PSYC 354 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: American Sign Language, Waggle Dance, Nim Chimpsky

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 354
• Professor: Jeremy Carpendale

Document Summary

Human communicate in very different ways compared to social insects like ants and bees. Involuntary communication: turning red because of embarrassment. Comparative approach to animal communication to see if its similar to human language. Important question about the nature of human language and whether or not language is innate or learned. Noam chomsky - claimed that language is innate, that humans and only humans are in some way pre-wired to learn language. Humans are born with evolved language acquisition device (lad) that make learning human language possible. Lad is a universal grammar with parameters that can be set by exposure to a particular human language - foundation for all human language. Language itself does not leave fossil records. Whole enterprise attacks beliefs about essential differences between animals and humans. Research requires a large investment of time, effort and money, sometimes even personal money.