ACS 106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Noam Chomsky, Arbitrariness, Animal Communication

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Arts and Contemporary Studies
• Course: ACS 106
• Professor: Dana Osborne

Document Summary

Language may be mysterious and unprecedented, but stopping here would ultimately mean giving up on trying to understand or appreciate it. In judaism, they assumed that god gave them language form the shape of the tongue when it moves. Although truly onomatopoeic words (i. e. , words that sound like what they represent) seem to be few and far between, there are actually many hidden relationships between sound patterns and meaningful associations (cid:862)(cid:271)o(cid:449) (cid:449)o(cid:449)(cid:863) theo(cid:396)y, (cid:862)ooh ah(cid:863) theo(cid:396)y. Speech is sure to have social origins, both for group cooperation and for keeping secrets from outsiders. But language is a modeling system that does not require social interaction. Lower larynx in the human body, extremely dangerous. Fine motor control of speech organs and hand movements processed by the same brain regions! Note: this accounts for the origins of speech more then the origins of language.