...Can you imagine animals starting a conversation with you, and understanding what you’re saying? People are teaching Bonobos to learn and use language with symbols. Kanzi, the Bonobo, is learning to combine symbols to make words. According to, Speaking Bonobo, it states “Kanzi combined up to 348 symbols to make words.”That’s Crazy! Though these symbols are familiar objects to Kanzi. Animals using symbols to form words is outrageous. However, many people say otherwise. In When Animals Communicate, They Are Not Using “Language” it states “Bonobos are very skilled animals, but they simply do not have the ability to learn or use language.So, can they really learn and use language? Also, Psychologists believe that Kanzi can understand about...
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...GE1132 Mind, brain and language 09.03.2015 Semester B 2014/2015 Rianne Okkema, 40070660 Mind, Brain and Language Thinking through language (Bloom and Keil 2001) My little nephew of two years old has begun talking in Frisian, the native language of people from the northern part of The Netherlands. For many people from this part of the country, Frisian and Dutch are their mother tongue because Dutch is the official language of The Netherlands. A lot of children, like my nephew, begin learning and speaking Dutch only when they enter school. In a couple of years my nephew will start his school life; will the change of knowing not one, but two languages in this young age change his way of thinking? According to Paul Bloom and Frank Keil it might. In their paper Thinking through language (2001) they look at several views and discuss the relation between language and thought, in particular, whether language influences thought. Some say language does not affect your thoughts while others do say that the language you learn has a profound influence on how you think. Theories At first Paul Bloom and Frank Keil make a distinction between theories of the claim language-affects-thought. The first distinction is about three positions. One can believe in language-general effects, in language-general and language-specific effect and one can believe in that neither of these effects exists. The second distinction is about the aspect of language that are said to matter, especially...
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...PART I: CHAPTER OUTLINE I. What is Culture? A. Culture and Human Intelligence B. Culture, Nation, and Society II. The Components of Culture A. Symbols B. Language 1. Language and Cultural Transmission 2. Is Language Uniquely Human? 3. Does Language Shape Reality? C. Values and Beliefs 1. Key Values of U.S. Culture 2. Values: Inconsistency and Conflict 3. Values in Action: The Games People Play A. Norms 1. Mores and Folkways 2. Social Control A. "Ideal" and "Real" Culture B. Material Culture and Technology C. New Information Technology and Culture I. Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life In One World A. High Culture and Popular Culture B. Subculture C. Multiculturalism D. Counterculture E. Cultural Change 1. Cultural Lag 2. Causes of Cultural Change A. Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativity B. A Global Culture? I. Theoretical Analysis of Culture A. Structural-Functional Analysis B. Social-Conflict Analysis C. Sociobiology I. Culture and Human Freedom A. Culture As Constraint B. Culture As Freedom I. Summary II. Key Concepts III. Critical-Thinking Questions IV. Applications and Exercises V. Sites to SeePART II: LEARNING OBJECTIVES * To begin to understand the sociological meaning of the concept of culture * To consider the relationship between human intelligence and culture...
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...This page intentionally left blank The Study of Language This best-selling textbook provides an engaging and user-friendly introduction to the study of language. Assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, Yule presents information in short, bite-sized sections, introducing the major concepts in language study – from how children learn language to why men and women speak differently, through all the key elements of language. This fourth edition has been revised and updated with twenty new sections, covering new accounts of language origins, the key properties of language, text messaging, kinship terms and more than twenty new word etymologies. To increase student engagement with the text, Yule has also included more than fifty new tasks, including thirty involving data analysis, enabling students to apply what they have learned. The online study guide offers students further resources when working on the tasks, while encouraging lively and proactive learning. This is the most fundamental and easy-to-use introduction to the study of language. George Yule has taught Linguistics at the Universities of Edinburgh, Hawai’i, Louisiana State and Minnesota. He is the author of a number of books, including Discourse Analysis (with Gillian Brown, 1983) and Pragmatics (1996). “A genuinely introductory linguistics text, well suited for undergraduates who have little prior experience thinking descriptively about language. Yule’s crisp and thought-provoking presentation of key issues works...
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