Language and Linguistics This section of the course is about language the vehicle for holding and transmitting culture We will cover the origins of human language the structure of language historical linguistics sociolinguistics and the history of writing Language origins Evidence for the evolution of language comes from anatomy comparative anatomy of modern humans and chimps and comparative anatomy of hominids through time and from primate sign language experiments in tool making and comparative linguistics The capacity for language like the capacity for culture was part of biological evolution Evidence for the evolution of language comes from anatomy comparative anatomy of modern humans and chimps and comparative anatomy of hominids through time and from primate sign language experiments in tool making and comparative linguistics We do not know much about the details of language evolution but we do know that the capacity for language like the capacity for culture was part of biological evolution There have not been any hominids on Earth except for H sapiens for 40 000 years That is probably how long it has been since the currently observable human capacity for language has been part of our repertoire There are technologically primitive people on Earth hunters and gatherers who never took part in the Neolithic revolution much less the preindustrial state revolution or the industrial revolution or the post industrial revolution now underway But there are no primitive people on Earth All humans have the same capacity for acquiring a language and all human languages ever known are capable of transmitting any culture even the most technologically complex The evolution of language and the development of the human hand and the ability to make tools are probably all related The voice box and neurological complexity have all evolved We know from endocranial casts that the area of the brain devoted to speech began developing as early as H habilis Speech and handedness The speech area of the brain is adjacent to the area devoted to the control of the human hand The makers of Oldowan tools were mostly right handed Chimps can make stone tools they don t do that in the wild but when they do in experiments in captivity they do not show any preference for right or left handedness Stanley Ambrose Science 2001 William Haviland points out that handedness is associated with lateralization of the brain as is language Hypoglossal canal By half a million years ago in H erectus we see a major increase in the size of the hypoglossal canal which could accommodate larger nerves for controlling the tongue By the time we get to Neandertals the hypoglossal canal is the same size as it is in fully modern humans though this is controversial Hyoid bone The hyoid bone U shaped bone at the base of the tongue that supports the tongue muscles In Neanderthals the hyoid shows that the larynx was as developed as that in modern humans And the thorax had expanded to the same size as that of modern humans breath control required for continual speech Washoe and other chimps Experiments with chimps and other apes show they are capable of much more than we thought in terms of language Chimps do not have the physical apparatus for human speech but Beatrice and Allan Gardner taught Washoe a female chimp 160 signs in Ameslan Generalizing signs Washoe moved beyond the signs and generalized them and combined them She learned open for one door and then used it to ask for other doors to be opened She asked for refrigerators to be opened and pointed to open drawers and briefcases Washoe and Lucy who was trained by Roger Fouts learned the sign for feces and generalized it to mean dirty Lucy used the term as an expletive when she got mad at Fouts for not giving her something Lucy invented cry hurt food three signs in Ameslan to talk about radishes and candy fruit to talk about watermelons Chimps and other great apes achieve the linguistic capacity of a 2 3 year old human Comparative linguistics and language origins Brent Berlin and Paul Kay studied 110 languages and found seven stages in the development of color terms All languages have at least two terms white and black or color and lack of color When languages acquire a third term it is always red When languages acquire a fourth term it is either green or yellow Berlin and Kay s study At five terms green or yellow enters depending on which one entered at stage IV At 6 terms blue enters and at 7 terms brown enters At the final stage of 8 or more terms purple pink orange grey or combinations of these terms enter the lexicon Moreover color lexicons become more complex as societies become more complex Brown and Witkowski s study Cecil Brown and Stanley Witkowski replicated Berlin and Kay s work using plants and animals At the first stage of lexical complexity for organisms languages have a word for plant Next they distinguish trees from all other plants Then grerb enters the lexicon grass and or herb Then bush enters and then grass and the vine In the animal kingdom the simplest lexicons distinguish animals from plants Then fish enter the lexicon then bird then snake then wug worm and bug and finally mammal Complexity of the lexicon But complexity of the lexicon for organisms is very plastic as comparisons between urban and primitive peoples shows People in small scale societies can name from 400 800 plants In urban areas this is 40 80 and they recognize even fewer as John Gatewood showed in his research on loose talk Pidgins and creoles Recent studies of Pidgins and Creoles also shed light on the evolution of language Pidgin languages are always second languages They develop when speakers of different languages try to communicate often for purposes of trade The lexicon usually comes from one language and the grammar from the other Creole languages develop from pidgins but as people develop native capacity in a pidgin the structure changes Hawaii is a good case In the late 19th century Filipinos Puerto Ricans AngloAmericans Chinese Japanese Korean and American Blacks all came to work on the plantations there Bickerton s study Derek Bickerton studied Hawaiian Creole in 1975 when it was a fully developed language Compared the structural properties of Hawaiian Creole to other creoles Found similarity in the use of particles for modifying verb roots to produce tense and similarities in the use of singular plural and neutral number markers Bickerton suggests that the similarities across
View Full Document
Unlocking...