首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Gestural Theory of Language The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the 【T1】______was act
The Gestural Theory of Language The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the 【T1】______was act
admin
2016-03-10
88
问题
The Gestural Theory of Language
The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the
【T1】______was actually the first form of language.【T1】______
I. The origin of language: sign and sound
—sign’s【T2】______: having to be looking at the signer【T2】______
—【T3】______: first associated with language because they draw attention【T3】______
II.【T4】______for gestural origin of sign language【T4】______
A. Sign languages: meeting all the languages’【T5】______【T5】______
—including: large lexicons, massive gestures,【T6】______, being grammatical【T6】______
—the order affects the meaning greatly
B. A study on how we【T7】______sound【T7】______
—sound and visual information combined in the nervous system
—the same meaning and【T8】______the same neutrons【T8】______
—existing in a phenomenon: the McGurk Effect
C. An illustration to the McGurk Effect
—Seeing somebody speaking is different from hearing speech sounds.
—Hearing a sound with a set of【T9】______makes the difference.【T9】______
III. Gestures and visual input
A. example: sounds sound【T10】______when eyes are open or closed the whole【T10】______
time
B. nervous system: having the ability to respond to sound and【T11】______【T11】______
C. mirror neuron: excited both by the sight and also by the sound
—neutron groups involved in human language【T12】______some of those in【T12】______
rhesus macaques
D. a study on the hypoglossal canal
—humans’ having very big hypoglossal canal overlaps with chimps
—a lot of axons: not sufficient for【T13】______【T13】______
—studying the values in fossil record for necessity and【T14】______【T14】______
IV. The way to create sounds
A. by looking at the【T15】______in hertz, which drops in puberty【T15】______
B. example: saying okay
—looking at the tongue and larynx and air sacs and asking
【T2】
The Gestural Theory of Language
Good morning everyone. Today’s lecture is about the gestural theory of language. The idea here is pretty simple. The idea is that in hominids, the species whose descendents include us, initial language was gestural.(1)Walking upright, bipedalism, freed the hands for communication, and communication using the hands was actually the first form of language.
(2)We know, as I’ll show you in a minute, that sign languages can be very complicated, but sign languages have a limitation. In order to be able to communicate, you have to be looking at the signer. If you’re not looking at the signer, everything else is lost. That’s not true with sound. In sound you don’t have to be looking at the person, you can be in the dark and still have a conversation.(3)One of the theories of the origin of language is that sounds were first associated with language because they drew attention to the signer. In this particular diagram this guy here, making noise, signals to the recipient that he’s about to say something incredibly significant with his hands, like "Look out, there’s a predator ahead." That sound simply drew attention to the signing, sound took over. The gestures became vocal: they went from being hand gestures to being vocal, and were thus invisible.
(4-1)What’s the evidence for this? Well, we have a large group of human signers that use different languages. Here we use mostly American sign language in the United States, but there are a number of different sign languages that use gestures and are very capable of communication.(5)Sign languages meet all of the criteria for languages. They have large lexicons. There are a very large number of gestures.(6)They carry meaning, and they’re grammatical. The order in which they’re made has a very profound significance in terms of their meaning.
(4-2/7)Another piece of evidence in favor of the gestural origin of sign language comes from a very interesting study on how we perceive sound. As I’ll show you in a minute, sound and visual information can be combined within the nervous system,(8)where the meaning of both is the same and activates the same group of neurons. We can see this very profoundly in a phenomenon called the McGurk Effect.
You’re going to see somebody speaking, and you will hear speech sounds. If you listen to these sounds with your eyes open, they will sound different from what you listen to with your eyes closed, but the guy is making the exact same sounds all of the time.(9)What’s different is that when you hear a sound together with a set of lip movements, it actually sounds different to you compared with what you hear by yourself. So here’s the McGurk Effect. Keep your eyes open for the first two sounds, close them for the second two sounds, and then open them again for the final two sounds.
"Ba ba, ba ba, ba ba. "
(10)If your eyes were open the whole time, or closed the whole time, they’ll sound identical, but if you opened your eyes in the middle they’ll sound different. We think we hear what we hear, but apparently what we hear also depends on what we see when it’s a human speaker. This is a good example of the combination of visual input and of gestures.
(11)At the level of the nervous system it turns out that there are nerve cells, there are neurons, that display the ability to respond to sound and also to respond to visual stimuli. These are called mirror neurons. In one case the sound is turned off, and in the other case the visual stimulus is turned off. In both—each one of these little hash marks here represents one action potential—what you can see is that this neuron is excited both by the sight of ripping the paper and also by the sound of ripping the paper. The neuron, in a sense, represents paper ripping.
If we go and map the occurrence of these mirror neurons in the brain of a rhesus macaque, so this is front and this is back,(12)what we see is that there are groups of mirror neurons, there are groups of neurons that are thought to be involved in language in humans, and they overlap.
This has actually been done. We have results of a study here in which they looked at the area of the hypoglossal canal. You can see that in humans you have the very big hypoglossal canal, particularly since our oral cavity volume is not so huge.
But look, we completely overlap with chimps.(13)So while having a lot of axons may be necessary to innervate your tongue, it isn’t sufficient for the development of language.(14)We’re looking for necessity and sufficiency. We can go back and we can take a look at all of these values in the fossil record. In fact there is no strong correlation between language itself, its emergence, and hypoglossal size.
Okay. How about the way we create sounds themselves? How about the human vocal organ and the human vocal tract? In humans we can tell a lot about the speaker.(15)You can see this pretty clearly when we look at the fundamental frequency in hertz. Then what happens at the time of puberty is that it drops in both of them. The pitch of voice also carries communication significance, and that’s because the vocal folds thicken at puberty due to the action of sex hormones.
One of the things we can look at is we can say okay. Let’s look at the tongue and the larynx and the air sacs in humans and in species—non-human primates—and ask what’s going on. It’s actually kind of dangerous to have a descended larynx. It makes it much more likely that food will get stuck. It’s actually the origin of having to do the Heimlich maneuver. Once again, it might have been necessary but it’s not sufficient.
All right. Today we discussed the gestural theory of language. I hope you will have a more clear understanding of it. Thank you very much!
选项
答案
limitation
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/qo7O777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Accordingtothenews,whichofthefollowingdidn’thappenonTuesday?
TheadvantageofassociatingthebirthofdemocracywiththeMayflowerCompactisthatitiseasytodoso.Thepublicbelieves
The"basics"taughtintheAmericanelementaryschoolsare
Bytheyear2100,globaltemperaturesareanticipatedtorisebybetween0.8and3.5degreeCelsius.Thatmaynotseemlikemuch
______isconcernedwiththestudyoftheactualuseoflanguageincommunication.
Accordingtothenewsitem,howmanyAmericansareunemployed?
WhenIwasgrowingup,Iwasembarrassedtobeseenwithmyfather.Hewasseverelycrippledandveryshort,andwhenwewouldw
Doyourememberallthoseyearswhenscientistsarguedthatsmokingwouldkillusbutthedoubtersinsistedthatwedidn’tkno
但是比较起冬天来呢,我却又偏爱了秋。是的,就是现在,我觉得现在正合了我的歌子的节奏。我几乎说不出秋比冬为什么更好,也许因为那枝头的几片黄叶,或是那篱畔的几朵残花,在那些上边,是比较冬天更显示了生命,不然,是在那些上面,更使我忆起了生命吧,一只黄叶,一片残英
PASSAGETHREEWhydidtheauthorearnthenicknameCaptainCalamity?
随机试题
A.Na+内流增多B.Na+外流减少C.Ca2+外流增多D.Ca2+内流减少E.Cl-内流增多形成快EPSP的离子基础主要是
肾上腺腺瘤的MRI表现描述正确的是
A、基因重组B、多重复活C、交叉复活D、互补作用E、加强作用用紫外线灭活的病毒疫苗在人体内可能发生
传播途径的全部过程包括二三个步骤,即
上海市久先科技开发公司欲申请开办一家全国设分支机构的商业银行“侨汇银行”。该公司按照《商业银行法》规定的条件,向中国人民银行总行(二司)递交了申请材料。一个月后,人民银行总行(二司)委托上海金融时报公告送达了不同意久先公司申办的侨汇银行(筹)的决定。现久先
行政诉讼的被告应当在收到起诉状副本之日起()日内向人民法院提交作出具体行政行为的有关材料,并提出答辩状。
下列有关信用期限的表述中,正确的有()。
已知无向图的邻接表如图2-35所示。此邻接表对应的无向图为(1)。此图从F开始的深度优先遍历为(2)。从F开始的广度优先遍历为(3)。从F开始的深度优先生成树为(4)。从F开始的广度优先生成树为(5)。
HotelbookingenquiryExampleDestination:VancouverHotelname:Holiday【L1】________Site:neara【L2】________Price:【L3】_______
Throughoutevolution,humanshavebeenactive.Ourancestorschasedpreyashunter-gatherersand【C1】______frompredators.Morer
最新回复
(
0
)