speech events are composed. These basic sounds are
used to create words. There are few of them, about 100 altogether, and they form the basis of all
human spoken language. No single language uses all 100 phonemes. For instance, English uses
about 40. We combine these units of sounds to make units of meaning.
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PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE
Criterion 2: Morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest units of language that have meaning. Morphemes consist of what we
recognize as root words, stem words, prefixes, and suffixes. Words that we recognize as meaningful
are made up of combinations of morphemes. We use rules to combine groupings of morphemes into
coherent sentences.
Criterion 3: Syntax
Syntax is a system of rules that specify how we combine words into phrases and sentences.
Looking back at the basics of spoken language, what inferences might we be able to make about the
controversy of whether the higher primates are capable of speech? They seem able to meet the first
two criteria of language, the symbolic and generative requisites, but do they follow the structure of
language, according to the rules of syntax? Not yet, at least so far as we have been able to
determine.
Language and the Human Child
Developmental Milestones
People learn to speak and use language in highly predictable ways. Certain skills are required for
learning to speak, such as babies crying before coherent vocalization can occur. Following crying,
babies babble at age 4 to 6 months, begin using phonemes at 7 to 11 months, and usually speak
their first real word at about 1 year of age. Nouns such as “banana” or “bar” or “mom” get used a
lot at first to indicate the child’s wants.
Between 2 and 2. years, sentences begin to appear and increase in complexity up to about age 5, at
which time the child has good syntactical capability and can even tell short stories (like the cat
drew the picture on my bedroom wall). One interesting aspect of language acquisition is that the
phonemes used during the first year by babies are cross-cultural. The early sounds of all babies are
the same, regardless of the language spoken around the child or the language(s) he or she will
eventually learn to speak. Why?