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Language and CommunicationLearning ObjectivesWhy is language important to humans?Major properties of language?What is the biological basis of human language?What are the limitations of primate call systems?Define phonemes, morphemes, and tone languages.Kinesics and the major forms of nonverbal communication.Why is Language Important to Humans?The working of the human mind depends on languageLanguage allows humans to enjoy the most complete and precise form of communication in any animalLanguage makes cultural transmission possibleProperties of Human LanguageDiscretenessMinimal units of sounds and meaning may be combined in different ways to communicate messagesArbitrarinessThe specific sounds combination that convey certain meanings have no inherent relationship to the things they representProductivityFinite number of words can be combined into an infinite number of novel sentencesDisplacementPeople can discuss objects and events that are not immediately present or that are imaginary, future, or only possibleMultimedia potentialMessages can be transmitted through many media (sound, print, sight, electronic)Human Evolution and the Biological Basis of LanguageThe speech regions of human brainA mutated gene known as FOXP2 provided advantages that allowed humans to speakHuman vocal tract is biologically evolved for speechDifferences between Human and Nonhuman Primate Communication SystemsCall systems of nonhuman primates: a limited number of sounds that can’t be combined to produce more meaningsThe vocal tract of nonhuman primates: not suitable for speechHow Does Language Work?Sound systemPhoneme: the smallest unit of sounds that speakers of a language recognize as distinct from other soundsPhonology: study of sounds used in speech in a particular languageLanguages have different phonemesThe phonemes of some languages do not appear in othersThe pitch changesChange between words, such as EnglishChange within a word-tone language (Chinese, Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Nupe)Tone languages: languages in which changing voice pitch within a word alters the entire meaning of the wordWords and meaningsMorpheme: a combination of phonemes that communicates a standardized meaningFree morphemes (words): cat, dog, treeBound morphemes (suffixes, prefixes): -ed, -un, -ing, anti-Morphology: the study of the units of meaning and word construction in languageNonverbal CommunicationKinesics: the study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressionsFacial expressionsSpace and distanceTouchingGesturesSociolinguisticsLearning ObjectivesHow does culture affect the vocabulary of a language?What are dialects and diglossia?How do individual speech patterns correlate with class, gender, and ethnicity?What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?How Does Culture Shape Language?VocabularyA language’s set of names for things, events, actions, qualities, etc.Semantic domain: a set of words that belong to an inclusive class, which develop around things that are important or useful to a society or a social groupDifferent cultures have different semantic domainsThe domains of some languages may not appear in othersSnowCattleDifferent cultures may have the same domain, but the components of each domain could be differentKinship termsColorVocabulary is the area of language that changes most readily as culture changesWhen the need arises, new domains could be created or old ones could be elaborated.Speech patterns of individualsVariations in speech patterns include pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.Speech patterns affected by gender rolesFemale speech pattern and women’s traditional power in societySpeech patterns affected by social classSpecialized vocabularies as status markersNegative evaluations of speech patterns of low-status groupsSpeech patterns, ethnicity, and identityDialects: variation in a single language based on factors such as region, subculture, ethnic identity, and socioeconomic status.The “standard” vs. “non-standard”The distinction between languages and dialects can be culturally and politically loaded rather than linguistically based.Speech patterns and social contextsDiglossia: the existence of “high” (formal) and “low” (informal) dialects within a single languageDoes Language Play a Role in Shaping Human Behavior?The Sapir-Whorf hypothesisThe idea that language profoundly shapes the perception and world view of its speakerThe chicken and egg questionCulture comes first or language first?How important is language as opposed to other social and cultural influences on perceptions and views of reality?Critique of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesisLanguage shapes thought only to certain degreesPeople’s perceptions and worldviews change much more rapidly than languageThe impact of language on individuals and the impact of culture on languageHistorical LinguisticsLearning ObjectivesWhat does historical linguistics study?Define daughter language and protolanguageHow were contact languages created?What is the difference between pidgin and creole?Definition of Historical LinguisticsThe study of the long-term change of languageSearching for a protolanguageDaughter language: languages sharing a common parent languageProto-language: language ancestral to several daughter languagesProto-Indo-European (PIE)Indo-European Languages (IE)LatinFrench, SpanishProto-Germanic German, English, DutchMany other ancient languagesWho created the Proto-Indo-European Language (PIE)?Hypothesis #1: Pastoralists in the Black Seas area about 4,000 years agoEvidence: vocabulary for chariots and wagonsHypothesis #2: Farmers in Anatolia (now Turkey) about 9,000 years agoEvidence: vocabulary for family relationsAn even more remote protolanguage?A very remote protolanguage, spoken perhaps 50,000 years ago in Africa, might have given rise to all contemporary languages (Gell-Mnn and Ruhlen 2011)Six possible ways of arranging word orders [subjects (s), object (o), and verb (v)]:SOV (“I like you,” e.g., Latin)- the most common, the original, ancestral word orderThe universal grammarHuman brain contains limited set of rules for organizing language, so all languages have a common structural basisGlobalization and Linguistic ChangesContact languages- the creation of new languagesTwo types of contact language as a consequence of the European exploration and colonization of many parts of the world:Pidgin: a grammatically simplified speech used for communication between people with different languagesCreole: a stable natural language developed from pidgins.Example: Gullah spoken by African Americans on coastal islands in SC and GeorgiaDifferences between Pidgins and CreolesPidgin: not a standard language, a tool for communication, with rudimentary grammar, gives birth to a creole languageCreole: a complete language with fully developed grammar, a mother tongue of the later generations of pidgin speakersLanguage lossThe world’s linguistic diversity has been cut in half in the past 500 years, and half of the remaining 7,000 languages are predicted to disappear during this century. ................
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