LING 1030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Premotor Cortex, Syntactic Category
Document Summary
Origin of language = origin of humans. Language is an evolutionary development (not invented or discovered) Language increases chances of survival: organizing thoughts, making/using tools, social interaction. Humans have complex language (animals do not) 3 design features of human language: displaced reference, duality of patterning, recursivity. Displaced reference: symbolic capacity of characterizing human thought (talking about things that aren"t right in front of you) animals can only communicate about here and now things. Combinatorial and recursive capacities of language allow the generation of an infinite number on sentences (only found in human language) Intelligence, working memory, tool-making: emergence of human symbolic capacity. Another difference between animals and humans: problem solving. Intelligence: ability to attain goals in face of obstacles by assessing current situation (humans are intelligent by definition) Enhanced working memory: located in premotor cortex. Symbolic representation: ability to hold in mind some representation that is not currently held in view .
