1) Language is sorta everything.
When we talk about what makes humans "better" than animals we always slide into describing our various and complicated ability to communicate. Why?How interested are you in languages? Are you as interested as this guy? For those of you who are multi-lingual, how do different languages change your knowing?
2) Language and genetics - a theory. We come loaded with a set language system that varies due to genetics.
Meet Noam Chomsky, Linguist and Philosopher (and political activist):
QUESTION: Language, then, is a key to human nature?
CHOMSKY: In Western scientific thought of the last several centuries there has been a tendency to assume that human nature is limited to the immediately observable physical structure of the organism. And that for other aspects of human nature, specifically for behavior, there are no genetically determined structures of comparable complexity to the directly observable physical organization of the body. So human physical structures and intellectual structures are generally studied in different ways. The assumption is that physical structures are genetically inherited and intellectual structures are learned.
I think that this assumption is wrong. None of these structures is learned. They all grow; they grow in comparable ways; their ultimate forms are heavily dependent on genetic predispositions. If we understood, as we do not, the physical bases for these structures, I have little doubt that we would find structures in the brain for social interactions, or language, or analysis of personality -- a whole variety of systems developed on the basis of a specific biological endowment.
QUESTION: Do you mean that all our behavior is innate, genetically determined?
CHOMSKY: No, but the basic structures for our behavior are innate. The specific details of how they grow would depend on interaction with the environment.
3) Language evolves (devolves?).
How do these changes shift our knowing?
How do these language shifts change our culture?
Read: Top Words of 2013
Read: Latest OED additions
Check out the real OED.
Homework - study rest of language package. Quiz on Friday.
