Language Flashcards
What differentiates language from communication (3)?
- Language = arbitrary symbols
- Can lie
- Grammar rules
What is the honey bee dance?
When foraging bees find food, they can express the location of the food using a specific dance which can be reproduced by a false bee.
Angle relative to gravity vector = angle from aximuth of the sun of the food source. Length of waggle part = distance from food
What are the 2 specific regions that when they are damaged lead to speech deficits?
Broca’s and Wernicke’s area. Those areas overlap with areas involved in imitation.
Is the bee dance a real form of communication of info or just a chance event?
They used a bee on a stick to reproduce the dance and obtained the following results:
Wagging and sound are required for bees to get to the right spot. Mechanic bee waggling time was correlating with distance bees would go to to look for food source. They don’t use smell because when a bee perform the dance and then change the starting point after the dance, bees just follow the instruction told by the dance.
What is the UG?
You have a limited number of all the possible grammars that are used in current languages. When you learn a language, you don’t make mistakes corresponding to non-existant grammars.
Can we learn non-UG?
Yes, however, when you learn a new language, you don’t make mistakes corresponding to non-UG grammar.
Also, we can deduce rules of grammar without knowing them so there is clearly a region of the brain that is genetically programmed to learn UG grammar.
When you try to learn non UG grammar, it is just harder to do so but at the end, you have the same performance.
Broca’s area is more stimulated when you learn UG compared to when you learn non-UG.
Is language a human invention or it evolved from an existing system?
By example, when you look at macaques coos and screams, when you modulate their frequency and look at the parts of the brain that are responding to those sounds, the areas are homologous to areas in humans involbed in speach. Those area do not respond as much to no biological sounds. Therefore, these areas were already present and used for communication in our common ancestor.
Discovered the language gene from an autosomal disease affecting speech that is not just language specific, imitation is also impaired (difficulty to repeat words). Have a reduced activity in Broca’s area when it is time to think about words: they have trouble constructing language in their brain.
What is the gene involved in language?
FOXP2, a TF. People with speaking difficulty have a missense mutation in that gene. This gene is shared accross species so it is not a new gene. We don’t know to what extent it is important to allow language.
What is the role of the FOXP2 gene in general?
It is involved in communication. In songbirds, when a bird learns a song, its brain grows and it correlates with high activity of FOXP2. When you have FOXP2 KO, the song learned is messed up.
How similar is FOXP2 genes across species?
Humans vs. primates = 2 amino acid difference
Humans vs. mice = 3 a.a. difference
What happens to mice with a humanized FOXP2 gene?
Mice are more timid (are scared) and spend more time with their conspecific. The humanized neurons have longer dendrites so wider connections and the frequency of their squeaks changes. Therefore, human FOXP2 gene have phenotypic effects.
Did neandertals could use language?
They had the same FOXP2 as us, which suggests they were maybe able to speak.
