ACS 106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Vocal Tract, Animal Communication, Pragmatics
31 Jan 2018
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Acs106: semantics: having to do with meaning of words (not necessarily the literal meaning) The ways that language and social factors intermingle to make new things. Eg. prey react to stimulus of the predator. Experiment: testing to see how capuchin monkeys react to predators. The formal structures of language: grammar, syntax, categories. Create new reactions based on the stimulus - limited amount of reactions though. It is open ended and combinatorial, meaning that we can use the same systems of signs to make whole new meanings. This differs from forms of animal communication in which signs often have direct meaning and systems are not adaptable over time. Some scientists have argued that humans have an inborn language faculty that is woven into the structure of our brains, unique among animals, and is the product of evolutionary forces. Evidence of this is often cited in the fact that speakers of linguistically diverse languages have similar components structurally.
