Language as uniquely human capacity

Question 1

What is the idea behind the Faculty of Language?

Answer 1

Chomsky describes it as a switch panel. Humans are born with it in neutral position and due to (environmental) input it gets adjusted (that’s the language learning process).

Question 2

What speaks for the FOL? (pro argument)

Answer 2

The poverty of stimulus; we don’t need to get exposed to every sentence in order to understand language (ability of language).

Question 3

What speaks against the FOL? (con argument(s))

Answer 3

1. It is not falsifiable.

2. Language is dynamic (changes all the time) speaking against Chomsky’s proposed hardware.

Question 4

Name 2 FOL origins (2 ideas, having same conclusion but from different perspectives).

Answer 4

1. Language exclusive to
   humans (FLB homologous to animals, FLN uniquely to human)
2. Language as by product, evolved as a tool to express thoughts, not comparable to animals

Question 5

What does the sensory-motor interface in the context of FOL?

Answer 5

• ability to perceive/produce sounds/gestures (used for communication)
• human share ability with animals to discriminate language based on perceptual rhythm (experiment with monkeys)

Question 6

Describe the conceptual-intentional interface on the example of vervet monkeys and honey bees.

Answer 6

• vervet monkey; different calls depending on situations -> causing reactions in the cohort (limited vocal control, calls cannot change)
• honey bees; communicate food place via dance (highly complex, lot of different components)

Question 7

Name some components of language which are uniquely to human.

Answer 7

1. discreteness, infinite words
2. organized syntactically
3. symbolism (different organization of elements)
4. complexity
5. recursion (not found in Piraha language, therewith controversial)

Question 8

What is meant by recursion in the context of language?

Answer 8

combining pieces of information in one sentence (experiment with birds can’t allow claim
if it’s existing in birds or not, can just occur by their rhythm observation)

Question 9

What is understood by merge concerning language?

Answer 9

representation of syntactic predicting hierarchy, branches to construct sentences, basic combinations to create basic syntactic tree, only humans can do that -> infinite possibilities to combine merges of thoughts

Question 10

Describe the function of the neural architecture for language superficially.

Answer 10

• for language production and perception
• important component, the Broca’s area (uniquely to humans); lexical-semantic (overlap meaning and words) and conceptual-semantic (interface concept and meaning)