LING 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Waggle Dance, Vocal Tract, Bird Vocalization
1 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
Charles hockett suggested in the 1950s that human language has a set of design features that de nes it. Animals share some of the features, but no animal mode of communication has all of the features. Displacement: the ability to talk about things distant in space and time. Discreteness: each unit of communication is separate and identi able. Complex messages are made up of smaller parts. Semanticity: linguistic utterances convey meaning about items, events (not limited, not just about self) Arbitrariness: the symbol is not directly connected to (logically related to) its meaning. prevarication: the ability to lie. Productivity: the capacity to express an unbounded range of meanings. Re exiveness: the ability to use language to talk about language. Specialization: the vocal tract and the ear are specialized for language. The scout bees perform a dance" to communicate where the food is. Calls: warn of predators, express aggression, coordinate ight activity, accompany feeding or nesting behaviour.
