ANTH 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: American Sign Language, Foxp2, Sociolinguistics

• School: Auburn University
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH 1000
• Professor: Christopher D.Berk

Document Summary

Language : distinctive features, primate language use, nonverbal communication, four domains of spoken language. Semantics: sociolinguistics, accents, and focal vocabulary. Distinctive features of language : conventionality: Symbols within our society that we recognize for certain things, but is not always permanent: productivity: Users of languages can create a number of new things that can be recognized by fellow speakers of the language: displacement: Talking about a future or past event: cultural transmission: Foxp2 gene: human language capacity has increased and become more complex over time. Social environments that depended on (and encouraged) these abilities emerged. Nonverbal communication : nonverbal human symbol systems are also quite complex, vocalizations and ritual gestures. Four domains of spoken language : sounds used (phonemes; phonology, meaningful combinations of sounds (morphemes; morphology, systematic combinations of morphemes into phrases (grammar; syntax, meanings derived from the three previous domains (semantics)