LING 15 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Animal Communication, Kobon Language, Lexical Item
Document Summary
4/25: midterm: some is mc, some is not, bring red scantron. Complexity of human language: animal communication: holistic, situational, non-remote, human language: abstract, patterned, combinatorial, languages vary in arrangement of symbols & organization of info. Social & gender stratification: weighted by languages, not speakers- gives better balanced representation to types, case study: numeral systems, numeral: a symbol that represents an amount. 1, 2, 3, etc are written as numerals. One lexical item for each numeral between one and ten. Ten is an organizing principle for larger amounts: eleven: beyond by one twelve : two beyond, thirteen: three + ten, nineteen: nine + ten, twenty: two x ten, twenty-one: two x ten + one. Vigesimal: base 20: basque, chukchi (15 x 20) + (10 + 2) = 312. Other bases: base 4: chumash, base 6: kanum, base 12: birom, kobon, base 60: ekari, sumerian, somatic/commercial origins. Behavior, roles, trades, dress, speech: reflected in linguistic patterns.
