Anthropology 1020E Study Guide - Baby Talk, Determinism, Indexicality
Document Summary
Language has developed alone with evolution as a species. Language is essential to out development of knowledge, technology, society, and survival. Vocal-auditory channel can just talk while other things would disadvantage this move. Putting sounds together to get words with meanings. Finite number of meaningless sounds gives way to an infinite number of words/meanings. Displacement not in our immediate context. Reflexiveness can talk about out own language with our language. Human characteristics related to evolution of language. Polygenesis: merging different ways of languages at different times. Mark pagel: how has language transformed society? (video@3:19) Human capacity for social learning gave us an advantage over other species. Language evolved us to solve the crisis of visual theft. Language is a piece of social technology for enhancing the benefits of cooperation. Not all language is verbal or oral. Human language uses a combination of verbal and nonverbal communication. Human communicative gestures that are independent of culture and language, universal.