ANT101H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Hominidae, Noam Chomsky, Social Order
Document Summary
Animals other than humans communicate but do not refer. Postural: patterns of behaviour involving the entire animal face/head, tail, gaze/glare ,bite theats and ect. Humans communicate in way that display their relation to one another. At the same time, they are talking about something else. The hominidae (great apes) form a taxonomic family, including four exxtent genera: chimpanzees (pan), gorillas, humans, and orangutans. Chimps are more closely related to humans than gorillas. The difference between the apes and humans is that we have language. Scientists have tried to show that the apes are able to learn. Chimps and other pes could, with significant training, produce combinations of signs. Chomsky defines language as " the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements " The generativists ( those who follow chompsky) strongly believe that language is uniquely human and also that differences between humans and other animals are qualitative not quantitative.
