2. Linguistics chapter 2 Flashcards
What is communicative signals and unintentionally informative signals?
When someone is listening or paying attention to you they might notice that you have a cold (you cough or sneeze) not at ease (shifting your position) disorganized (non-matching socks) or have a strange accent is unintentionally informative.
When you actively say something “I am a teacher” you are intentionally communicate.
Humans can produce sounds and syllables that appear to have no communicative purpose, as in glossolalia (speaking in tongue). These outpourings sound like language but it is not intentional communication
We can compare this with chirping and singing from birds, we wouldn’t assume a blackbird with black feathers on a branch is communicating but maybe it is when the loud squawking is communicative signal produced when a cat appears in the scene, meaning they might have potential for intentional communication.
What is reflexivity? What wouldent we be able to do without this ability?
All creatures communicate in some way, even if it is not through vocalization. We do know that other creatures probably are not reflecting on the way they create their communicative messages or review how they work. (One barking dog is probably not offering advice to another barking dog saying “hey you should lower you bark to make it sound more aggressive”
Humans are clearly able to reflect on language (I wish she didn’t talk with so many terms) meaning that we in fact can use language to think and talk about language. This is called reflexivity. Without this ability we wouldn’t be able to reflect on or identify any of the other distinct properties of human language.
What is displacement? What kind of animal has limited displacement?
Animal communication seems to be designed exclusively for the here and now. (meow if you say “Hi” or “what have you been up to”.) It isn’t used to relate events that are removed in time and place (A dog saying “grr” means “grr” now and is not communicating “grr” last night).
Humans can refer to past and future time. This type of property is called displacement. It allows us to talk about things and places e.g (angels, fairies, Santa Clause, superman, heaven, hell) whose existence we cannot be sure of.
Bee´s have limited displacement, they can find a source of nectar, return to the beehive, perform a dance routine to communicate the location of this nectar, the other bees can then work out where this newly discovered feast can be found. But this displacement does not have the range of abilities found in human language because they can not communicate “delicious rose bush in town that we visited last weekend” so it must be the most recent food source.
What is arbitrariness? What does it mean to make words “fit” the concept? What are onomatopoeic words?
There is no natural connection between linguistic form and its meaning; we can not look at the word “kelb” and from its shape determine it has a natural and obvious meaning any more than its English translation form “dog”.
The linguistic form has no natural relationship between words and object and it is described as arbitrariness. Some words “fit” the concept they indicate but it only emphasizes the arbitrariness of the connection that exists between word and meaning, these are words that “echo” the sound of object or activity and have less arbitrary connection (cuckoo, slurp, whirr, squelsh) Onomatopoeic words are rare in human language.
Animals don’t have connection between message and signal they´re communication is finite and is limited with a set of vocal or gestural forms (to establish territory) or at particular times (to find a mate).
What are the different properties in linguistics?
Displacement, arbitrariness, productivity, cultural transmission, and duality.
What is cultural Transmission? And what evidence is there that language is transmitted through culture? And how is it different from animals?
We inherit physical features such as brown eyes from our parents but we do not inherit their language, we acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from our parental genes (if your parents speak korean but bring you up in England, never speaking korean or if you are adopted) you will have physical characteristics from your biological parents but will inevitably speak English. This process of language passed on through generations is described as cultural transmission. We acquire language in a general sense. We are not born with the ability to produce utterances in a specific language but we acquire our first language as children in a culture.
Animals are creatures born with specific signals produced instinctively, evidence shows that when birds develop their songs that instinct has to combine with learning/exposure for the right song to be produced, if they were to grow up without hearing birds they will instinctively produce songs or calls but they will be abnormal and cats will meow regardless humans won´t have distinctive language.
What is productivity and what is fixed reference?
Humans are continually creating new expressions by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations and this property is described as productivity (creativity or open-endedness) which means that the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.
In one experiment a hive of bees was placed at the foot of a radio tower and a food source at the top, ten bees were taken to the top but could later not convey the message. The problems seems to be that their communication has a fixed set of signals for communicating location and they all relate to horizontal distance and they can not create a new message for vertical distance, meaning they have no word for “up” and they can not invent one.
The lack of productivity in animal communication is called fixed reference; the communication system of other creatures seems to be fixed in terms of relating to a particular occasion or purpose.
What is duality? What are the two different levels? How is it different from animals?
Human language is organized at two levels simultaneously. We have a physical level at which we produce individual sounds like “n” “b” and “i” and as individual sounds none of these forms has any essential meaning but in combination such as “bin” we have another level we have a distinct sound at another level which has another meaning,
Duality makes it possible to produce very large numbers of sound combinations that are distinct in meaning.
But among other creatures each communicative signal has single fixed forms and cannot be broken down into separate parts. A dog can say “woof” it can not say “w+oo+f” if the dog was operating double level then we would expect to hear different combinations with different meaning “oowf” and “foow”.
How do different people talk to Animals? Key; riders, dogs, circus? What is the argument against that non-humans can understand human language?
It seems extremely unlikely that other creatures would be able to understand it, riders say Whoa to horses and they stop, we say heel to dogs and they almost always do, and a lot of animals in circus go up, down, and roll over in response to spoken commands. This is not evidence that non-humans can understand human language but the standard explanation is that the animal produces a particular behavior in response to a sound stimulus.
A horse living with cows wont say Moo, a baby living with a puppy will still end up with the baby making lots of human speech but not the puppy.
How did It become clear that non-human primates do not actually have a physically structured vocal tract that is suitable for articulating the sounds used in speech? Key; Gua and Viki
An experience of raising an infant chimpanzee together with their baby son, the chimpanzee, Gua, was able to understand about hundred words but couldn’t say any of them.
Viki, was reared by a scientist couple Cathrine and Keith in their home, as if she was a human child. They tried to get her to say English words by trying to shape her mouth as she produced sounds, she managed to produce poorly articulated versions of mama, papa and cup.
It became clear that non-human primates do not actually have a physically structured vocal tract that is suitable for articulating the sounds used in speech.
Who is Washoe? What did they teach the chimpanzee? And what did this experiment indicate?
Decided to teach a female chimpanzee, Washoe, American Sign Language bc in the wild chimpanzees have been seen using gesture types.
Sign language was always used when Washoe was around and she was encouraged to use signs. In 3,5 years the chimpanzee came to use signs for more than hundred words (airplane, baby, banan, window, woman and you) produce sentences (give me tickle, more fruit, open food drink/meaning refrigerator) and she even invented a few by herself (bib, water bird/meaning swan)
This indicates that Washoes communication system had the potential of productivity and understanding a large number of sign/conversations/question-answer sequences.
Who are Sarah and Lana? What did the plastic shapes represent? What did Sarah preferr? And how was she raised? Did she understand complex sentences? What is Yerkish and how was it used with the Chimpanzee Lana?
Another Chimpanzee, Sarah, was being taught to use a set of plastic shapes to communicate with humans and these plastic shapes represented “words” that could be arranged in sequence to build “sentences”.
The chimpanzee preferred to arrange the shape into a vertical order eg. (Mary give chocolate Sarah) Sarah was not treated like a human child in a domestic environment, she remained an animal and was systematically trained to associate the plastic shapes with objects or action and was trained with food rewards to manipulate a set of symbols and she was capable of getting an apple by selecting the correct plastic shape. She was also able to understand complex structures such as (if sarah put red on green, Mary give Sarah chocolate) then sarah would get the chocolate.
A similar training technique with an artificial language (Yerkish) was used by Duane with another chimpanzee and consisted of a set of symbols on a large keyboard linked to a computer. When Lana wanted some water, she had to find and press four symbols to produce the message “Please machine give water”.
What is the controversya and how is it associated with a vending mashine? What was psychologist Herbert Terrence conclusion? What response did Gardner have to that conclusion? What was the difference between Nim and Washoes environment?
Both Sarah and Lana demonstrated an ability to use what look like word symbols in ways that superficially resemble the use of language.
When Lana used the symbol “please” she did not have to understand the meaning.
The computer buttons could be equivalent to buttons on a vending machine and the argument is that we can learn to operate a vending machine without knowing language. Psychologist Herbert Terrace argued that chimpanzees simply produce signs in response to the demands of people. The conclusion was that chimpanzees are clever creatures who learn a certain type of behavior (singing) in order to get rewards and are essentially performing sophisticated tricks. Gardner argued that the chimpanzee used sign even when humans were not there.
The major difference between Washoe and Nim was that Nim was a research animal in a complex environment with a lot of different researchers- not fluent in sign language meanwhile Washoe lived in a more limited domestic environment with a lot of opportunity; in the absence of humans Washoe and younger chimpanzees occasionally used signs with each other.
Who is Matata and Kanzi? Matata stuggled but what did Kanzi learn and why? What did he demonstrate at eight y/o?
Attempting to train a chimpanzee, Matata, how to use Yerkish symbols, her adopted baby Kanzi was always there. Matata did not do very well but Kanzi spontaneously used the symbol system with ease. He didn’t learn by being taught but by being exposed/observing at a young age. Kanzi developed a symbol vocabulary (over 250 forms). At eight y/o he demonstrated understanding of spoken English comparable to a 2,5 y/o human.
What can you tell us about using language when it comes to animals and humans?
Were Washoe and Kanzi capable of taking part in interaction with humans by using a symbol system chosen by humans and not chimpanzees? “Yes” Did Washoe and Kanzi go on to perform linguistically like a human child about to begin pre-school? “No”
There are two ways of thinking about “using language” the broad way- language serves as a type of communication system in different situations. Another way a human child interacting with a caregiver. We also observe chimpanzees interacting with humans the same way and therefore, in both cases, we observe participants “using language”.
BUT there is an underlying difference, a two year old has the capacity to develop a complex system of sounds and structures that allows the child to produce extended discourse containing an infinite number of utterances and no other creature has been observed “using language” in this sense. Therefore it is more comprehensible and productive to say that language is uniquely human.
