Langue as a Uniquely Human Capacity Flashcards
What is Universal Grammar?
Chomsky’s proposition that humans are born with certain possibilities fir language (ex. the appropriate hardware awaiting to be turned on). The language you are raised with determines what rules are activated.
What is an argument in favor of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar?
Poverty of Stimulus - speakers know what is right or wrong without exposure to it
What are the arguments against Chomsky’s Universal Grammar?
- It’s not falsifiable
2. Fast-changing languages are incompatible with a slow-changing genetic hardware
What are the 3 hypotheses on the Faculty of Language?
- FLB is homologous to animal communication
- FLB is an adaptation, and is only present in humans
- FLB is homologous to animals, FLN is uniquely human
What is the sensory-motor interface?
Mechanism that connects mental expressions to the external world via language production and perception (external)
What is an example of the sensory-motor interface?
Monkeys are able to classify languages based on their rhythmic properties
Shows that the sensory-motor interface may not be uniquely human
What is the conceptual-intentional interface?
Mechanism that connects mental expressions to internal activities (semantic-pragmatic interpretation, reasoning, planning, etc.)
What are 2 examples of the conceptual-intentional interface?
- Vervet monkey alarm calls. They use different calls (depending on the predator) to alert their cohort of the impending danger.
Note: they cannot learn new calls - Honeybee waggle-dance. Use dance to tell other bees the location of food in relation to the sun. The different parts of the dance are syntactic building blocks
What are the uniquely human components of language?
Recursion, merge, and the complexity of the human lexicon
What is recursion?
The computational mechanism of FLN in which 2 ideas are related to the same object in a single sentence
Give an example (human) that would challenge the idea that recursion is what makes human language unique.
The Piraha community. There is no recursion in their e-language.
Give an example (animals) that challenges the idea that recursion is what makes human language unique.
European starlings. In an experiment, they were trained to identify recursion (in their own singing). The starlings could do recursion, which would indicate that recursion is not uniquely human.
However, it could be that they were just counting or detecting acoustic approximation
What is merge?
The process of concatenating 2 ideas that belong together with the minimal amount of effort. Occurs in the lower part of the syntax tree.
What makes the human lexicon unique?
The complexity of it. Symbols on their own are not unique to humans.
Exemplify the notion that the complexity of the human language is what is unique to humans.
In a study, infants and chimpanzees were compared in terms of their lexicon. It showed that chimpanzees cannot expand their lexicon. Infants can be specific about an “apple” (can cut it, eat it, throw it, etc.). For chimps, no matter the action, an “apple” is just an “apple”
