6] language Waggle dance- bees move in a circular motion when they spot food near to the hive but when food is further away, they do sort of a waggle dance. Von Frisch found that bees couldn't communicate when the food was near yet far away. Animals have communication systems but the rules here are on the surface and it is a fine eyed communication system. Cannot express different combinations of things. -This is a crucial difference to the human communication system. Human communication system: Have a bunch of words [vocabulary] and we can combine them into sentences. We understand the rules of what the ordering means and what it expresses. Because we use words in conjunction with the rules, what we can have is the finite amount of words with rules, we can make almost infinite amount of words. Components- · Phoneme sound [d/p/b] · Morpheme sound [dog] · Syntax- rules for combining words · Pragmatics- rules for communication Children- Holophrases- combine word with a gesture [up] Telegraphic speech- grammatical and non-grammatical [big doggie drink water] Overregularization- apply rules that don't fit [I winned] What happens- 1. How does it happen 2. Where does language come from 3. Learned or innate Skinner- Children imitate adults. Their correct utterances are reinforced when they get what they want or are praised. 1% difference between humans and chimpanzees matter: . Head is held at 690 degrees to the body, the chimps isn't · Humans have a curved tongue, chimp tongue is flat · Low epiglottis [dangly thing in back of throat, chimps is high · Humans have a low larynx, chimps have a high larynx · Humans can choke on a cherry tomato as they have the crossover whereas chimps can drink and breathe at the same time Children are like rats [skinner box]- - If child sees something and makes a noise and the parents react happily to it, that's a reward - Ignores the respective environment= could be many things that could be made a comment on- unclear what the reward is for- unable to learn a particular pattern of behaviour
Learning isn't the whole story of learning: · time taken to reinforce utterances vs. time taken to master language · don't just reward (reinforce) grammar but speaking the truth- unclear how you can pick up rules of grammar . poverty of stimulus- don't really speak properly to each other · similarity in language development . although reinforcement and imitation clearly play a role in word learning and other processes Chomsky= child's brain contains special language-learning mechanisms at birth. We can judge that the sentence is grammatically correct even through it makes no sense-makes a distinction between grammatical rules and meaning of language- show that we cannot possibly learn any of the grammar, it must have already been there. Children are born with a universal grammar- contains all he things that are common features of all languages such as word order or grammatical syntax. He proposed the idea of the