PSY374H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Mutual Intelligibility, Animal Communication, Arbitrariness
Document Summary
Same language if it"s mutually intelligible to each other. Same dialect if it"s in the same region. Swedish person may be able to understand dutch person. All languages adhere to certain rules; same basic principles. Bees dance to communicate the location of nectar. Monkeys make sounds to indicate what kinds of predators are approaching. Sn- words relating to nasal activity (sneeze, snore, sniff) Don"t vary continuously: duality of patterning: ability to combine units in different ways to create different signals; do not need a lot of units, phonemes:inventory of sounds to create words. Building blocks that convey no meaning: morphemes: inventory of words to create sentences. Smallest unit of sound that conveys meaning: productivity: ability to create combinations that have not been encountered. No finite number of words in a language. Ability to understand and create novel sentences. Iteration: adding structures onto structures (at the end)
