SPCH 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Mating Call, Animal Communication, Pragmatics
Document Summary
The chapter talks about early 19th century researchers who tried to get chimpanzees to speak by immersing them in human contact. Whether or not animals knew or could learn language- regardless of whether or not they can learn how to speak the human language. Starting with this because i told you to skim, but don"t want to neglect the importance, many of you will find it interesting: Animals usually communicate when given some sort of stimulus- for example, they communicate danger or a mating call. Animals aren"t able to communicate past the here and now - they don"t have hypothetical language that abstracts them into the past or into the future. I can tell jasper it"s time for bed and he"ll go to his cushion and curl up. But if i tell him that i am going to take him for a walk in the morning, he hears walk and goes to the door.
