ANTHROP 4S03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: American Sign Language, Bound And Unbound Morphemes, Historical Linguistics
18 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
American sign language (asl): language used by this chimpanzee. We are programmed to speak, through sounds and through gestures, based on biological factors. Language permeates everything we do, and everything we do is reflected in language. Humans are able to describe objects and actions that occurred in another time and place. It is this ability that helped ancient humans communicate, strategize, and analyze the world around them, setting them apart from the animal world. Anthropologists understand that culture is learned and transmitted from one person to another and from one generation to the next. This transmission depends on effective communication systems, which are far more complex than communications systems of all other animals. All cultures accomplish this communication through some form of language, which is perhaps the most distinctive of all human characteristics. Language is a system for communicating in symbols, and the symbols are generated culturally.
