Transcript ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AUG. 30, 2013 – DAY 3 Brain & Language LING 4110-4890-5110-7960 NSCI 4110-4891-6110 Harry Howard Tulane Universit.

ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC
COMPETENCE
AUG. 30, 2013 – DAY 3
Brain & Language
LING 4110-4890-5110-7960
NSCI 4110-4891-6110
Harry Howard
Tulane Universit
8/30/13
Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
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Course organization
• The syllabus, these slides and my recordings are
available at http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/
• The NSCI students that were not registered should have
been notified by NSCI that they are cleared to register.
• The LING students that were not registered should have
been cleared to register. You will not receive any
notification, however.
• Anyone else not registered should talk to me.
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PUBLIC SERVICE OPTION
Office of Public Service
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Review
• processing
• modularity
• localization
• aphasia
• phrenology
• linguistic sign, signifier & signified
• symbol
• representation, first- & higher-order
• evolution & co-evolution
• natural & sexual selection
• falsifiability
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What is co-evolution?
• What examples of co-
evolution can you think
of?
• So, how could the
brain and language
have co-evolved?
• Will we ever know? –
Don’t answer! See
next slide.
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What is falsifiability?
• Are all swans white?
• The classical view of the philosophy
of science is that it is the goal of
science to ‘prove’ observational
data.
• This hardly seems possible, since it
would require us to infer a general
rule from a number of individual
cases, e.g. all swans are white.
• However, if we find one single black
swan, logic allows us to conclude
that the statement that all swans are
white is false.
• Falsificationism thus strives for
questioning, for falsification, of
hypotheses instead of proving them.
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Falsifiability
• Is it good or bad?
• Is the theory of the co-evolution of the brain & language
falsifiable?
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ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC
COMPETENCE
Ingram §2 – Design features of language
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What makes a language?
• Charles Hockett (1966), "The Problem of Universals in
Language"
• The search for universals through comparison with animal
systems:
• "The design-features listed below are found in every language on
which we have reliable information, and each seems to be lacking
in at least one known animal communicative system.
• They are not all logically independent, and do not necessarily all
belong to our defining list for language--a point to be taken up
separately..."
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Design features of language 1-5
• 1. Mode of communication:
• vocal-auditory, tactile-visual, or chemical-olfactory
• 2. Rapid Fading:
• Message does not linger in time or space after production.
• 3. Interchangeability:
• individuals who use a language can both send and receive any
permissible message within that communication system.
• 4. Feedback:
• users of a language can perceive what they are transmitting and
can make corrections if they make errors.
• 5. Specialization:
• the direct-energetic consequences of linguistic signals are usually
biologically trivial; only the triggering effects are important.
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Design features of language 6-9
• 6. Semanticity:
• there are associative ties between signal elements and features in
the world; in short, some linguistic forms have denotations.
• 7. Arbitrariness:
• there is no logical connection between the form of the signal and its
meaning.
• 8. Discreteness:
• messages in the system are made up of smaller, repeatable parts;
the sounds of language (or cheremes of a sign) are perceived
categorically, not continuously.
• 9. Displacement:
• linguistic messages may refer to things remote in time and space,
or both, from the site of the communication.
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Design features of language 10-12
• 10. Productivity:
• users can create and understand completely novel messages.
• 10.1. In a language, new messages are freely coined by blending,
analogizing from, or transforming old ones. This says that every
language has grammatical patterning.
• 10.2. In a language, either new or old elements are freely assigned
new semantic loads by circumstances and context. This says that
in every language new idioms constantly come into existence.
• 11. Cultural transmission:
• the conventions of a language are learned by interacting with more
experienced users.
• 12. Duality (of Patterning):
• a large number of meaningful elements are made up of a
conveniently small number of meaningless but messagedifferentiating elements.
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Design features of language 13-15
• 13. Prevarication:
• linguistic messages can be false, deceptive, or meaningless.
• 14. Reflexiveness:
• In a language, one can communicate about communication.
• 15. Learnability:
• A speaker of a language can learn another language.
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Summary
image
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Which are the most important ones?
• "There is...a sense in which [productivity], displacement,
and duality...can be regarded as the crucial, or nuclear, or
central properties of human language."
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What about
body
language?
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ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC
COMPETENCE
Ingram §2 – Phonetics
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Phonetics
• How do you pronounce this word?
• “ghoti”
• enough
• women
• solution
• What can you conclude from this exercise?
• the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
• [fIʃ]
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NEXT TIME
Continue with this chapter. Do exercises that I will send
you.