Origins and Aspects of Language Flashcards

Flashcards covering key linguistic concepts, Hockett's design features, animal language studies, and theories on the origin of language.

Communicative Symbol

A behavior used intentionally by a sender to provide specific information.

Informative Symbol

A behavior that provides information to an observer unintentionally.

Charles Hockett

An American linguistic anthropologist who defined 16 design features of language, concluding that certain features are unique to human language.

Reflexivity

The design feature of language that allows humans to use language to reflect on and talk about language itself.

Displacement

The ability of language users to refer to events, objects, or concepts removed in time, space, or reality, including the past, future, or imaginary worlds.

Arbitrariness

The property of language where there is no natural or inherent connection between a linguistic sign (word) and the real-world object it represents.

Cultural Transmission

The process by which language is acquired through culture and interaction with other speakers, rather than inherited genetically.

Productivity

Also referred to as creativity or open-endedness, the capacity of language users to create new words and an infinite number of novel utterances from a finite set of resources.

Duality

Also known as double articulation, the organization of language into two levels: individual meaningless sounds and meaningful combinations of those sounds.

Gua

A chimpanzee raised alongside a human infant by Luella and Winthrop Kellogg; she was reported to understand approximately 100 words but could not produce spoken words.

Viki

A chimpanzee raised by Catherine and Keith Hayes who attempted speech by shaping her mouth, achieving poorly articulated versions of "mama", "papa", and "cup".

Washoe

A chimpanzee trained by Beatrix and Allen Gardner who learned over 100 American Sign Language (ASL) signs in three and a half years and combined them into new concepts.

Sarah and Lana

Chimpanzees involved in language research that demonstrated the capability to create and comprehend messages using arbitrary visual symbols.

Kanzi

A bonobo who demonstrated enhanced potential for learning language symbols at an early age through observation.

Psammetichus

An ancient Egyptian pharaoh who isolated two newborns with a mute shepherd and concluded Phrygian was the original language after one child uttered "bekos".

King James the Fourth of Scotland

A monarch who conducted a language deprivation experiment around 1500 on Inchkeith Island using a deaf woman and two newborns, concluding Hebrew was the original human language.

Akbar the Great

A Mughal emperor who ordered twelve infants raised in a silent environment by mute nurses, resulting in the children developing no spoken language.

Otto Jespersen

A Danish linguist who published "Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin" (1922) and classified several sound-based language origin theories.

Bow-wow Theory

A theory proposing that spoken language originated from early humans attempting to imitate natural sounds and onomatopoeia.

Pooh-Pooh Theory

A theory suggesting that language originated from emotional human sound ejaculations, such as grunts, gasps, or sighs.

Yo-he-ho Theory

A theory arguing that language originated from rhythmic grunts and chants used to coordinate group physical labor and social interaction.

La-La Theory

A theory proposing that language arose from vocalizations associated with charm, melody, and song during social interactions.

Physical Adaptation Source

An origin theory attributing language development to biological evolutionary changes in early humans, including bipedalism and modified vocal tract structures.

Tool-Making Source

An origin theory linking language and sign development to manual tool construction and right-handedness beginning around two million years ago.

Lateralization

The specialization of brain functions into left and right hemispheres, placing vocalization control and object manipulation adjacently in the left hemisphere.

FOXP2 Gene

A gene discovered in the early 2000s studied in humans, chimps, songbirds, and mice that is linked to language encoding and vocal motor control.

Sarasvati

The Hindu goddess of speech, learning, and knowledge, credited in tradition with creating the Sanskrit language.

Tower of Babel

A biblical story from the Book of Genesis in which God confounded the unified speech of a single language community constructing a clay tower.