LING 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: American Sign Language, Kanzi, Foxp2

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 100
• Professor: Clifford Burgess

Document Summary

Washoe, chimp: taught american sign language, combination of signs was said to show basic syntactic ability and productivity. Nim, chimp: tightly controlled experiment with dismal results, only signed when signed to, stuck at 3-word stage, merely repeated his trainers on many occasions, mean length of utterance very low. If identical experimental results cannot be obtained under identical conditions, something is wrong. Cetaceans (whales, porpoises, dolphins) can learn new patterns of vocalization. Does(cid:374)"t (cid:373)ea(cid:374) that (cid:449)ords are (cid:374)ot a(cid:272)ti(cid:448)el(cid:455) lear(cid:374)ed; (cid:448)o(cid:272)a(cid:271)ular(cid:455) (cid:271)uilds o(cid:448)er a lifeti(cid:373)e. Investigating fla can be done in two manners: Naturalistic approach: diary and recording-based efforts, often longitudinal studies; interest resides in investigation of change over time, author (cid:373)e(cid:374)tio(cid:374)s gatheri(cid:374)g data (cid:862)(cid:449)eekl(cid:455) or (cid:271)i(cid:449)eekl(cid:455) i(cid:374)ter(cid:448)als(cid:863, provide some valuable descriptive data, but may lack explanatory power. Experimental approach: usually cross-sectional, look at comprehension, production, imitation, comprehension ability exceed production ability; production results are too conservative, very challenging to work with little kids as they have short attention span.