Chapter 4 - Language
Koko and Washo were two primates who had learned
American Sign Language
Linguists refer to mixed languages with a simplified grammar that people rarely learn as a mother tongue as
a pidgin language
In evolutionary terms humans are distinct from other primates with respect to their ability to use language because we...
can speak using larynx
Words that originate from a common word in the same ancestral language are called
cognate words
The human ability to speak about the past, about items not present and about imaginary worlds is called
displacement
For pastoral groups such as the Dinka and the Nuer, the cow acts as which kind of symbol?
elaborating symbol
What is a feature of language?
it consists of sounds organized into words according to some sort of grammar
When anthropologists study language as a set of grammatical rules, rather than the way people use language in real settings, are focusing on
language
The US government's prohibition of Native American children speaking their own indigenous languages in Indian schools has contributed profoundly to
language death
The study of how words fit sounds together to make meaningful units is called
morphology
Anthropologist Sherry Ortner distinguished three kinds of culturally powerful symbols which do NOT include
narrative symbols
Animal call systems
only express responses to stimuli in their present environment
When language speakers use slang or metaphor, they are engaging in which concept suggested by French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure?
parole
A distinct unit of sound in a specific language that distinguishes one word from another and changes meaning.
phoneme
_________ refers to the study of speech sounds
phonology
Animal call systems lack the ability (found in human languages) to produce an infinite number of word combinations. This ability in human language is called
productivity
Brent Berlin and Paul Kay found that if a language had only three color terms, they would always be black (dark), white (light), and ______.
red
