6-Linguistics-Communication

communication in linguistics

Communicating {communication, linguistics} can be verbal or non-verbal.

verbal

Verbal communication involves volume, intonation, enunciation, pace, stress, and tone.

non-verbal

Non-verbal communication involves eye contact; smiling, frowning, and other facial expressions; body language; gestures; and speaker-listener proximity.

purposes

Communication conveys information, along channels, from one system part to another, to trigger receiving-part action based on sending-part state. Communication can induce behavior, facilitate behavior, imitate, monitor, organize, recognize, announce status, beg for food, offer food, conciliate, bond, groom, invite to groom, alarm, signal distress, assemble, recruit, lead, incite to hunt, synchronize hatching, initiate migration, invite to play, initiate work, threaten, submit, appease, relieve sentinel, advertise for sex, court, sexual bond, copulate, announce post-copulation, inhibit reproduction, and inhibit castes.

signals

Society members continually communicate using signals. Signals are specific information, do not change meaning, and are about immediate events. Signals are reflex responses to stimuli. Signals are not symbols.

symbols

Mammals and birds have 10 to 40 different signals, such as danger and location calls, courtship rituals and displays, grooming, group or family signals, and personal communication between individuals. Primates and humans have 150 to 200 non-linguistic symbols, such as facial expressions. Animal communications repeat. Behavior, display, and signal redundancy and ritualization increase communication efficiency. Animals can use opposite signals, such as high or low and loud or soft, for opposite intentions or behavior. Animals can modify signals in different contexts. Only humans deliberately rearrange signals.

animals

Bird and mammal vocalizations indicate language phylogeny and ontogeny, some homologous and some analogous {homoplastic}. Bird and mammal vocalizations are for anti-predator behavior for groups. Animal languages seem to be involuntary responses. Groups can pay attention to same object or event, such as predators, and tune responses.

Parrots can mimic but respond to objects only by association. Mammals have communication systems, but they have limited grammar and meaning [Mithen, 1996]. Apes know only associations, not word meanings. Apes cannot make sentences or word phrases and cannot understand spoken phrases or sentences. The bonobo Kanzi used and understood 150 words, typically to express desires or refer to present objects. Its word learning was instrumental association, with no grammar. Perhaps, it was not referential [Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986]. All primate societies have vocal signals. For example, gibbons have 12 standardized, meaningful calls [Premack, 1986] [Premack and Premack, 2003].

evolution

Language evolved separately from culture, cognition, and thought, because language does not explain most mental functions. Cognitive and reflex functions build together. Brain modules mix functions.

errors

Speech errors typically substitute one phonological distinctive feature for another.

mental state expression

Faces and bodies can express information about feelings and thoughts {mental state expression}. All mental states are complex, regardless of expression complexity.

phattic communication

Languages have stock phrases and expressions {phattic communication, linguistics}, to further social relations and politeness.

play signal

Playful animals send signals {play signal} that indicate intention to play.

reference in communication

Vocalizations can refer to object or event categories {reference, communication}. Signals can imitate referents {mimetic reference, communication}. Signs or signals, such as alarm calls, can indicate referents {proxy reference, communication}. Signals, such as category words, can bring referents to mind without causing responses {conceptual reference, communication}.

speech community

Speaker communities {speech community} use same communication system.

spoonerism

Sentence sounds can interchange {spoonerism}|.