PSY270H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Cognitive Load, Functional Fixedness, Pythagorean Theorem
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Language began about 100 000 years ago in southern africa. Well, language travels from place to place as people move from one location to another (people bring their language with them). One thing we"ve noticed is that in younger/more recent cultures have more influences from other languages. So researchers figured out how many distinct sounds there are in a language. As you go from younger to older cultures you see very few distinct sounds. In southern africa there are only ~15 sounds so the idea is that no other languages influenced them since they were already well established (and nobody else is going to come to these well-established places) It evolves based on the culture and the influences on it. Oxford dictionary puts out new words as a society we decide this word is now a legitimate word. Ex: the word nice" a couple decades ago used to mean foolish, senseless, wicked" used to mean cool now it means evil.
