Monday, February 7 Monday, February 14

1. Professor Rodolfo Celis Monday, February 7Monday, February 14 Topics: Some of the goals of linguistics Evolution of language Speech physiology (to continue next class) Some paper topics

2. Note on PowerPoint slides . . . • I will upload lecture slides so that they are accessible over the Internet. • However, they are no substitute for reading simply because you have quizzes to deal with. • Most importantly, the slides themselves are relatively skeletal and are presented to you more for purposes of organization than anything else. You will need to take notes on my discussion points revolving around each slide.

3. Next Week Reading • Read Searle article on intentionality if you already haven’t. • Using Lexus-Nexus (“Academic Universe”) on Beaver College Atwood Library Electronic Resources home page, select US News for the past year and find and read July 25 1999 (Sunday) Week in Review article, New York Times, “My Dog Loves Me, And Other Delusions.” This short and fun article will make the Searle article much easier and more interesting. Can also use Atwood Library microfilm NYT collection if you prefer. http://www.beaver.edu/library/libresources.htm

4. Schedule for next week (Valentines Day!) Presentations (reverse alphabetical order) • Michele Yukas – Genie (your choice of selection/overview based on the Russ Rhymer book) • Bruce Williamson – “The Throat Singers of Tuva” – article from September 1999 issue of Scientific American • Kelly Moran – “The Fossils of Language,” chapter from the book by the ever-controversial Derek Bickerton

5. A note on in-class presentations . . . • I do ask that you provide some sort of supporting material, e.g., a handout, play an audio tape, PowerPoint slides with imported graphics/scans, or simply use the chalkboard well (but you should probably at least have a handout). • Don’t worry – these are informal – just have fun stuff for us to look at where appropriate (so, e.g., for Genie, only a handout would be appropriate most likely, as there aren’t a lot of photos of Genie)

6. The QuizJanuary 31 • In terms of perception, what is “special” about human speech, as opposed to other sorts of non-speech sounds? • In terms of speech, what is the purpose of the larynx? • What does Lieberman (the author) have to say about Neanderthals? (answer must be reasonably insightful – not, e.g., “they were around dude.”

7. The Goals of LinguisticsorThe Big Picture • The search for the Adamic tongue. • Language with a capital “L” versus language with a little “L” • Universal Grammar and The Linguistic Wars • Feral children / The Tragedy of Genie. • Bed bugs, drug runners, recontras, and the curse of the Costa de Mosquitos • The Language of Spirit Possession • The Strange Tale of the Garifono

8. “Nativist” linguistics • Nativist linguistics is concerned with the innate/biological/genetic capacities for language that are responsible for a baby eventually learning language, but not, e.g., a puppy.

9. “Universal Grammar” • Though Lieberman doesn’t want to talk about it too much, most prominent example of “nativist linguistics” is found in Noam Chomsky’s claims re. “universal grammar” or what linguists call “UG”

10. “Universal Grammar” • UG can be thought of as the structure of the innate biological capacity for language, that allows normal children, given a relatively impoverished stimulus, to acquire a natural human language. • Can be thought about in analogy to the genetic code. • How linguists try to figure out what UG looks like. • Child as “little linguist”

11. “Universal Grammar” • “The study of biologically necessary properties of language is part of natural science: its concern is to determine one aspect of human genetics, namely, the nature of the language faculty.” – Noam Chomsky, Rules and Representations (1980)

12. “Universal Grammar” • “The grammar of a particular language can be regarded as simply a specification of values of parameters of UG, nothing more.” – Noam Chomsky Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures (1981)

13. “Universal Grammar” • Trivia: The first chimp trained in sign language was named “Nim Chimpsky”

14. “Universal Grammar” • According to Chomsky, UG is genetically determined at its initial state (in the baby’s brain) and is specified and expressed in the course of normal human experience with the world, growing up, hearing people talk, etc., to yield the particular grammars of individual languages.

15. “Universal Grammar” • UG is rich and yet spare enough to take the “stuff” in the environment and make a principled language out of it, viz, a system of rules and generalizations. • We’re pretty much in the domain of syntax here – whereas the things Lieberman talks about are in the domain of phonetics and phonology. • Thus, the grammar of the language (e.g. English, Cantonese) that ultimately emerges can be regarded as a set of values or settings for each of the parameters stipulated in UG.

16. “Nativist” linguistics • “Although current nativist linguistic theory focuses on syntax, its strongest claim – that innate brain mechanisms determine the particular form of any human language – derives from Jakobson’s work on the sound pattern of language.” • (trivia) A note on the sociology and politics of linguistics – “the linguistic wars”

17. “Nativist” linguistics • Jakobson’s theory was that the different sounds of all the world’s human languages are just recipes composed of a core set of ingredients called “[basic] features” or “atomic units” – just like molocules can be put together in different ways to make different substances, but have the same basic physical ingredients at a very low level (e.g. neutrons, electrons, etc.)

18. “Nativist” linguistics • Jakobson suggested that language acquisition in children involved a sort of “activation” of the particular features that a language uses, and a “deadening” or “pruning” of those features that their linguistic environment (e.g. English for kids growing up in an English-speaking household) does not have.

19. “Nativist” linguistics • There seems to truth to this, as further research eventually demonstrated. • A note on the incredibly amazing things babies and chinchillas can do, but why babies take the gold prize and the chinchillas take the silver (at best – but they are very good at being chinchillas).

20. “Nativist” linguistics • It has become apparent that human speech involves a number of innate, genetically transmitted neural mechanisms. • Why is this apparent?

21. “Nativist” linguistics • Because of the extremely rapid rate of transmission and perception of speech sounds versus other types of (nonspeech) sounds. • Speech encoding – rake vs. rate ; seek vs. seat. • Neural-perceptual congeners. • High transmission rate allows complex thoughts to be transmitted within constraints of short-term memory. • The issue of “hypothesis generation and constraints.” Child as little linguist.

22. “Nativist” linguistics • Speech has won from a phylogenetic perspective, but gesture not far behind (and that is kind of how evolution works . . .) • (If time) Celis, C. R. (1996). Linguistics and biology: A xenogamous relationship? Special Paression, The 32nd Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Chicago, Illinois, April 11-13. • A bit more on Darwinian or evolutionary “fitness” or “selective advantage” or “adaptivity” –the sounds that are specific to speech are less susceptible to perceptual confusion than non-speech sounds.