Language and Communication Flashcards
Define communication
“When one organism (the transmitter) encodes information into a signal which passes to another organism (the receiver) which decodes the signal and is capable of responding appropriately”
Compare verbal and non-verbal communication
Verbal - Spoken/written transmission of a message
Non-verbal - non-linguistic aspects (e.g. body language, gestures, emoticons)
- Language also has non-verbal elements (e.g. tone, rhythm, stress)
Define language
- A type of communication
- A structured system of symbols (“words”) and the rules (“grammar”) by which they are combined
How many languages are there?
Between 3,000 and 8,000
How often to languages die out?
At a rate of 1 every 2 weeks
All European languages together =
3% of total
What are the most common languages?
Chinese, Spanish, English
L1 + L2 =
English (20% of population)
What are the design features of a language?
- A system to communicate thoughts, feelings, information, etc. of arbitrary signs (words) that refer to things in the world, have meaning (e.g. not just onomatopoeia) to combine these signs (syntax)
- Limited number of words and rules combine to form unlimited number of expressions that allows us to go beyond the here and now that is used by a group of people
Does communication = language?
No
Define semanticity
Words are symbols/signs that express meaning
Define artbitrariness
No intrinsic relation between (most) words and their meaning (but onomatopoeia)
Define displacement
Not tied to here and now, can talk about past, future, somewhere else, hypotheticals, etc.
Define productivity/generativity
- New language can be generated
- A finite collection of sounds and words allows an infinite number of messages
- As long as we obey the rules of the language, any message can be understood by the other language users
Define prevarication
We can lie
Define reflexiveness
We can use language to talk about language
Define sound sybolism
Individual sounds or clusters of sound can convey meaning
- Kiki - pointy shape
- Bouba - round shape
- “gl” - words for shiny things -> glisten, gleam, glint, glare, glam, glimmer, glaze, glass, glitz, gloss, glory, glow, glitter
What makes a language (animal language)?
Animals certainly can communicate
- Bee dance -> novel messages, but only about food
- Dolphins -> can communicate there is something new in the water; no evidence of syntax use
- Songbirds -> overlap with human language acquisition; babbling, critical period, left-hemisphere specialisation
Fact about apes
- Very rich communication systems (95%-98.5% genetic overlap, highly social, approx. IQ of 3 year old)
-Similar brain asymmetries as humans - Teaching them to speak is near impossible
Research of chimps
GUA Kellog & Kellog - chimp learned to understand a few words, but never produced any
VIKY Keith & Kathy Hayes - after 6 years -> could understand words and some word combinations; learned to articulate a few words, but with difficulty
WASHOE Garner & Garner - taught ASL, after 4 years -> had acquired 85 signs (you, me, listen, gimme), also sign combinations (you drink); some sensitivity to word order + some new combinations (water bird); taught signs to adopted son
Explain Nim Chimpsky
- Terrace et al.
- Learned 125 AASL signs and made sign combinations (play me) (longer combinations heavily redundant - give orange me give eat orange…)
- 40% simple repetitions; rarely signed spontaneously; no novel combinations (unlike children)
Make comparisons between chimps and children
Chimps
- Huge amounts of explicit training
- Rarely signed spontaneously
Little evidence of syntax
Mainly stimulus controlled (eating + sleeping)
- All topics about here + now (no questions)
- Very repetitive
- Output was mainly non-creative
Children
- Require no special training
- Lots of spontaneous production
- Clear syntactic structure
Utterances involve temporal displacement
- Ask questions (and lots of them)
- Less imitation (some children rarely imitate)
- Utterances quickly become more creative
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- Language shapes our thoughts
- LInguistic determinism (strong version): thoughts are limited, constrained by language; language determines our thinking - people with a different language think differently
- Linguistic relativism (weak version): people who speak a different language perceive and experience the world differently
Egocentric versus allocentric (language affects encoding in space)
- Egocentric: left, right, in front/back, next to - relative frame of reference
- Allocentric: north, south - absolute frame of reference
