ANT100Y1 Lecture : lecture note
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ANT100Y1 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
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Document Summary
Plato (c 427 bce) poverty of stimulus : language is an innate biologicial endowment. We come with everything we know, not from environment but from the mind. Noam chomsky (1928-) universal grammer or innatist hypothesis, many linguists looking for genes. We come with grammer capacity all environment does is set it off and we speak, Gene called fpxp2, evidence that a specific language impairment seems to be passed on involving word inflections and complex syntax. Foxp2 should not be considered a language gene, however, thousands other genes are believed to contribute to building the human brain. Childeren don t know moon what they call it, they may call it ball, we are creative beings, vocal speech. The central fact of language is that speakers can make infinite use of the finite resources provided by their language. Though the capacity for language is universal, the individuality of each language is a property of the people who speak it.
