LING 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Waggle Dance, Vervet Monkey, Nicholas Humphrey

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 100
• Professor: Yourie Pankrats

Document Summary

6909 languages in the world: every week or two weeks, one language dies, but sometimes they revive (e. g. , hebrew, notio(cid:374)s of (cid:862)la(cid:374)guage death(cid:863), (cid:862)la(cid:374)guage shift(cid:863), (cid:862)la(cid:374)guage loss(cid:863), a(cid:374)d (cid:862)la(cid:374)guage (cid:396)e(cid:448)i(cid:448)al(cid:863) 73. 7% of the world speaks one of forty most common languages: the rest, 26. 3%, speaks their mother tongue. Chinese has the biggest population, followed by english and spanish. In australia, 90% of 250 indigenous aboriginal languages spoken before 1900 are already dead (or heading to death) In usa and canada, 187 native na languages are extinct (heading to extinction) When we lose a language, we lost more than just communication: we also lose information, and socio-cultural identities. Language as a means of communication (oral and written language) As a means of storage and transmission of information (written language) As a means of expressing and organizing the contents of our mind: cognitive function and development language is a part of our thinking ability (thought expression)