Lecture 2- Language Acquistion And Feats

Question 1

What is Bow- wow Theory?

Answer 1

The idea that language arose because humans were imitating sounds in their environment

Evidence was found from onomatopoeia words -> can not speculate this as sounds of onomatopoeia vary across cultures

Question 2

What is Pooh-Pooh theory?

Answer 2

The idea that when things happen to us, we produce spontaneous focalization to express emotion

-> their evidence was the universal use of sounds (ow, wow) there is a problem here as animals also produce spontaneous noise

Question 3

What is the yo-he-ho theory?

Answer 3

The focalization humans made in joint effort is the bases of language

( if a tree fell and there is a group of people helping pick i up; the sound they made was the basis of language )

Evidence? Rhythmic features of language but animals also have rhythmic noises , similar to lala theory that humans arose from song

Question 4

What is the link between vocal abilities and language?

Answer 4

Compared to great apes, humans are ill equipped to swallow as they can choke to death due to the positioning of the vocal tract and internal organs - these allow us to make a wide range of sounds ,
We can see the evolution of vocalizarions in fossils of the vocal tract physiology of hominids

Problem?
Parrots can also make a lot of sounds but they don’t have language

Question 5

What is the relationship between intelligence and language ?

Answer 5

The idea that language was a byproduct of other evolution , are processes triggered the increase of human intellectual abilities

• Spandrel- an artistic design
• early humans have protolanguage- complex thought
  Human infants use protolanguage

Question 6

Did language evolve from manual gesturing?

Evidence

Answer 6

Shift to bipedalism - hands were free to communicate

Existence of sign language today

Vocal tract relates many sounds isn’t sufficient
Association between handedneds and language lateralizarion in the brain

Brain areas in monkeys correspond to language areas of humans - show responses to manual gesture

Question 7

What type of information does the speech stream of language convey?

Answer 7

1. Linguistic info
   Words & meaning
2. Inventory of words
   But in some languages- there are multiple words to refer to one thing