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 hands was actual
The Gestural Theory of Language The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the hands was actual
admin
2015-01-09
76
问题
The Gestural Theory of Language
The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the hands
was actually the first form of language.
I. The origin of language: sign and sound
— sign’s【B1】______: having to be looking at the signer【B1】______
—sounds; first associated with language because they draw attention
II.【B2】______for gestural origin of sign language【B2】______
A. Sign languages: meeting all the languages【B3】______【B3】______
—including: large lexicons, massive gestures, carrying meaning, being grammatical
—the order affects the meaning greatly
B. A study on how we【B4】______sound【B4】______
sound and visual information combined in the nervous system
the same meaning and activating the same neutrons
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【B5】______makes the difference.【B5】______
III. Gestures and visual input
A. example: sounds sound【B6】______when eyes are open or closed the whole time(6)
B. nervous system: having the ability to respond to sound and【B7】______【B7】______
C. mirror neuron: excited both by the sight and also by the sound
—neutron groups involved in human language【B8】______ some of those in【B8】______
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【B9】______【B9】______
—studying the values in fossil record for necessity and sufficiency
IV. The way to create sounds
A. by looking at the【B10】______in hertz, which drops in puberty【B10】______
B. example: saying okay
—looking at the tongue and larynx and air sacs and asking
【B6】
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. Walking upright, bipedalism, freed the hands for communication, and communication using the hands was actually the first form of language.
(1)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. 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.
(2)What’s the evidence for this? Well, we have a large are 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.(3)Sign languages meet all of the criteria for languages. They have large lexicons. There are a very large number of gestures. They carry meaning, and they’re grammatical. The order in which they’re made has a very profound significance in terms of their meaning.
(2)(4)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, 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.(5)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."
(6)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.
(7)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,(8)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.(9)So while having a lot of axons may be necessary to innervate your tongue, it isn’t sufficient for the development of language. 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.(10)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
identical
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/rrdO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Changesinthewaypeoplelivebringaboutchangesinthejobsthattheydo.Moroandmorepeopleliveintownsandcitiesinst
AnAmericansurveyhasshownthateachyeareveryemployedpersonlosesthreetofourworkingdaysfromcoldsandalliedcomplai
HowtoBeaGoodConversationalistAgoodconversationalistcanconnectwithpeopleandmakethemfeel【B1】______.【B1】______Tob
______isthestudyoflanguageinrelationtothemind.
ChineseCalligraphyCalligraphy,thewritingofcharacters,isoneofthetraditionalfourartsandhasdevelopedovercentu
IhavebeenteachingforlongerthanIcaretosay,andalwaysofferacourseforenteringfreshmen.AndI’vediscoveredsomet
生活就像一杯红酒,热爱生活的人会从其中品出无穷无尽的美妙。将它握在手中仔细观察,它的暗红色中有血的感觉,那正是生命的痕迹。抿一口留在心中回味,它的甘甜中有一丝苦涩,如人生一般复杂迷离。喝一口下肚,余香沁人心脾,让人终身受益。红酒越陈越美味,生活越丰富越美好
由小学到中学,所修习的无非是一些普通的基本知识。就是大学四年,所授课业也还是相当粗浅的学识。世人常称大学为“最高学府”,这名称易滋误解,好像过此以上即无学问可言。大学的研究所才是初步研究学问的所在,在这里做学问也只能算是粗涉藩篱,注重的是研究学问的方法和实
名声、财产、知识等等是身外之物,人人都可求而得之。但没有人能够代替你感受人生。你死之后,没有人能够代替你再活一次。如果你真正意识到了这一点,你就会明白,活在世上,最重要的事就是活出你自己的特色和滋味来。你的人生是否有意义,衡量的标准不是外在的成功,而是你对
TheWorldBankfiguresshowsharppriceincreasesinwheat,maize,sugar,and【N1】______overthepastsixmonths,withpricesal
随机试题
A.抗Jo-1抗体B.抗乙酰胆碱受体抗体C.核周型抗中性粒细胞胞浆抗体D.抗Scl-70抗体E.抗Sin抗体重症肌无力可有
有关抗生素管理下列哪项错误
A.刺激颈动脉体感受器B.刺激主动脉体感受器C.直接刺激脑桥呼吸调整中枢D.直接刺激延髓呼吸中枢动脉血H+浓度增加时引起呼吸加强的主要机制是
老年期妇女生理上最突出表现是
具有抗吞噬作用的细菌结构是
印戒样癌细胞多见于
A.左锁骨上窝淋巴结B.右锁骨上窝淋巴结C.颈部淋巴结D.腋下淋巴结E.以上都不是鼻咽癌较易转移到()
分析方法既要充分反映评估对象各方面的最重要功能,又要防止过分强调某个因素而导致系统失去平衡指的是评估原则中的()原则。
自我防御性归因是指通过强调自已对积极的、合乎期望的好结果的作川,缩小对消极的、不合乎期望的坏结果的责任来保护自尊。根据上述定义,下列属于自我防御性归因的是()。
A.心电图检查B.24小时动态心电图C.导管调搏检查D.心内电生理检查诊断心律失常最重要的无创检查方法是
最新回复
(
0
)