LING 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Border Collie, Feral Child, Hemispherectomy
Document Summary
Children fast become competent speakers of languages surrounding them. Human brains different from other animal brains. Human brains constrain process of language acquisition- respond to data in special ways. Controversial hypothesis- universal grammar contains intricate lang specific info. Biologically determined behavior: honeybee communication, suckling chewing swallowing, walking. Learned cultural behaviors- takes explicit instruction: reading/writing, cooking, chimps- ways of obtaining/eating ants- varies between colonies. Not very clear distinction between the above though: feline hunting behavior- hunting/chasing instinct, but killing/eating prey is learned from their mothers, reading/writing, writing is a fairly recent invention (8k yrs, but humans have been around. 200k yrs: not an instinct, but relies on a number of innate skills and is constrained by human brains, other animals cant do it. Acquiring language is more like feline hunting than reading: almost all cats learn to hunt, but not all people learn to read or write.
