SMC219Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Zeitgeist, Samuel Morse, Bi Sheng
17 Sep 2016
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We are influenced and changed by whatever our communication connects us to. This means that it is very important for us to understand what communication actually is. The old belief that the (cid:373)ethod of (cid:272)o(cid:373)(cid:373)u(cid:374)i(cid:272)atio(cid:374) does(cid:374)"t (cid:373)atter, as lo(cid:374)g as the message gets across is clearly untrue, especially in our culture today. Speech: there is a lot of controversy over when human speech began, two elements of speech: Metaphorically or symbolically attaching a specific meaning to a specific sound. Speech is a form of metaphoric communication by which sounds represent meanings. Not just humans have vocabulary; all kinds of animals have vocabulary. Humans started using vocabulary about 2. 5 million years ago (a rough estimate) However, anthropologists say that not only vocabulary can constitute speech, otherwise anything that can make a noise can speak. The speech of humans, specifically, is syntax. Syntax means the order in which we put the words.
