BCS 152 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Waggle Dance, Animal Language, Animal Communication
30 Oct 2018
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Document Summary
When compared to animals, features should be thought or as a continuum instead of a binary value. Binary value is yes/no, continuum - continuous. For ex, specialization is the function of signal. In common: rely on symbolic representation & smaller communication elements combined to create complex messages. Difference: bee dance- non-arbitrary, human language- mostly arbitrary. The meanings of the words retain their identity. Well-ordered sentences depend on ordering syntactic categories of words in correct sequences. Sentences are built round verbs and we can distinguish words that do the semantic work. We have infinite number of sentences from a finite number of rules. An essential feature of human language is that it involves both associating a finite number of words with particular meanings/concepts and using a finite number of rules to combine those words into a potentially infinite number of sentences.
