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LINGUISTICS 1, WEB QUIZ #8 1. HUMAN AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION #1 2. HUMAN AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION #2 3. ANIMAL AND HUMAN COMMUNICATION #3 4. THE NATIVE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM OF CHIMPANZEES 5. ANALOG COMMUNICATION 6. VARIATIONS ON A THEME 7. BEE LANGUAGE 8. CHIMPANZEE EXPERIMENTS USING NON-LANGUAGE SYMBOLS 9. SIGNING BY HUMANS AND APES #1 10. SIGNING BY HUMANS AND APES #2 1. HUMAN AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION #1 In the left hand column are some human linguistic expressions. On the right are some animals, who have their own communicative expressions. See the online version to hear the animal sounds. Full URL: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Web_Quizzes/Quiz_08/08web.html Some human expressions Some animal expressions

Wow!

Nuts!

Woops!

Yum!

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING FEATURES DO THESE HUMAN EXPRESSIONS SHARE WITH THE ANIMAL EXPRESSIONS?

Linguistics 1, Online Quiz #8 2

a. They are communicative events (in contrast, say, to the sound made in producing a sneeze). b. They are calls that communicate messages to other members of the species. c. They have the feature of arbitrariness. d. They are unitary expressions which cannot be analyzed into smaller meaningful units. e. All the above. 2. HUMAN AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION #2 In the left hand column are some human linguistic expressions. On the right are some animals, who have their own communicative expressions. See question #1 for nnimal pictures and link to play sounds. Some human expressions Some animal expressions

That's very impressive! (Picture and sound of a cow.)

I wish that wouldn't have happened!

(Picture and sound of a donkey.)

That was pretty clutzy! (Picture and sound of a frog.)

That tastes good! (Picture and sound of a rooster.)

WHAT FEATURES DO THESE HUMAN EXPRESSIONS HAVE THAT THEY DO NOT SHARE WITH THE ANIMAL EXPRESSIONS? a. They would have been acquired through exposure within a particular community of the species. b. They have grammatical structure. c. They have duality of patterning. d. They could have the feature of "displacement" in time and/or space from the time they are uttered. e. None of these features are shared with the animal expressions.


3. ANIMAL AND HUMAN COMMUNICATION #3 We compared the expressions in Columns 1 and 2 with animal vocalizations in questions #1 and #2 respectively. Column 1 Column 2 Message 1 Wow! That's very impressive!

Message 2 Nuts! I wish that wouldn't have happened!

Message 3 Woops! That was pretty clutzy!

Message 4 Yum! That tastes good! The paired messages in Columns 1 and 2 have approximately the same meaning/function. WHAT IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FACT THAT THESE PAIRINGS REVEAL ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HUMAN LANGUAGE AND THE ANIMAL SYSTEMS SEEN IN QUESTIONS 1 AND 2? a. Humans can make more vocal sounds than other animal species. b. Human language can express a wider variety of emotional states than other animal communication systems. c. Human languages utilize rules that allow for unlimited variety in the structures of their messages. d. Human language does not convey messages through (semi-)automatic vocalizations. e. The existence of duality of patterning allows a language to be represented by sequences of written letters; it would not be possible to write the sound(s) of, say, a cow's "moo". 4. THE NATIVE COMMUNICATIVE SYSTEM OF CHIMPANZEES The YouTube video below illustrates a number of native chimpanzee communicative interactions. YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQFOi5Whlzk WHICH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERISTICS MOST CLEARLY DIFFERENTIATES NATIVE CHIMPANZEE COMMUNICATION FROM HUMAN LANGUAGE? a. The "topics" that chimpanzees use their native communication system for seem limited to FOOD, SOCIAL INTERACTION (submission, dominance, locating each other), EMOTIONAL STATES (fear, anger), and maybe a few others. b. The native chimpanzee messages seem vague and general in meaning. For example, FOOD GRUNT and FOOD SQUEAK are both defined as "food anticipation/enjoyment".


c. Chimpanzee vocalizations seem always to require an accompanying facial expression. d. From examples in the video, it is hard to know what differentiates purposeful communication from automatic vocal noises. For example, is LAUGHTER (the last item in the video) really a "communication". e. The distinct messages in native chimpanzee communication could be listed in a finite "Chimp-tionary". 5. ANALOG COMMUNICATION Bee "dances" are a form of communication which Pinker (p. 342) refers to as "analog". Human communication along an analog scale can be seen in degrees of emotion shown by facial expressions along a scale without discrete points, such as different levels of fear:

WHICH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING WOULD BE AN EXAMPLE OF AN "ANALOG" USE OF LANGUAGE? a. A professor, frustrated by students dragging in late to class, after several complaints, one day ends up shouting, "I WISH YOU WOULD GET HERE ON TIME!" b. Sounds of spoken language may vary depending on context. For example, the vowel in can is nasalized whereas the vowel in cat is not. The "l" in lick is a "light l" whereas the "l" in kill is a "dark l". c. Entries in a thesaurus listing words that have subtle meaning differences, for example, under BADNESS we find 'evil', 'bad', 'wrong', 'ill', 'harm', 'hurt', 'woe', 'mischief', 'nuisance', 'annoyance', … d. English has a number of auxiliary verbs expressing doubt or conditionality, for example MAY go, MIGHT go, WOULD go, SHOULD go, COULD go. e. Prefixes that can be added to show increasing negative powers: 'deci-meter' (1/10 of a meter), 'centi-meter ' (1/100 of a meter), and so on for mili-, micro-, nano-, … 6. VARIATIONS ON A THEME Here are excerpts from an interesting Wikipedia article on "songs" of Humpback Whales", followed by a picture and sound from the same article, combined as a "movie" (see the Wikipedia article or the online version of the quiz to hear the whale sounds): Full URL: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Web_Quizzes/Quiz_08/08web.html


"Two groups of whales, the Humpback Whale and the subspecies of Blue Whale found in the Indian Ocean, are known to produce a series of repetitious sounds at varying frequencies. This is known as whale song. ... Male humpback whales perform these vocalizations only during the mating season, and so it is believed the purpose of songs is to aid sexual selection. ... The whale will repeat the same song, which last up to 30 or so minutes, over and over again over the course of hours or even days. ... All the whales in an area sing virtually the same song at any point in time and the song is constantly and slowly evolving over time.[citation needed] For example, over the course of a month a particular unit that started as an "upsweep" (increasing in frequency) might slowly flatten to become a constant note."

WHICH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS BEST CHARACTERIZES WHALE SONGS AS THE TYPE OF COMMUNICATION THAT PINKER CALLS "VARIATIONS ON A THEME"? a. As one can hear in the recording, a song comprises a variety of sounds. b. The song changes over time but it remains functionally the same. c. The song varies from whale to whale. d. The song seems to vary in intensity, suggesting more or less excitement/urgency. e. The whales are improvising on the same underlying melody in the same way that a jazz musician might improvise a solo based on, say, "My Favorite Things". 7. BEE LANGUAGE The YouTube video below shows "dances" of honey bees that are used to communicate nectar sources to other bees (course reader, page 128). YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NtegAOQpSs&feature=fvwrel Bee communication is actually a combination of discrete messages and analog messages. WHICH OF THE COMPONENTS OF BEE COMMUNICATION LISTED BELOW IS MOST CLEARLY ANALOG? a. The taste of the nectar that the other bees get from the "forager bee". b. The direction of the nectar source.


c. The ability of the bee to alter the original direction by accounting for the movement of the sun. d. Duration and rapidity of vibrations indicating distance to the nectar source. e. All these aspects of bee communcation are analog. 8. CHIMPANZEE EXPERIMENTS USING NON-LANGUAGE SYMBOLS Here are two tasks performed by chimpanzees who learned symbolic systems using symbols that did not resemble spoken or signed human words. The first is from Sarah (course reader, pages 128-129), the second from Lana (course reader, pages 124, 129):

The interrogative was introduced with the help of the concepts "same" and "different". A plastic piece that meant "question mark" was placed between two objects and Sarah had to replace it with either the word for "same" or the word for "different". (quoted from Scientific American Vol. 227, No. 4, 1972, pages 92-99)

See the video clip in the online version of the quiz. Full URL: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Web_Quizzes/Quiz_08/08web.html

I claim that the Sarah experiment revealed more than the Lana experiment about cognitive processes that are used in language by humans. WHICH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING COMPARISONS SUPPORTS THIS CLAIM? a. The Sarah experiment involved direct manipulation of objects; the Lana experiment involved indirect reference to objects (that is, the buttons were not the objects themselves).


b. The Sarah experiment used objects that a chimpanzee would probably not get direct enjoyment from; the Lana experiment resulted in things like food, grooming, or looking at pictures. c. The Sarah experiment required grouping of words into phrases and phrases into sentences; the Lana experiment required only that words be placed in sequential order. d. The Sarah experiment involved an understanding of meaning relationships; the Lana experiment required only learning to perform a certain sequence of actions to get a reward. e. Neither experiment resulted in any insights into chimpanzee cognition since neither involved a real language. 9. SIGNING BY HUMANS AND APES #1 In the film, "The First Signs of Washoe", we saw a sequence in which Washoe used the sign meaning 'dirty'. Below are figures showing the sign 'dirty' and a second sign meaning 'prone to dirtiness' (see pages 113-114 of the course reader showing comparable sign pairs meaning 'sick'/'prone to sickness', 'mischievous'/'mischief prone', and 'rough'/'cruel' = "rough prone").

In the lecture on the experiments to teach apes ASL, it was claimed than the apes do show mastery of some language-like abilities in their use of ASL. WHAT FEATURE(S) OF COMMUNICATIVE ABILITY DOES WASHOE'S MASTERY OF THE SIGN FOR 'dirty' SHARE WITH A HUMAN ASL SIGNER? a. The feature of arbitrariness. b. The feature of duality of patterning. c. The feature of inflectional morphology. d. The feature of derivational morphology. e. None of these features.


10. SIGNING BY HUMANS AND APES #2 Below are sequences of signs, made by a human signer and by Washoe, for 'baby in my drink' (presumably meaning something like "the baby is in (the cup that I) drink (from)").


In talking about ASL compared to spoken language, we have argued that ASL as used by humans shares all the following features with spoken human languages. WHICH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING FEATURES DOES WASHOE'S SIGNING MOST CLEARLY LACK AS COMPARED WITH ASL AS USED BY HUMANS? a. The feature of arbitrariness. b. The ability to correctly interpret (to "understand") a sign made by a human. c. Syntactic structure, with words grouped into phrases. d. The ability to apply a relevant sign in more than one context. e. The ability to use combinations of two or more signs that are relevant to a single context.

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