Language

Question 1

Where did language come from regarding the Tower of Babel?

Answer 1

• Everyone spoke a single language which united them to build a city with a tower to reach the sky.
• To limit the power of humans, languages are scattered across the world to ensure unintelligibility.

Question 2

How does language evolve?

Answer 2

Darwin’s theory of evolution states it evolves through natural selection.

Question 3

Who stated that at some point species evolved a language organ?

Answer 3

Pinker & Bloom (1990)

Question 4

Who came up with ‘Poverty of the stimulus’?

Answer 4

Chomsky

Question 5

What is Chomsky’s Universal Grammar?

Answer 5

All languages are based on the same innate constraints, so all languages are equal.

Question 6

What is Pinker’s ‘mentalese’?

Answer 6

Thought is independent of language.
- We do not think with ‘natural language’ but an abstract, pre-linguistic ‘mental language’.

Question 7

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 7

The languages we speak influence how we think and perceive the world.

Question 8

Who studied spatial metaphors for linguistic relativity?

Answer 8

Boroditsky (2001)

Question 9

Who studied colour terms for linguistic relativity?

Answer 9

Winawer et al. (2007)