Language and Communication

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• Language and Communication

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What is Language?

• Communication, speech, and language are NOT the
  same things.
• Human language is a symbolic communication
  system.
• Human language is learned rather than being
  biologically inherited.

http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/2/l_0
72_04.html
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Language Defined

• Language symbols that convey meaning, plus rules
  for combining those symbols that can be combined
  to generate infinite variety of messages.

• 3 - Properties of Language
• Symbolic represents objects, actions, events
  ideas (ex car class of objects that have
  certain properties).
• Generative limited number of symbols can
  generate infinite array of novel messages (there
  is always something novel).
• Structured infinite variety is structured in a
  limited number of ways (Rules govern the
  arrangement of words into phrases sentences).

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Hierarchical Structure of Language

• Phonemes smallest (basic) speech units that can
  be distinguished perceptually (ex Ch, Th, a ).
• 100 possible, English has about 40 phonemes.
• Morphemes smallest unit of meaning.
• 50,000 in English Example unfriendly root
  words (friend), prefixes (un), suffixes (ly)
  unfriendly 3 morphemes.
• Semantics meaning of words and word
  combinations.
• Denotation dictionary definitions
• Connotation emotional overtones secondary
  implications.
• Example clever, cunning, slick, sly all same
  denotation.
• Syntax a system of rules for arranging words
  into sentences.
• Different rules for different languages
  sentence must have a noun phrase verb phrase.

5
The Nature of Language

• There are approximately 6,000 languages around
  the world (although 60 of the people speak only
  30 different languages half of the number
  existing today will vanish within the century).
• All languages are organized in the same basic
  way.
• Spoken languages use sounds and rules for putting
  the sounds together.
• Sign languages use gestures rather than sounds.

According to Genesis, the observed variety of
human languages originated at the Tower of Babel
with the confusion of tongues. (Image from
Gustave Doré's Illustrated Bible).
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Historical Linguistics

• Historical linguistics deals with the fact that
  languages change over time.

• Language family
• A group of languages descended from a single
  ancestral language.
• Linguistic divergence
• The development of different languages from a
  single ancestral language.

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Glottochronology

• In linguistics, glottochronology is a method for
  identifying the approximate time that languages
  branched off from a common ancestor.
• It is based on analyzing core vocabularies.
• Core vocabularies (Cognates)
• In language, pronouns, lower numerals, and names
  for body parts and natural objects (etc.).

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Historical Linguistics Cognates

• Cognates are vocabulary words from two or more
  languages which sound similar and refer to the
  same thing.
• English Spanish
• One Uno
• Sun Sol
• Day Dia
• Latin is the historical root language for the
  so-called Romance Languages (Spanish, French,
  Italian, etc). Thus, the Romance Languages share
  a great number of cognates because they share a
  common origin.

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English Indo-European Languages
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Language Mapping
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Origin of Language One Theory

• Early hominids probably began using gestures to
  communicate intentions within a social setting.
• FOXP2 gene Language or Speech gene responsible
  for major inherited speech disorder (KE family
  studied).
• Over 3 generation, half the family afflicted.
• Inability to form intelligible speech.
• Defects in processing words according to rules.
• Caused by a single nucleotide mutation on exon 14
  of chromosome 7.
• Very conserved gene 1 change in 75 million
  years before the divergence of chimps humans
  and 2 in the 6 million years since that
  divergences.
• Mutation occurred 10,000 100,000 years ago and
  may be critical for the development of modern
  human speech.

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Biology and Human Speech
Sound systems. The human upper respiratory tract
made speech possible as the high larynx seen in
species like the chimp (left) dropped, creating
an expanded pharynx (red). AFTER J. LAITMAN, LA
RECHERCHE
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Gestures Body Lanuage

• The Hook em, hornssalute flashed by U.S.
  President Bush and his family during his 2005
  inauguration shocked many Europeans who
  interpreted it as a salute to Satan.

• Proxemics The cross-cultural study of
  humankinds perception and use of space.
• Intimate 0 -18 inches
• Personal 11/2 4 feet
• Social 4 12 feet
• Public 12 beyond

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Origins of the Gesture-Call System
Vervet Monkey Alarm Calls

• Inherited from our primate ancestors.
• Gesture component consists of body motions used
  to convey messages.
• Call component consists of extralinguistic noises
  involving various voice qualities and
  vocalizations.

3 different alarm calls for 3 different
predators leopards, eagles, pythons.
Each type elicits a different response in other
monkeys. Leopardsrun into trees. Eaglesrun
into the bushes. Pythonbipdeal to spot snake
move away.
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Paralanguage

• The extralinguistic noises that accompany
  language, for example, those of crying or
  laughing. Its not whats said, but how its
  said
• Giggling, groaning, or sighing
• Pitch tempo of speech

Tonal language

• A language in which the sound pitch of a spoken
  word is an essential part of its pronunciation
  and meaning.
• 70 of the worlds languages are tonal.
• Example Mandarin Chinese has 4 contrasting
  tones flat, rising, falling, falling then
  rising.

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Can Animals Develop Languages?

• Allen and Beatrice Gardner (1969) (
  http//www.friendsofwashoe.org/ )
• Chimpanzee Washoe learned ASL 160 word
  vocabulary.
• Rules of language or Operant conditioning (Nim
  Chimpsky)?
• Penny Patterson Koko (1971) (
  http//www.koko.org/index.php )
• Koko the gorilla understands 1,000 ASL signs
  approx 2,000 spoken English words.
• Irene Peperberg Alex the African Grey parrot
  (1975-2007).
• ( http//www.alexfoundation.org/ )
• Could identify fity different objects and
  recognize quantities up to six could distinguish
  seven colors and five shapes had a vocabulary of
  about 150 words (operant conditioning?).
• Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
• (http//www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?sto
  ryId5503685 )
• Bonobo chimpanzee Kanzi (the Einstein of
  chimps?)
• Used symbols that represented language.
• Receptive language 72 of 660 requests.

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Linguistic Relativity

• Linguistic relativity The idea that distinctions
  encoded in one language are unique to that
  language (example Inuits have many words for
  snow.
• Linguistic Determinism The structure of language
  influences how individuals perceives
  conceptualizes the world. (Language completely
  determines how we think).
• Sometimes called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after
  its originators Edward Sapir and his student
  Benjamin Lee Whorf.

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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• A language is not simply an encoding process but
  is rather a shaping force.
• Language guides thinking and behavior by
  predisposing people to see the world in a certain
  way.
• They suggest that speakers of different languages
  think about the world in quite different ways.
• There has been a recent renewal of interest in
  this hypothesis.

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Linguistic Determinism the Aymara Indians

• Aymara Indians living in the highlands of Bolivia
  and Peru in South America depend on the potato as
  their major source of food.
• Their language has over 200 words for this
  vegetable, reflecting the many varieties they
  grow and the different ways they preserve and
  prepare it.

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Cross-cultural comparisons

• If a language doesnt distinguish between blue
  and green, do people who speak that language
  think about colors differently than people in
  other cultures do?
• Speakers of African languages that do not
  distinguish between blue and green have a harder
  time making quick discriminations between blue
  and green than English-speaking subjects (Ozgen,
  2004).
• Additional studies have found that language can
  have some impact on how people think about motion
  (Gennari et al., 2002), time (Boroditsky, 2001),
  and shapes (Davidoff Shapiro, 2002).
• Is the new data sufficient to support the
  original strong version of the hypothesis or a
  weaker version that suggest that language can
  make certain ways of thinking easier or harder?

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Writing Systems

• Tallies by carving notches in wood, bone, and
  stone were used for at least forty thousand
  years. Stone age cultures, including ancient
  American Indian groups, used tallies for gambling
  with horses, slaves, personal services and
  trade-goods but this was not writing.
• A set of visible or tactile signs used to
  represent units of language in a systematic way.
• An alphabet is a series of symbols representing
  the sounds of a language arranged in a
  traditional order.
• The history of the alphabet starts in ancient
  Egypt. By 2700 BC Egyptian writing had a set of
  some 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that
  begin with a single consonant of their language,
  plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the
  native speaker.

Tally marks on stone from Blombos cave, South
Africa 77,000 years old.
14th century BC letter in Akkadian.