ANTH 1150 Lecture 11: Week 11 Language and Culture.docx

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH 1150
• Professor: Tad Mc Ilwraith

Document Summary

Linguistic relativity: all languages are equally capable of providing speakers/signers with a means of communication (no language is better than another) Defining language: language is a set of publically accessible symbols that allow communication. Design features of language: made by charles hockett the properties of language. Interchangeability can speak other languages: rapid fading spoken words disappear mere seconds after spoken. 6 features for communication: sender of message - addresser, receiver of message addressee, message, channel form of contact between, code (language, context (image provoked by sound/message) Vervet monkey has 3 danger calls for different types of predators closed system) 3 main plural morphemes in english: pin (z sound), books (s sound), box (es: syntax sentence structure, grammar, conversation. Issues with this hypothesis: too deterministic, you can learn the differences between languages, many people are multi-lingual. Saving languages can save knowledge about things like plants and animals from ecosystems that we know little about: david harrison stephen colbert report dying languages.