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Language as element of Human Evolution

  • Tools
  • Bipedalism
  • Premature birth, and long dependency period of infants
  • Language

What language is

  • Humans have highly elaborate codes called language, made of words & rules that combine to make sense
  • Language code could be sounds units, meaningful units, eg, words or phrases etc
  • To decode a message is to react to a message in ways that reflect the way the sender intended

Two approaches to study language

  • Theoretical Linguistics- concerned with the form& structure of language
  • Linguistic anthropology- seeks to make sense of social and cultural context in which people speak

Goes beyond analysis of language structure & pattern of language to look at :

the contexts, and how we use words,

How do we use language to control or influence others?

What accounts for different accents,

does the different words we use affect our different experiences?

uniqueness of human language

  • Displacement / Human language is open/digital

  • Duality of patterning ( sound and meaning)

  • The arbitrariness of language (no necessary relationship between sound & meaning)

  • Universal grammar (Chomskian theory of universal grammer).

Phonological /phonemic systems

  • Phoneme- each distinct sound humans make

  • Phonemic analysis- When native speaker works out the different sounds in words, with different meanings
  • Morpheme- smallest unit of word( walk/ walked

Two dimensions of language

  • Sound and Meaning
  • Phonetics- All the sounds that humans make

bit/bite

Lit/light/lite

Hit/height

Bit/pit- differences in sound, differences in meaning

Minimal pairs

How to communicate

  • To communicate, a receiver must detect the senders’ message
  • Examples of sender’s messages: fear, hungar or sexual receptivity( internal state) or presence of danger
  • All messages are placed in codes

Saussure& Semiotics

  • Humans communicate through symbols: words, gestures or things that stand , or point to something else
  • Symbols are vehicles of meanings eg

raised hand signifier = Signifies “ We are number one”

Symbols influence behavior eg. Traffic signs command us to stop, speed etc

The arbitrariness of language

  • No necessary connection between symbols and the things they symbolize:

Is a matter of convention or intentionality

Is by custom that the rose represents a particular kind of flower

Is by stipulation( not out of necessity) that the + points to their referents

Language & Communication

  • Communication- behavior that affects behaviors of others by the transmission of information
  • When a machine or organism communicates, it sends messages about itself or its environment
  • The result of communication is change

Themes that Concern L. Anthropologists

  • Language and ethnicity,
  • Education,
  • Nations and Nationalism
  • Gender