The properties of human language are explored we are presented with reflexivity (our ability to use language to talk about language itself), displacement (our ability to talk about things not present in the immediate environment), arbitrariness (the fact that there is no obvious or ‘natural’ connection between a linguistic form and its meaning), cultural transmission, (the way in which humans acquire language from interacting with others who share the same culture and language and not through parental genes), productivity (humans’ ability to create new expressions and manipulate linguistic resources) along with animals and their fixed reference lastly, duality (the ability of human language to be organized at two levels simultaneously: letters and sounds that combined to produce different meaning). Yule also presents the term ‘glossolalia’ as humans’ ability to produce sounds in a stream that have no communicative purpose. Other possible sources include the musical source, (the belief that human language origins may be due to the production of sounds before language) the social interaction source, including the ‘yo-he-ho’ theory involving sounds needed to coordinate physical activity among several people the physical adaptation source, showing how the human vocal tract and skeletal changes favored human bodies to produce language the tool-making source, observing the belief that manual gestures may have been a precursor of language due to the development of hands and the capacity of making tools and lastly, the genetic source, including the innate hypothesis.Ĭhapter Two, “Animals and Human Language” starts explaining how communicative signals must be differentiated from informative signals. It includes the theory of a divine source, found in Herodotus’s report on pharaoh Psammetichus’s experiment with two newborn babies and King James’s similar experiment the natural sound source including the ‘Bow-wow’ theory relying on onomatopoeia as origins of language, and the ‘Pooh-pooh’ theory proposing speech development from emotional circumstances. The online study guide has also been updated including now more resources and tutorials.Ĭhapter One, “The Origins of Language” presents different theories regarding how language originated.

In the introduction we learn that this 7th edition has been updated with 40 new study questions, 20 new tasks and changes to the chapters on phonetics (Chapter Three) and semantics (Chapter Nine). REVIEWER: Claudia Sanchez, Illinois State University

LINGUIST List 32.907 Fri Review: General Linguistics: Yule (2020)

G yule the study of language