ANTHRO 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Karl Von Frisch, Language Acquisition Device, Noam Chomsky
Document Summary
Karl von frisch discovered that australian honey bees communicate details. A sentence that is symbolic communication means at least two things. First that it has meaning even when it is referent (whatever it is referred to) is not present. Second, the meaning is arbitrary; the receiver of the message could not guess its meaning just from the sound and does not know the meaning instinctively. Primates vocal systems are closed, different calls are not combined to produce new, meaningful utterances. Humans systems are open, governed by complex rules about how sounds and sequences of sounds can be combined to produce an infinite variety of meanings. Noam chomsky and other theoreticiansof grammar suggest that there is an innate language- acquisition device in the human brain. Pidgin is a simplified language drawn from the master"s languages. It lacks many of the building blocks found in languages of whole societies. May bring us closer to the origin of human language.