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Eric Lenneberg
Eric Heinz Lenneberg (19 September 1921 – 31 May 1975) was a linguist and neurologist who pioneered ideas on language acquisition and cognitive psychology, particularly in terms of the concept of innateness. Life and career He was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. Ethnically Jewish, he left Nazi Germany because of rising Nazi persecution. He initially fled to Brazil with his family and then to the United States where he attended the University of Chicago and Harvard University. A professor of psychology and neurobiology, he taught at the Harvard Medical School, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Cornell University and Medical School. Lenneberg's 1964 paper "The Capacity of Language Acquisition," originally published in 1960, sets forth seminal arguments about the human-specific biological capacity for language, which were then being developed in his research and discussions with George A. Miller, Noam Chomsky, and others at Harvard and MIT, and popularized by Steven Pinke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Its influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Harvard was founded and authorized by the Massachusetts General Court, the governing legislature of colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony. While never formally affiliated with any denomination, Harvard trained Congregational clergy until its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized in the 18th century. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among the Boston elite. Following the American Civil War, under Harvard president Charles William Eliot's long tenure from 1869 to 1909, Harvard developed multiple professional schools, which transfo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phi Beta Kappa
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and to induct outstanding students of arts and sciences at select American colleges and universities. Since its inception, its inducted members include 17 President of the United States, United States presidents, 42 Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court justices, and 136 Nobel Prize, Nobel laureates. History Origins The Phi Beta Kappa Society had its first meeting on December 5, 1776, at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia by five students, with John Heath as its first President. The society established the precedent for naming American college societies after the initial letters of a secret Greek motto. The group consisted of students who frequented the Raleigh Tavern as a common meeting ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Linguistic relativity asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. One form of linguistic relativity, linguistic determinism, regards peoples' languages as determining and influencing the scope of cultural perceptions of their surrounding world. Various colloquialisms refer to linguistic relativism: the Whorf hypothesis; the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis ( ); the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis; and Whorfianism. The hypothesis is in dispute, with many different variations throughout its history. The ''strong hypothesis'' of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, is that language ''determines'' thought and that linguistic categories limit and restrict cognitive categories. This was a claim by some earlier linguists pre-World War II; (a debate between university professors) since then it has fallen out of acceptance by contemporary linguists. Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a ''weaker'' version of linguistic re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Atwood Lee Whorf (; April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer best known for proposing the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. He believed that the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. Whorf saw this idea, named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, as having implications similar to those of Einstein's principle of physical relativity. However, the concept originated from 19th-century philosophy and thinkers like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Wilhelm Wundt. Whorf initially pursued chemical engineering but developed an interest in linguistics, particularly Biblical Hebrew and indigenous Mesoamerican languages. His groundbreaking work on the Nahuatl language earned him recognition, and he received a grant to study it further in Mexico. He presented influential papers on Nahuatl upon his return. Whorf later studied linguistics with Edward Sapir at Yale University while w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguistics, linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sapir was born in German Empire, German Pomerania, in what is now northern Poland. His family emigrated to the United States of America when he was a child. He studied Germanic linguistics at Columbia University, Columbia, where he came under the influence of Franz Boas, who inspired him to work on Indigenous languages of the Americas, Native American languages. While finishing his Ph.D. he went to University of California, Berkeley, California to work with Alfred Kroeber documenting the indigenous languages there. He was employed by the Geological Survey of Canada for fifteen years, where he came into his own as one of the most significant linguists in North America, the other being Leonard Bloomfield. He was offered a professorship at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Embodied Cognitive Science
Embodied cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior. It comprises three main methodologies: the modeling of psychological and biological systems in a holistic manner that considers the mind and body as a single entity; the formation of a common set of general principles of intelligent behavior; and the experimental use of robotic agents in controlled environments. Contributors Embodied cognitive science borrows heavily from embodied philosophy and the related research fields of cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Contributors to the field include: * From the perspective of neuroscience, Gerald Edelman of the Neurosciences Institute at La Jolla, Francisco Varela of CNRS in France, and J. A. Scott Kelso of Florida Atlantic University * From the perspective of psychology, Lawrence Barsalou, Michael Turvey, Vittorio Guidano and Eleanor Rosch * Fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Embodied Philosophy
Embodied cognition represents a diverse group of theories which investigate how cognition is shaped by the bodily state and capacities of the organism. These embodied factors include the motor system, the perceptual system, bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world that shape the functional structure of the brain and body of the organism. Embodied cognition suggests that these elements are essential to a wide spectrum of cognitive functions, such as perception biases, memory recall, comprehension and high-level mental constructs (such as meaning attribution and Categorization, categories) and performance on various cognitive tasks (reasoning or judgment). The embodied mind thesis challenges other theories, such as Cognitivism (psychology), cognitivism, computationalism, and Dualism (philosophy of mind), Cartesian dualism. It is closely related to the extended mind thesis, situated cognition, and enactivism. The modern version dep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haskins Laboratories
Haskins Laboratories, Inc. is an independent 501(c) non-profit corporation, founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut, since 1970. Haskins has formal affiliation agreements with both Yale University and the University of Connecticut; it remains fully independent, administratively and financially, of both Yale and UConn. Haskins is a multidisciplinary and international community of researchers that conducts basic research on spoken and written language. A guiding perspective of their research is to view speech and language as emerging from biological processes, including those of adaptation, response to stimuli, and conspecific interaction. Haskins Laboratories has a long history of technological and theoretical innovation, from creating systems of rules for speech synthesis and development of an early working prototype of a reading machine for the blind to developing the landmark concept of phonemic awareness as the critical preparation for learning to read an alp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alvin Liberman
Alvin Meyer Liberman (; May 10, 1917 – January 13, 2000) was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. Liberman was an American psychologist. His ideas set the agenda for fifty years of psychological research in speech perception. Biography Liberman received his B.A. degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri in 1938, his M.A. degree from the University of Missouri in 1939 and his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1942. His ideas set the agenda for fifty years of research in the psychology of speech perception and laid the groundwork for modern computer speech synthesis and the understanding of critical issues in cognitive science. He took a biological perspective on language and his 'nativist' approach was often controversial as well as influential. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and of linguistics at Yale University as well as president of Haskins Laboratories from 1975 through 1986. Liberman had a distinctive goal in mind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motor Theory Of Speech Perception
The motor theory of speech perception is the hypothesis that people perceive spoken words by identifying the vocal tract gestures with which they are pronounced rather than by identifying the sound patterns that speech generates. It originally claimed that speech perception is done through a specialized module that is innate and human-specific. Though the idea of a module has been qualified in more recent versions of the theory, the idea remains that the role of the speech motor system is not only to produce speech articulations but also to detect them. The hypothesis has gained more interest outside the field of speech perception than inside. This has increased particularly since the discovery of mirror neurons that link the production and perception of motor movements, including those made by the vocal tract. The theory was initially proposed in the Haskins Laboratories in the 1950s by Alvin Liberman and Franklin S. Cooper, and developed further by Donald Shankweiler, Mic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Period
In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period" to learn a given skill or trait, it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop certain associated functions later in life. Functions that are indispensable to an organism's survival, such as vision, are particularly likely to develop during critical periods. "Critical period" also relates to the ability to acquire one's first language. Researchers found that people who passed the "critical period" without having developed communication skills would not acquire their first language fluently. Some researchers differentiate between 'strong critical periods' and 'weak critical periods' (also known as 'sensitive' periods)—defining ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
