ANT253H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Dionysius Thrax, Eric Lenneberg
Document Summary
Indian scholar named panini in 400 bce wrote a book of grammar rules for the sanskrit language which contained over 4000 rules. This was used as reference for later cultured writers: the word language comes from the latin word lingua meaning tongue, the tongue is used to create forms of thoughts known as words. Speech the use of that system to transmit verbal messages: speech can be vocal (speaking) or nonvocal (writing, you can have language without speech but not vice versa, a lowered larynx is a pre-requisite for speech. It starts at the age of 3 months: plato believed in the poverty of stimulus . Most of what we know is innate, coming from earlier existence and is reawakened in each individual: there is a connection between nature and nurture. We can see this by feral children: chomsky believes in the universal grammar theory.
