Lecture Notes 05/13/14 - Important Questions o To what degree does language and culture influence the way we process information? o Do people who speak different languages, or come from different cultures, perceive the world in a way that is significantly different? o But how do we account for those differences? Are they due to language? To culture? To basic cognitive abilities? - Human and animal communication o Do primates have language?  How about bees? Birds? o Would you draw a line between human and animal communication? Where? - Language o Origins  Charles Hockett - Early attempts to find origins of human language o 1. “living fossils” attesting to earlier stages of evolution  Through study of their language could see how language evolved  Problem: no language (or people) discovered that is more primitive than others; all language and cultures are equally evolved  Language evolution - Language in the context of biology and culture o Material remains found in Neanderthal sites suggest a belief system in life after death - Language as a required aspect of culture (Stokoe) o The lack of biological information… o But is language only auditory?  Sign Languages - Primary sign languages- languages used by those who are unable to acquire true spoken competence - Alternate sign language- used in addition to a spoken language  Signing and Speech: Friends? - Early stages: a visual language (form of signing) o As did Neanderthals - When speech arose it probably coexisted (like it is evident in contemporary cultures)  How do you go from visual to auditory (+visual)? - Spoken language evolutiono Large groups  driving force for encephalization - Why do humans have big brains? o Social intelligence hypothesis:  Larger group size requires…  Dependence on each other requires…  Social bonds between individuals requires…  Larger neo-cortex - Evolutionary pressures o Increases in brain size and group size only if it offered some sort of evolutionary advantage  Primates with biggest brains live in open areas, spend lots of time on ground  Protection against predators  Development of social grooming - These needs set the limits to group size o 50 chimps spend 20% of their time grooming o 150 chimps could need to spend close to 50% of their time grooming  Group Size and Social Bonding - Development of language o Communicate while doing other things o A form of vocal grooming designed to accommodate larger groups  Why Gossip is Good for You (Dunbar) - Groups needed to be bigger, but their size was limited by social grooming - Social grooming is time consuming, so they have to balance social and food needs - What is gossip? o Exchange of information about individuals not present - What advantages does talking, in the form of gossip, provide?  Charles Hockett - 2. Comparative method of historical linguistics o Languages with common origins o Reconstruction of proto-languages o Might find some earlier, more primitive languageo Lexicostatistics: relationships between languages; quantitative comparison of lexical cognates; does not reconstruct a proto-language o Glottochronology: “archaeology of languages”; part of lexicostatistics that deals with the chronological relationships of languages o Examples of basic words (cognates): I, you, this, who, what, one, two, fish, dog, louse, blood, bone, egg, horn, tail, ear, eye, nose, tooth, tongue, hand, know, die, give, sun, moon, water, salt, stone, wind, fire, year, full, new, name o Features o Functions o