Exam 5: Language

The gorilla named "Koko" was able to:

Scientists who study the behavior of animals in their natural setting are called:

Linguistic anthropologists find that people who are forced to abandon their native language and culture:

Often the exchange of greetings between two individuals in the United States appears to be routine and not filled with emotion, deep thought, or real consideration for the feelings of the other individual. Is this perception correct? Observe the greeting behavior between a number of individuals who differ in social position, occupation, age, sex, or other dichotomies. Did you notice any differences? What were those differences? Now, try an experiment: When someone says, "Hi, how are you?" or "How's it going?" stop them and give a detailed account of how you are feeling and how the day is going for you. Note their reaction. How did they respond to your answer to their "routine" greeting?

According to Herbert Terrace's research, chimpanzees are highly intelligent animals that can learn many signs, but they cannot understand syntax.

Linguistic anthropologists study phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Unlike animal communication systems, human language can refer to people, things, or events that are not present, a feature called displacement.

Even though all humans have approximately the same set of special senses for perceiving reality (eyes, ears, noses), not all of the sensations in the environment reach our consciousness in the same way since each language filters out different parts of reality. Each language provides the speaker with a built-in filter that heightens, dims, or eliminates certain perceptions, thus determining how we perceive reality. This thesis is called the:

Parrots, like humans, can displace one word for another when imitating human speech.

If everyone in the United States woke up one morning and started to speak in a "non-gender biased" manner (that is, eliminated every word that differentiated males from females, such as fireman, policeman, mankind, etc.), would social reality in the U.S. change? If it would, how do you think it would change? If not, why not? Would there be less or more stereotyping of the sexes and sex roles?

Phonology is the study of morphemes, the smallest units of a language that convey meaning.

Consider the following English words that are similar except for the beginning sound: cat and rat. The /c/ and the /r/ are called:

Could Neandertals speak in the same way as anatomically modern human beings?

Semantics is the study of the meaning of symbols, words, phrases, and sentences in a language.

Research conducted by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh on Kanzi suggests that this chimpanzee can understand English words and does appear to have a crude command of syntax.

A system of symbols with standard meanings is a __________.

Would it be possible to have a culture without a language?

Anthropologists use the ethnosemantic approach to study how different societies understand and classify everyday objects like animals, plants, and food.

It has been suggested that major cultural advances, cultural evolution, and human creativity could not have occurred before adequate language ability evolved.

"Did I hear you say that there are four pounds of sulfur in the box?" versus "Did I heah ya say that there are foah pounds of sulfuh in the box?" is an example of: