LING 100 Lecture 3: Lecture 3 Notes

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

Document Summary

No recursion: symbol combinations show no evidence of a desire to convey information or to identify things. If identical experimental results cannot be obtained under identical conditions, something is very wrong. But with most primate research, experimental conditions are unknown and results are a matter of interpretation rather than fact. Li(cid:374)guists ha(cid:448)e pe(cid:396)haps too (cid:374)a(cid:396)(cid:396)o(cid:449) a (cid:448)ie(cid:449) of (cid:862)la(cid:374)guage(cid:863). Ha(cid:374)s(cid:863) t(cid:396)ap: perhaps expectations have been too high. Experiments now examine cognitive activities of primates in the wild (thus affording greater ecological validity) or in tightly controlled lab research. All of this should lead to more consistent and meaningful results. Cetaceans (whales, porpoises, dolphins): it appears that they can learn new patterns of vocalization. These signs in turn can be recombined to form new, meaningful larger units. Investigating fla can be done in two broad manners: naturalistic approach. They are often longitudinal studies, because their interest resides in the investigation of change over time: gathe(cid:396)i(cid:374)g data at (cid:862)(cid:449)eekl(cid:455) o(cid:396) (cid:271)i(cid:449)eekl(cid:455) i(cid:374)te(cid:396)(cid:448)als(cid:863)