ANTH 1001H Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Phonology, Cultural Relativism, Pragmatics
29 Nov 2016
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Communication + idealized worlds
• Pre-human ancestors like other non-human primates would’ve used call systems before
language evolved.
• Call systems are simple communication systems, unlike our language. They have a
relatively small vocabulary, and convey only information about the individual’s current
state.
Language:
• Used naturally and habitually only by humans.
• Standardized units that are combinable according to rules
• Allows us to express a much greater variety of things compared to call systems.
• It’s a set of symbols (things that stand for other things). As symbols, language is a
form of knowledge.
Speech:
• Use of language.
• Behaviors acted out when people talk
• Fades rapidly, ephemeral.
• Only if speech is transformed into a stable form primarily through being remembered
can it be stored long term.
• For speech to work both speaker and listener have to have similar language in memory
Biological aspects of language/capacity for language:
• Evolved in ancestors by natural selection and other evolutionary forces
• Capacity for language related to capacity for culture.
• These physical changes that occurred in our bodies occurred over the evolution of our
genus Homo.
• Enlarging of brains and specialization of certain brain areas, particularly those dedicated
to language.
• Changes to our vocal apparatus that made fine manipulation possible. First these
changes happened in our hands to make fine hand movements, and then later changes to
vocal apparatus to manipulate and vibrate air to create fine distinctions in sound.
Cultural aspects of language:
• Specific languages including their vocabulary and their grammars are socially learned.
• Therefore all languages are made of culture, of socially learned information.
• Expressions of language can take the form of ideas, behaviors and artifacts.
• In the case of linguistic information, it exists as ideas in memory, that is, mental
representations of a grammar, vocabulary and other utterances.
Language universals and variation: Distinguish learned from innate.
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