Study guide for week 2:

The goals for this week are to: 1) examine the specific differences between human language and animal communication; 2) learn how productivity in language is related to the hierarchical structure that characterizes all sentences 3) practice analyzing sentences in to their constituent phrases and categories.

Readings:

Language Files: 2.1-4; 13.1-3
Pinker: Chapters 2, 11

Exercises from the text:

Language Files: none.

Additional exercises:

1. Name three ways that language could have provided an advantage to our ancestors in evolution?

2. What other structures have resulted from the same kind of adaptive complexity that we see in language? Name several examples from humans or other species.

3. In your opinion, what kind or kinds of evidence would provide conclusive proof that animals communicate with a system like human language? In other words, what feature or features of human language separate it from other communication systems found in nature? Is it possible to state this in terms of difference in kind or type, or is human linguistics communication only different in degree?

4. Suppose Washoe were to successfully pass such a language test. What would this tell us about the answers to the following questions:
a. Is the capacity for language acquisition innate?
b. Is the capacity for language acquisition specific to the human species?
c. Is the capacity for language acquisition innate in the human species?

5. If humans started building nests, living in trees, eating worms, and singing songs at daybreak, what would you conclude about the status of these behaviors with respect to innateness in birds?

6. Read about sign language parameters in file 13.3. What do you think might be the paramaters of spoken language?

7. A common view opposing the innateness hypothesis can be characterized as follows: “There is no innate language faculty (UG). That is, the human brain is not specially adapted for language. Rather, it is just very sophisticated, and we humans are very smart. When our intelligence is applied to the problem of learning language, fueled by our intense desire to communicate, we learn language—just as we would solve any other difficult intellectual problem under similar circumstances.” How are Pinker’s stories about Mr. Ford, the K’s, Denyse, and Crystal problematic for this counter-hypothesis?

Essential concepts:

a) adaptive complexity
b) natural selection
c) adaptation vs. exaptation
d) gradualism
e) genetic variation
f) iconicity
g) transparent
h) translucent
i) opaque
j) primes/chemeres
k) language acquisition
l) Great Chain of Being
m) Homo erectus
n) Homo habilis
o) Austrilopithecus afarensis
p) Charles Darwin
q) Apparent design