PSYCH 3GG3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Habituation, Universal Grammar, Deep Structure And Surface Structure

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH 3GG3
• Professor: Mel Rutherford

Document Summary

White-crowned sparrow: has to hear older males months before producing song. Vervet monkey: 3 alarm calls for different predators, humans can learn things that have never been said before, monkeys can not. Viki: their own kids could learn language without intensive training, but viki required much more. Lived with human family and went through intense language training training and never really. Learned papa, mama and cup, but mixed them up if she got excited, did not really know what they meant. Language is a human universal, anywhere there are humans, there is language: not more complex in more complex societies - different from art, this is more primitive in primitive societies and more complex in complex societies. Language is not an artifact or innovation, unlike agriculture, the controlled use of fire, art, written language - these things you can pinpoint where it was invented in history and trace how it spread.