Course: Human language and mind: Thinking and speaking

Human language and mind: Thinking and speaking SPRING/SUMMER 2022

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COURSE DESCRIPTION and REQUIREMENTS Page

HUMAN LANGUAGE AND MIND: THINKING AND SPEAKING

HUMAN LANGUAGE and the MIND is a course in human thinking and speaking that deals with psychological and cognitive aspects of language as a key to the mind, intellect and creativity; interrelation of the language, thoughts and brain; language in mediating the experience, remembering and creating meaning; the instinctive, emotional and rational in our cognition; pre-linguistic cognition of hominids; children’s language acquisition and learning; and language diversity.

Course requirements

Assignment	Weight in ZÁPOČET”	Comments and learning outcomes
Attendance and active participation READINGS and TED Talks preparation of web activities	20% 20%	5 absences or more entails failing the course

Research proposal	10%	Presenting a topic and research thesis, outlining a plan to collect data and a strategy to analyze them, explaining the outcomes
Final test, written	30%	Concepts, experiments and readings
Presentation on the research project based on the submitted proposal	10%	Presenting on the research project (15 mins)
Paper summarizing the project	10%	cca. 3000 words

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Project proposal form File
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Topics of former students' projects File

WEEK 1: ORIGINS of MODERN MAN and LANGUAGE Feb. 21

Topics: Cognition, intelligence and creativity

Language as instinct vs. social learning

Hominids vs. modern humans: What to add to the mind to get language? (John Searle)

Animal communication systems vs. human language (David Premack)

The search for human ancestors in Ethiopia, TED Talk, by Z. Alemseged

https://www.ted.com/talks/zeresenay_alemseged_looks_for_humanity_s_roots?language=en

What are the reasons for the rise of humans and modern language? TED Talk by Y. N. Harari 2015: https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_what_explains_the_rise_of_humans

QUESTIONS TO TACKLE in class:

1. In what ways is language related to our brain and mind?

2. Why do we talk?

3. Did we invent language or come to BE through language?

4. When and where did language start? In what sort of a community?

5. Is ART an evidence of thinking and speaking?

6. How did language humanize us in anatomy, genes, brain and cognition?

7. Is language natural and instinctive?

8. What characteristics make language work the way it does? Language design

9. When did we learn/start to think?

10. In what way language is and in what way it is not universal?

11. What can we do with l. that other primates or animals can’t (or can partially)?

12. What makes the phenomenon of language possible?

13. Do we use the same sort of thinking when we do math as when we understand language or listen to music?

14. Why we do blanks when needing to retrieve words?

15. What's the reason for speech errors?

Readings: Language in Mind: Introduction to Psycholinguistics, by Julie Sedivy 2018, ch. 2, pp. 9-31

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J. Sedivy, ch. 2, part I File
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Sedivy ch. 2, web activities URL
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The day we learned to think, 3-part series URL
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The Origins and Evolution of Language | Michael Corballis, TED URL
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Homo naledi File
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Descartes, Questions and the web File
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Design features File

WEEK 2: HOW HUMANS INVENT LANGUAGE Feb. 28

Topics: Animal communication and chimps' language learning

Teaching dogs and chimps: The environment

Language structure

Communicative intent and joint attention

Gesturing, babbling, speaking, writing and signing

Inventing and learning language

Homesign, language sign and vocal language

Assignments: Sedivy, ch. 2

Web activities 2.1-2.5

Recommended: articles by Chomsky, Evans, Premack

WEEK 3: Language and the Brain March 7

Topics: Language change: Survival of the fittest?

Genetic disorders as manifested in language

How Humans Invent Language

Communicating from scratch
When gestures replace language
Language: It takes a village
Streamlining signing
The sensitive period and innate language ability

Survival of the Fittest Language?

Language changes
Evolution of a prayer
What’s adapting to what?
Language evolution in the lab

Language and Genes

Williams syndrome: An island of preserved function?
Linguistic and nonlinguistic impairments in Williams and Down syndromes
The new frontier: Tracing our ancestors’ genes

Grey matters: Understanding language, lecture by J. Elman:

Assignments: the PROJECT, p. 53

web activities on sign language in ch. 2

dichotic listening, ch. 3 https://learninglink.oup.com/access/content/sedivy-2e-student-resources/sedivy2e-chapter-3-web-activity-1?previousFilter=tag_chapter-03

Readings: Sedivy, ch. 3, part I, Genetic Disorders, pp. 54-62 (62-7)

IF YOU WANT TO GO FURTHER...
Seeds of Speech, by Jean Aitchison, Cambridge U Press 2000
Researchers Debate the Origin of Language, by Marc Hauser 2002, in Harvard Gazette and How human mind originated 2009

WEEK 4: MAPPING LANGUAGE in the BRAIN March 14

The language change and Evolution of a prayer

Language and Genes

Williams syndrome: An island of preserved function?
Linguistic and nonlinguistic impairments in Williams and Down syndromes and what they tell us about interlinking of general cognitive and linguistic skills
Tracing our ancestors’ genes

Disorders of language and other cognitive functions: SLI and Dyslexia

The brain is inscrutable and language is multifunctional: Tracing the functions through brain neural networks

Grey matters: Understanding language, lecture by J. Elman:

How does brain process, perceive and produce language?

Reading: Sedivy, ch. 3, pp. 60-84

McGilchrist,The Divided Brain, TED Talk

Assignment: Web activities, ch. 3: Dichotic listening (see above) and Linguistic or paralinguistic/affective use of tone, vowel length, syllable stress and clicks https://learninglink.oup.com/access/content/sedivy-2e-student-resources/sedivy2e-chapter-3-web-activity-2?previousFilter=tag_chapter-03

WEEK 5: Brain anatomy for language March 21

For the Reading (Sedivy, ch. 3), web assignments and video materials, see Week 4.

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Cl 5 ch 3, II fMRI L mapping NOTES File
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Cl 5 ch 3,2 Notes Aphasia Anatomy File
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Class 5, Questions to tackle File

WEEK 6: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: LEARNING SOUND PATTERNS March 28

How infants learn: The nature of learning from language sounds
Statistical learning: Recognition of sounds and their patterns
TED Talk Pat Kuhl et al., Language, culture, mind and brain File
Reading: Learning sounds, in Sedivy, ch. 4, pp. 105-119
Recommended readings: Seeds of Speech, ch. 7, by J. Aitchison
Review: File 2.1-2.3 (Phonetics)
Assignment: Web activities 4.1-4.5 https://learninglink.oup.com/access/sedivy-2e-student-resources#tag_chapter-04

WEEK 7: Language ACQUISITION: Sounds, phonemes and words April 4

How infants learn "to speak"

What are the "meaningful" language sounds and where are the words?

Sounds vs. phonemes; Articulating sounds and rules of coarticulation;

Phonology: The sounds to distinguish meanings

Readings: Sedivy, ch. 4, part II

and if interested... Language and the mind, by Raymond Hickey

Learning vs. growth, in Language in Use, by G. Diessel, pp. 313-19

Digital mind in an analog world, in Language Instinct, by S. Pinker 1994

Semiotic Landscape, by G. Kress and T. Leuwen, in Language in Use

ASSIGNMENT: Web activities 4.6-4.9 https://learninglink.oup.com/access/sedivy-2e-student-resources#tag_chapter-04

WEEK 8: DISCOVERING WORDS April 11

The nature of speaking: Recognizing sounds and matching them to words

Concepts and reference

Reading: Learning words, in Sedivy, ch. 5, part I

Recommended readings:

Productivity and the Mental Lexicon, by Ingo Plag, in Language in Use, pp. 106-13

How do they do it?, by Steven Pinker

Tomasello, Michael, The usage based theory of language acquisition

ASSIGNMENT: web activities, ch. 5/I https://learninglink.oup.com/access/sedivy-2e-student-resources#tag_chapter-05