WLC 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Bipedalism, Human Tooth, Stone Tool
15 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
The ability to produce sounds and vocal patterns is stored in primitive part of the brain. Divine source theory: children should develop language independent of outside influence because god gave humans language. Akbar the great conducted a test which seems to disprove this theory. Genie: child neglected and not spoken to did not develop normal language capacity. Bow-wow theory: mimic sounds in nature, use those to name source of sounds. Pooh-pooh theory: sounds made during emotional exclamations are foundations of language. Yo-he-ho theory: sounds of people in physical effort. Physical adaptation source theory: upright humans which were bi-pedal could spend more time speaking. 4 legged creatures, breathing matches walking rhythm, 2 legged it does not. 35000 years ago, human ancestor features matched us more closely. Human pharynx acts as a resonator for sounds. Manual gestures may have been a precursor for language.
