LNGS2615 Language brain mind

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Brain and core language capacity.

What is language ?

Multiple levels of organization, timescales of process, mul loci of function.

Brain: Archaeological,

Barely understood!

Sagittal section of brain situ.

Imaging techniques.

EEG Of the Brain along scalp. N400 could be explained with matrix addition result into a funny picture.

Encephalization Quotient Ratio between actual brain mass and predicted brain mass for an animal of a given size. EQ: Human: 7.6 Dolphin 4.1, Chimpanzee 2.4 , Dog 1.2 , Rat 0.4, Wernike’s aphasia,
Youtube tono tono.

Shayman : sharing object ????

Symbol / signal

Language is a limited projection of real world? Least energy v.s clear expression ? Pronunciation capacity. Compound words.

Research on linguistic concepts disagrees on a lot, but shares the same scope.

Refer ? Concept = some kind of idea, representation. Language = ways to refer to things or events

Duck design: nudge people, German , yes , circle yes, against Austria

Linguistic concepts are choice architectures , commonly images

Demand Character ‘Each thing says what it is.’ Water says drink , Kurt Koffka 1886 – 1941

Modality, Red berry : Demand character and

Demand character operates at multiple scales, including: Individual scale (decision by agents) Population scale (

Teddy bear evolution Driven by ? Human demand ! Fashion evolution driven by ? Human demand !

Illegal enemy combatants Credit card surcharge & cash discount,

The historical cumulation of the efficacy of language is captured in the language structure, which in turn furnishes a palette of choice for linguistic agents.

What happened ? What’s happened ?

Semiotic Process, Semiotic language vocabulary
Smoke – fire,

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4. language as shaped by the brain

Chomsky 1965 Universal Grammer Father of Modern Linguistics.

What is the advantage/disadvantage of implementing past tense, present tense, and future tense?

What is the advantage/disadvantage of implementing noun+adj?

First language aquisition.

1. Unconscious
2. no formal teaching
3. child controls space,
4. unlike L2 learning

multi linguistics environment influence +/- ?

Baby

babbling joint attention (9 months) attention sharing.

1-year old

first words, holophrases interjections: ops, yuk, ritual rotuiine (bye-bye, etc)

2 year old

2-5 word utterances morphology added explosion of vocabulary overgeneralizations

don't giggle me I go-ed already is hat she's book? It's for childs, not for mans.

2nd language difficulty index ?

Bigger populations particluarly with formal education tend to simplify the language.

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3 yo

basic grammer in place 25 new words per day.

Argument from the poverty of the stimulus.

learn language without 'having to try', no formal instruction any language can be acquired yet the input is imperfect no error correction

no other species can do this.

Universal Grammar

UG1: That which humans have which is biologically necessary to learn the language.

UG2: That which humans have which is biologically necessary to learn the language and which is not a general purpose learning mechanism.

(UG1) is an 'anxiom': there's no hypothesis that we have a capacity for language, rather that's the thing to be explained.

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UG 1: many principles proposed

"Principles and parameters" 'genetically-specified principles with switch values' Simpler Syntax took kit: 'phrase structure, agreement, etc' 'Minimalism' one mechanism: 'merge'

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Preliminary 1

Biological versus cultural evolution

Biological evolution in deeper time, depends on biological reproducction (not vertebrates only!) cultural evolution n historical time; different modes of production, itmes are the units, stigmergy,

Evolution

Populations Characters, Variation Inheritance Replication Competittion Selection

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Preliminary 3

cost-benefit tradeoff: ease versus expressivity

Language as shaped by the brain

UG cannot be an adaption to language, because the environment (linguistic input ) has been too varied. Human populations have diverged too greatly languages change too fast (much faster than genes) surface features are not the ones UG adapted to.

Key Point: if UG was an adaptation to one kind of language system, then another kind should be resistant to acquisition.

UG cannot be a non-adaptive evolution, because no causal account is likely (see C&C's technical arguments)

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Why is the brain so well suitaed to learning language? Instead , ask 'why is language so '

Language is easy for us to learn and use, not bcz our brains embody knowledge of langauge, but bcz language has adapted to our brains. (C&C 2008:490)

writen/spoken length/energy cosumation implyfy the langauge produced time ??.

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Constraints from the brain,

1. cons from though, mental representations.
2. perceptuo-motor factors.
3. cognitive constraints on learning and processing
4. pragmatic constraints
5. the impact of mulpitl constraints

These factors can make it more or less likely that one linguistic variant is selected over another and can thereby ultimately determine the nature of the the observed population-level practices

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giggle morphology ritual routine anxiom stigmergy