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The evolution of socioculture and language.

The co-evolution and reciprocal nature of socio-culture and languages are accepted by all socio-linguists. Darwinian evolution of genetic traits has also been utilized as a model in sociolinguistics and the important ideas of selective adaptation have proven useful in understanding the evolution of human culture and the languages by which it is communicated. The objective conditions considered essential by Darwin for genetic evolution to occur also exist in cultural evolution. Therefore phylogenetic models and associated mathematics are useful in both genetic and cultural evolution. As a result of evolutionary models describing human migration, demographics, and cultural history these processes are understood better today. However, the horizontal transmission of cultural traits unique to cultural evolution creates greater complexity not easily captured by phylogenetic methods since they were first developed to understand more lineal vertical genetic evolution. Nevertheless these methods have proven of great value to researchers trying to unravel our cultural descent. Forces of cultural stability affect evolutionary trends, although the forces of globalization require new thinking on the future of cultural and language evolution. In the multiplicity of thousands of human languages we have the modern support for the evolution of languages which after all was not caused by God at the Tower of Babel.

5.2 Language development: the meaning of language terms and early speech.

The student of language development needs to understand a number of terms in common use by linguists. The most basic verbal element is the lexical or word content referring to the number and variety of words in a language. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound, and morphemes are the most elementary meanings in a language. The grammar of a language is also called the syntax, and refers to the specific rules that determine how words are combined or structured. Verbal language is also about the sounds we make in speech, and phonology refers to how words should sound in a given language. Pragmatics is about the social context and how language is dependent on and understood within a given situation. Finally, semantics refer to the meaning or substance of words.

The smallest units of speech are phonemes as indicated above. Cultures produce varying emphasizes on phonemes that can cause both amusing language differences and also difficulties in pronunciation. For example l and r are not distinct in the Japanese language as it is in English. Japanese speakers cannot distinguish between la and ra, a distinction easily made by U.S. respondents (Miawaki, Strange, Verbrugge, Liberman, Jenkins, & Fujimura, 1975). Infants are able to make phonetic distinctions before they can articulate speech. Once developed the boundaries of phonetic expression are set causing problems when later learning a second language (Goto, 1971). Infants begin to babble at about 6 months, and start forming words after one year. The lexical accumulation is followed by the learning of grammatical rules, and later learning helps the child to take the nonverbal context into account such as the pragmatic rules of taking turns in speech.


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 752


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THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIO-CULTURE | Cultural language difference and linguistic relativity.
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