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El canal de "Pero Like" de Buzzfeed es un canal para los jóvenes latinos aquí in los Estados Unidos y tiene muchos videos de los problemas comunes entre jóvenes latinos. Aquí, una actriz depicta la abuela común quien usa palabras en inglés, pere el video está burlando a los acentos de la abuelas. Creo que hay muchas familias extendidas en familias latinas aquí y también generalmente la población latina y más vieja no hablan inglés muy bien, entonces habla principalmente español.

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Por lo menos en Güendis tienen papas. MUSIC Merengue Whirl Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. SFX provided by Audioblocks. (https://www.Audioblocks.com) Footage provided by VideoBlocks http://vblocks.co/x/BuzzFeedYouTube Made by BFMP www.buzzfeed.com/videoteam Be one of the first to subscribe to BuzzFeed's newest channel! After Party BuzzFeed Motion Pictures' drunk uncle.

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Post written by François Grosjean.

Bilingual 1: "When I'm around Anglo-Americans, I find myself awkward and unable to choose my words quickly enough ... When I'm amongst Latinos/Spanish-speakers, I don't feel shy at all. I'm witty, friendly, and ... I become very out-going."

Bilingual 2: "In English, my speech is very polite, with a relaxed tone, always saying "please" and "excuse me." When I speak Greek, I start talking more rapidly, with a tone of anxiety and in a kind of rude way...".

Bilingual 3: "I find when I'm speaking Russian I feel like a much more gentle, "softer" person. In English, I feel more "harsh," "businesslike."

Could it be that bilinguals who speak two (or more) languages change their personality when they change language? After all, the Czech proverb does say, "Learn a new language and get a new soul."

Despite the fact that many bilinguals report being different in each of their languages, only few researchers have attempted to get to the bottom of this question. Early in her career, Berkeley Emeritus Professor Susan Ervin-Tripp conducted a study in which she asked Japanese-American women to complete sentences she gave them in both Japanese and English. She found that they proposed very different endings depending on the language used. Thus, for the sentence beginning, "When my wishes conflict with my family . . ." one participant's Japanese ending was, ". . . it is a time of great unhappiness," whereas the English ending was, ". . . I do what I want."

More than forty years later, Baruch College Professor David Luna and his colleagues asked Hispanic American bilingual women students to interpret target advertisements picturing women, first in one language and, six months later, in the other. They found that in the Spanish sessions, the bilinguals perceived women in the ads as more self-sufficient as well as extrovert. In the English sessions, however, they expressed more traditional, other-dependent and family-oriented views of the women.

The spontaneous reports by individual bilinguals, and the results of studies such as those mentioned here, have intrigued me over the years. I noted first of all that monocultural bilinguals who make up the majority of bilinguals in the world are not really concerned by this phenomenon. Although bi- or multilingual, they are in fact members of just one culture. But what about bicultural bilinguals? I proposed in my first book on bilingualism, Life with Two Languages, that what is seen as a change in personality is most probably simply a shift in attitudes and behaviors that correspond to a shift in situation or context, independent of language. Basically, the bicultural bilinguals in these studies were behaving biculturally, that is, adapting to the context they were in (see here).

As we saw in an earlier post, bilinguals use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people (see here). Different contexts and domains trigger different impressions, attitudes and behaviors. What is taken as a personality shift due to a change of language may have little, if anything, to do with language itself.

Imagine the way we speak to a best friend and the behavior that we adopt. Then, think of how all this changes when we are speaking the same language to a superior (e.g. a school head, religious authority or employer). We behave differently and sometimes change attitudes and feelings even though the language is the same.

The same is true for bilinguals except that here the language may be different. It is the environment, the culture, and the interlocutors that cause bicultural bilinguals to change attitudes, feelings and behaviors (along with language)-and not their language as such. In essence, there does not seem to be a direct causal relationship between language and personality.

A Swiss German-French-English trilingual gives us a concluding statement that is fitting:
"When talking English, French or German to my sister, my personality does not change. However, depending on where we are, both our behaviors may adapt to certain situations we find ourselves in."

Note: This topic is taken up again in a second post (see here).

References

Ervin, S. (1964). An analysis of the interaction of language, topic, and listener. In John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.), The Ethnography of Communication, special issue of American Anthropologist, 66, Part 2, 86-102.

Luna, D., Ringberg, T. & Peracchio, L. (2008). One individual, two identities: Frame switching among biculturals. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(2), 279-293.

Grosjean, F. Personality, thinking and dreaming, and emotions in bilinguals. Chapter 11 of Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: Life and Reality. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

"Life as a bilingual" posts by content area: http://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/blog_en.html

François Grosjean's website: www.francoisgrosjean.ch

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Change of Language, Change of Personality?

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Post written by François Grosjean. Bilingual 1: "When I'm around Anglo-Americans, I find myself awkward and unable to choose my words quickly enough ... When I'm amongst Latinos/Spanish-speakers, I don't feel shy at all. I'm witty, friendly, and ... I become very out-going."

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El cambio de personalidad con el cambio de lenguas

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El cambio de personalidad con el cambio de lenguas

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Este artículo describe el cambio de los tonos entre lenguas. Para muchas personas bilinguales, una lengua tiene una personalidad diferente de otra. Es posible que con lenguas diferentes, hay asociaciones con la cultura, entonces los valores de la cultura son vinculados a la lengua para la mayoridad de personas bilinguales.

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Post written by François Grosjean.

Bilingual 1: "When I'm around Anglo-Americans, I find myself awkward and unable to choose my words quickly enough ... When I'm amongst Latinos/Spanish-speakers, I don't feel shy at all. I'm witty, friendly, and ... I become very out-going."

Bilingual 2: "In English, my speech is very polite, with a relaxed tone, always saying "please" and "excuse me." When I speak Greek, I start talking more rapidly, with a tone of anxiety and in a kind of rude way...".

Bilingual 3: "I find when I'm speaking Russian I feel like a much more gentle, "softer" person. In English, I feel more "harsh," "businesslike."

Could it be that bilinguals who speak two (or more) languages change their personality when they change language? After all, the Czech proverb does say, "Learn a new language and get a new soul."

Despite the fact that many bilinguals report being different in each of their languages, only few researchers have attempted to get to the bottom of this question. Early in her career, Berkeley Emeritus Professor Susan Ervin-Tripp conducted a study in which she asked Japanese-American women to complete sentences she gave them in both Japanese and English. She found that they proposed very different endings depending on the language used. Thus, for the sentence beginning, "When my wishes conflict with my family . . ." one participant's Japanese ending was, ". . . it is a time of great unhappiness," whereas the English ending was, ". . . I do what I want."

More than forty years later, Baruch College Professor David Luna and his colleagues asked Hispanic American bilingual women students to interpret target advertisements picturing women, first in one language and, six months later, in the other. They found that in the Spanish sessions, the bilinguals perceived women in the ads as more self-sufficient as well as extrovert. In the English sessions, however, they expressed more traditional, other-dependent and family-oriented views of the women.

The spontaneous reports by individual bilinguals, and the results of studies such as those mentioned here, have intrigued me over the years. I noted first of all that monocultural bilinguals who make up the majority of bilinguals in the world are not really concerned by this phenomenon. Although bi- or multilingual, they are in fact members of just one culture. But what about bicultural bilinguals? I proposed in my first book on bilingualism, Life with Two Languages, that what is seen as a change in personality is most probably simply a shift in attitudes and behaviors that correspond to a shift in situation or context, independent of language. Basically, the bicultural bilinguals in these studies were behaving biculturally, that is, adapting to the context they were in (see here).

As we saw in an earlier post, bilinguals use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people (see here). Different contexts and domains trigger different impressions, attitudes and behaviors. What is taken as a personality shift due to a change of language may have little, if anything, to do with language itself.

Imagine the way we speak to a best friend and the behavior that we adopt. Then, think of how all this changes when we are speaking the same language to a superior (e.g. a school head, religious authority or employer). We behave differently and sometimes change attitudes and feelings even though the language is the same.

The same is true for bilinguals except that here the language may be different. It is the environment, the culture, and the interlocutors that cause bicultural bilinguals to change attitudes, feelings and behaviors (along with language)-and not their language as such. In essence, there does not seem to be a direct causal relationship between language and personality.

A Swiss German-French-English trilingual gives us a concluding statement that is fitting:
"When talking English, French or German to my sister, my personality does not change. However, depending on where we are, both our behaviors may adapt to certain situations we find ourselves in."

Note: This topic is taken up again in a second post (see here).

References

Ervin, S. (1964). An analysis of the interaction of language, topic, and listener. In John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.), The Ethnography of Communication, special issue of American Anthropologist, 66, Part 2, 86-102.

Luna, D., Ringberg, T. & Peracchio, L. (2008). One individual, two identities: Frame switching among biculturals. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(2), 279-293.

Grosjean, F. Personality, thinking and dreaming, and emotions in bilinguals. Chapter 11 of Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: Life and Reality. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

"Life as a bilingual" posts by content area: http://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/blog_en.html

François Grosjean's website: www.francoisgrosjean.ch

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Change of Language, Change of Personality?

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Post written by François Grosjean. Bilingual 1: "When I'm around Anglo-Americans, I find myself awkward and unable to choose my words quickly enough ... When I'm amongst Latinos/Spanish-speakers, I don't feel shy at all. I'm witty, friendly, and ... I become very out-going."

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El elenco de Jane the Virgin habla en Espanglish

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El elenco de Jane the Virgin habla en Espanglish

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El programa Jane the Virgin es unos de mis programas favoritos de televisión. Creo que el programa ofrece representación para la comunidad latina y estadounidense, y muchas de los problemas en el programa son familiares a los jóvenes aquí. Aquí, el elenco del programa trata de adivinar las signicancias de frases comunes del Espanglsh aquí.

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Gina Rodriguez Emotional Speech For Best TV Actress At Golden Globes 2015

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Virgin Cast Gives Their Characters Advice & Spill On Guest Stars

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Jane the Virgin Cast Put to the Spanglish Test

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More Celebrity News ►► http://bit.ly/SubClevverNews Danielle Robay caught up with the cast of Jane the Virgin at Paleyfest to test their Spanglish knowledge.

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Este video demuestra unas mujeres latinas quienes no identifican con la subcultura latina de la Chonga aquí en los Estados Unidos.  La subcultura de la Chonga surgió al final del siglo XX y describa los mujeres latinas quienes son expresivas, trabajandos, y agresivas. Hay partes distinctas de la Moda, como la ropa barata como las aretes de aro o camisetas distinctas.

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People Recreate Photos Of Their Immigrant Ancestors

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"This is me. If you don't like it, go make caca somewhere else." Subscribe to BuzzFeed's newest channel! Check us out on Facebook! - facebook.com/perolike Pero Like Pero, like... You know what we mean. Weekly videos of tu vida. Videos posted daily! New Abuela videos every Friday!

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Me
Sandra (USA) - English Dominant multilingual (Mandarin Chinese, Spanish)

Mother
Xiaohong Chen (China, USA Immigrant) - Mandarin Chinese Dominant multilingual (Tiantainese, English)

Father
Hui Zhi (China, USA Immigrant) - Mandarin Chinese Dominant multilingual (Shanxinese, English)

Maternal Grandparents
Mengqi Chen (China) - Shandongnese/Mandarin bilingual
Lianbi Xu (China) - Tiantainese/Mandarin bilingual

Paternal Grandparents
Shuqin Zhi (China) - Shanxinese/Mandarin bilingual
Rongwen Sun (China) - Shanxinese/Mandarin bilingual

Notes:
1. Hui and Xiaohong immigrated from Beijing (where they worked) to West Lafayette, IN (to pursue masters degrees) in 1989, meaning they were 27 and 25 when they immigrated. English proficiency increased while they were in school and throughout their lives, but they still call their children to ask them how to spell "efficiency".
2.  Most Chinese people know both Mandarin (the official language of China) and one or more dialects of Mandarin based on their hometown.

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Este sitio de web es muy interesante! Conozco el sitio después de un proyecto en la escuela segundaria. Es un archivo de los patrones en el acento de hispanohablantes múltiples, pero el párrafo que dicen los participantes es en inglés. Además de hispanohablantes, este sitio es interesante para ver los acentos de varias partes de los Estados Unidos.

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afrikaans3, male, pretoria, transvaal, south africa

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Este video es de una chica de España que hace vlogs en YouTube. Puedes oír su acento con palabras como “empecemos” y “hacer” con un lisp con los sonidos de “c” o “z”. Es evidente que ella no tiene el lisp con todos los sonidos de “s” también porque puedes oír el sonido de “s” en palabras como “siempre”.

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RESPUESTAS PRÁCTICAS A PREGUNTAS ABSURDAS #ad

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Para todas las novedades del equipo #PureActive entra en su web: http://skinactive.es/pure_active.html o sígueles en sus redes sociales y #DaLaCara! La respuesta a "¿Por qué no tienes novio?" tan magnífica es propiedad del youtuber Tigrillovlogs, al que previamente pedí permiso para utilizarla porque me parece lo mejor de la vida XD ¿Qué preguntas absurdas os hacen a vosotros y qué respondéis?

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Cuando aprendimos de los sonidos del español de los puertorriqueños, Pensé en una canción de Reggaetón que me gusta mucho, esta canción de Daddy Yankee, quien es de Puerto Rico. En la canción, él dice “Nada ha cambiado” pero la palabra “cambiado” suena como “cambiao” y también la palabra “pegado” cambia a “pegao”. Este tiene sentido porque es consistente con los acentos de los puertorriqueños.

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Nada Ha Cambiado - Daddy Yankee ft. Divino

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"Nada Ha Cambiado ft. Divino" performed by Daddy Yankee Buy on Amazon(http://amzn.to/1ib9m33) or iTunes(http://bit.ly/1gZuSLK) Facebook-http://goo.gl/QYZ53a | Twitter-http://goo.gl/AzaR8o Instagram-http://goo.gl/a6F7gz | www.daddyyankee.com Copyright 2013 - El Cartel Records

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Joanna es una celebridad de YouTube en la comunidad hispánica y en este video, ella creó chistes con las variaciones de español. Ella menciona que el acento mexicano parece a un poeta sin aliento. Sus descripciones son muy exactos y divertidos, pero también son maneras de describir coloquialmente los sonidos de IPA en otros acentos.

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Palabras en lenguas diferentes que significan cosas más profundas

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Palabras en lenguas diferentes que significan cosas más profundas

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En realidad, inglés es una lengua muy aburrido. Hay una entrada en el blog de "Humans of New York" que dice que el español es una lengua con muchos sentidos. Aquí en esta página, hay palabras que significan cosas más profundas que no podemos describir con una palabra en inglés. Unas de mis favoritas son "Fremdschämen/Myötähäpeä" y "Cafune".

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Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find le mot juste. Here are a whole bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent.

1. Kummerspeck (German)
Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.

2. Shemomedjamo (Georgian)
You know when you're really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can't stop eating it? The Georgians feel your pain. This word means, "I accidentally ate the whole thing."

3. Tartle (Scots)
The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can't quite remember.

4. Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego)
This word captures that special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do.

5. Backpfeifengesicht (German)
A face badly in need of a fist.

6. Iktsuarpok (Inuit)
You know that feeling of anticipation when you're waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they're there yet? This is the word for it.

7. Pelinti (Buli, Ghana)
Your friend bites into a piece of piping hot pizza, then opens his mouth and sort of tilts his head around while making an "aaaarrrahh" noise. The Ghanaians have a word for that. More specifically, it means "to move hot food around in your mouth."

8. Greng-jai (Thai)
That feeling you get when you don't want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.

9. Mencolek (Indonesian)
You know that old trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from behind to fool them? The Indonesians have a word for it.

10. Faamiti (Samoan)
To make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child.

11. Gigil (Filipino)
The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute.

12. Yuputka (Ulwa)
A word made for walking in the woods at night, it's the phantom sensation of something crawling on your skin.

13. Zhaghzhagh (Persian)
The chattering of teeth from the cold or from rage.

14. Vybafnout (Czech)
A word tailor-made for annoying older brothers-it means to jump out and say boo.

15. Fremdschämen (German); Myötähäpeä (Finnish)
The kinder, gentler cousins of Schadenfreude, both these words mean something akin to "vicarious embarrassment."

16. Lagom (Swedish)
Maybe Goldilocks was Swedish? This slippery little word is hard to define, but means something like, "Not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right."

17. Pålegg (Norwegian)
Sandwich Artists unite! The Norwegians have a non-specific descriptor for anything - ham, cheese, jam, Nutella, mustard, herring, pickles, Doritos, you name it - you might consider putting into a sandwich.

18. Layogenic (Tagalog)
Remember in Clueless when Cher describes someone as "a full-on Monet...from far away, it's OK, but up close it's a big old mess"? That's exactly what this word means.

19. Bakku-shan (Japanese)
Or there's this Japanese slang term, which describes the experience of seeing a woman who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.

20. Seigneur-terraces (French)
Coffee shop dwellers who sit at tables a long time but spend little money.

21. Ya'arburnee (Arabic)
This word is the hopeful declaration that you will die before someone you love deeply, because you cannot stand to live without them. Literally, may you bury me.

22. Pana Po'o (Hawaiian)
"Hmm, now where did I leave those keys?" he said, pana po'oing. It means to scratch your head in order to help you remember something you've forgotten.

23. Slampadato (Italian)
Addicted to the UV glow of tanning salons? This word describes you.

24. Zeg (Georgian)
It means "the day after tomorrow." OK, we do have "overmorrow" in English, but when was the last time someone used that?

25. Cafune (Brazilian Portuguese)
Leave it to the Brazilians to come up with a word for "tenderly running your fingers through your lover's hair."

26. Koi No Yokan (Japanese)
The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.

27. Kaelling (Danish)
You know that woman who stands on her doorstep (or in line at the supermarket, or at the park, or in a restaurant) cursing at her children? The Danes know her, too.

28. Boketto (Japanese)
It's nice to know that the Japanese think enough of the act of gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking to give it a name.

29. L'esprit de l'escalier (French)
Literally, stairwell wit-a too-late retort thought of only after departure.

30. Cotisuelto (Caribbean Spanish)
A word that would aptly describe the prevailing fashion trend among American men under 40, it means one who wears the shirt tail outside of his trousers.

31. Packesel (German)
The packesel is the person who's stuck carrying everyone else's bags on a trip. Literally, a burro.

32. Hygge (Danish)
Denmark's mantra, hygge is the pleasant, genial, and intimate feeling associated with sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends.

33. Cavoli Riscaldati (Italian)
The result of attempting to revive an unworkable relationship. Translates to "reheated cabbage."

34. Bilita Mpash (Bantu)
An amazing dream. Not just a "good" dream; the opposite of a nightmare.

35. Litost (Czech)
Milan Kundera described the emotion as "a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery."

36. Luftmensch (Yiddish)
There are several Yiddish words to describe social misfits. This one is for an impractical dreamer with no business sense.

37 & 38. Schlemiel and schlimazel (Yiddish)
Someone prone to bad luck. Yiddish distinguishes between the schlemiel and schlimazel, whose fates would probably be grouped under those of the klutz in other languages. The schlemiel is the traditional maladroit, who spills his coffee; the schlimazel is the one on whom it's spilled.
We compiled many of these words in these three posts from 2011 and 2012.

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38 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent

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Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find le mot juste. Here are a whole bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent. 1. Kummerspeck (German) Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon. 2. Shemomedjamo (Georgian) You know when you're really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can't stop eating it?

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Un bosquejo de la comedia (perdón las malas palabras)

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Un bosquejo de la comedia (perdón las malas palabras)

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Una pasión mía es la comedia, y me gusta mucho los comedios Key & Peele que subrayan unos problemas con comunicación moderna. Esto es similar que el video "yo tb tq" en que los textos no pueden comunicar el tono de una conversación, entonces dos personas pueden perder comunicación en una manera inocente.

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Key & Peele - Text Message Confusion - Uncensored

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Es interesante ver slang de otros países que hablan inglés porque cuando oí la slang que se describe aquí, creo que las frases no tienen sentido. Sin embargo, hay palabras de slang que son únicas de personas de Texas, como "y'all" o la frase "blow-off class" para describir una clase muy fácil. Aquí tenemos dos celebridades de YouTube quienes son de países diferentes, y el americano Joey necesita conjeturar el significado de la slang extraña.

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British Slang With Joey Graceffa | Zoella

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I gave Joey a list of "British Words" & asked him what they meant. Video we filmed on Joeys channel: http://bit.ly/14PAgKM Subscribe to Joey: http://bit.ly/12xPKip * NO MORE IT'S "HOKEY POKEY". We discovered that in the UK we sing "Hokey Cokey" and in the US they sing "Hokey pokey".

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Palabras en español que significan cosas diferentes en varios países

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Palabras en español que significan cosas diferentes en varios países

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No hay duda que palabras en español evolucionaron entre culturas diferentes. En esta lista, tenemos palabras que significan cosas ligeramente diferente o, en algunos casos, totalmente diferente. La lista también tiene mucha slang que significa otras cosas del significado literal. Por ejemplo, creo que la slang de "fresa" en México es interesante porque significa alguien con dinero en una manera negativa. También las palabras diferentes para una coche en varios países son fenómenos interesantes.

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If you are learning Spanish, you probably know by now that some things are described by different words depending on the country. As you know, the version of Spanish that is spoken in Spain is different to the one that is spoken in, say, Peru, and many words are also pronounced differently depending on local accents - remember our introduction to Spanish dialects? Feel free to have a look at it if you missed it or if you need to refresh your memory, because these things can be confusing.

Ready? Now let's take a look at 10 words which are used in several Spanish-speaking regions but do not mean the same thing depending on where you use them. This list could be very useful if you are planning on speaking Spanish while travelling, for example, so learn these words to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation. Don't worry though, if you do end up making a mistake, your new friends will probably find it endearing!

1. Torta
If you order a Torta at a restaurant, you might get something completely different depending on the country where you and said restaurant is located. In Spain, you will probably get sweet cake similar to a birthday cake - However, note that this word can also be used to describe a slap in the face in Spain! In some Spanish regions, torta also refers to all types of round and flat bread that are made without using yeast.

In Mexico, however, you would be served a crusty white sandwich roll garnished with vegetables, ham, eggs, avocado or a meat fillet.

Finally, ordering a torta in the Philippines will get you a special kind of omelette made with eggs or eggplant, ground meat and sometimes minced onion and potato.
2. Chucha
In Colombia, chucha is used to describe bad armpit odor. In Argentina, on the other hand, it describes the female reproductive organ and is, similarly, used as an insult in several Latin American countries. In Chile, the phrase "está a la chucha" is used to say that something is far away.
3. Fresa
In most of the Spanish-speaking world, strawberry translates to fresa. However, this fruit is called frutilla in Argentina.

When used in Mexico, fresa describes a young person that is (acting) preppy and is used in a negative way. Mexican teenagers use it to describe the typical superficial, conceited, egocentric, and wealthy Mexican. The opposite of fresa would be naco, which is the pejorative slang term that describes tasteless, tacky and bad-mannered people.
4. Banqueta
If you use the word banqueta in Mexico or Guatemala, people will understand that you are talking about the sidewalk. In most other countries, this word describes a bench whereas it is the word acera which translates to sidewalk.
5. Coche
In Spain, coche means car. However, in Guatemala, it is a slang term for the word "pig" and in Chile, it can also be used to describe a baby stroller. Oh, and by the way: there are several ways to call cars across the Spanish-speaking world. In Mexico, people say coche or carro. In Colombia and Venezuela, carro is also the prefered term whereas Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Peru prefer to say auto.

6. Chucho
In most Spanish-speaking countries, chucho is a slang term for dog or mutt and also means shiver. However, in Central America chucho also means stingy and can be used to describe a crook or an unreliable person as well. In Latin America. it is also slang for joint. Chucho also means cold in Argentina, jail in Chile and in Mexico it characterizes someone who is clever and skilled. Last but not least, Chucho is also the nickname that is often given to people named Jesus!
7. Guagua
Guagua is a slang term for baby ( bebé in standard Spanish). However, in the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, and Spain, buses with a fixed route are also called guaguas.
8. Rato
Rato literally means "while" or "bit" - a undefined length of time. However, this term is used differently depending on the country, and this is where things get tricky. In Mexico, it means a short period of time ("one moment"), whereas in Spain, un rato is a long period of time
9. Mona
Mona is the name that characterizes a female monkey. However, this word has got additional meanings across the Spanish-speaking world. In Spain, mona describes a cute girl, wherea in Colombian slang, it is a word that is used to characterize a blond or white woman (mono being the masculine equivalent). Lastly, in Venezuela, the word is used to talk about conceited girls.
10. Buzo
Buzo means diver in standard Spanish. However, it has several other local meanings. A buzo is a sweatshirt in Argentina, sweatpants in Chile and Costa Rica, and in Guatemala the word is used to define someone who is very good at doing something.

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10 Spanish Words With Multiple Meanings - Lingoda

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If you are learning Spanish, you probably know by now that some things are described by different words depending on the country. As you know, the version of Spanish that is spoken in Spain is different to the one that is spoken in, say, Peru, and many words are also pronounced differently depending on local accents.

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El usos de sonidos de los gatos para comunicación con humanos

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El usos de sonidos de los gatos para comunicación con humanos

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Antes de hacerse domesticados, los gatos nunca usa sonidos como "meow" porque no hay una lengua hablada entre los gatos. Sin embargo, con el desarollo del gato domesticado se apareció este sistema de comunicar con los humanos con los sonidos de "meow". Además, nosotros humanos tenemos adaptaciones a los sonidos de "meow" y entendemos que los meows significan cosas diferentes.

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ITHACA, N.Y. -- After more than 5,000 years of human-feline cohabitation and enough elaborations on "meow!" to fill a dictionary, cats still haven't mastered language. But a Cornell University evolutionary psychology study -- analyzing people's reactions to feline vocalizations -- shows that cats know how to get what they want.

"No matter what we like to believe, cats are probably not using language," says Nicholas Nicastro, a self-described cat person who has documented hundreds of different feline vocalizations in the common house cat ( Felis catus ) and its ancestor, the African wild cat ( Felis silvestris lybica ). His study, which he will describe June 5, 2002, at the 143rd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in Pittsburgh, "shows that some very effective cat-to-human communication is going on," he says. "Though they lack language, cats have become very skilled at managing humans to get what they want -- basically food, shelter and a little human affection."

The communication study began when Nicastro, a graduate student, compiled a sample of 100 different vocalizations from 12 cats. No cats were harmed in the experiment, although a few human eardrums were stretched by what came next: He played back the recorded cat calls to 26 human volunteers and asked them to rate each sound for pleasantness and appeal, on a scale of 1 to 7. Nicastro played the same 100 sounds to a second set of 28 volunteers and asked them to indicate how urgent and demanding the sounds were, also on a 1-to-7 scale. He then analyzed the calls to see which acoustic features tended to go with pleasant or urgent meows.

Nicastro, who is a student in the laboratory of Cornell psychology assistant professor Michael Owren, found a clear negative relationship between pleasantness and urgency, rooted in how the calls sounded. "The sounds rated as more urgent (or less pleasant) were longer,". Nicastro says, "with more energy in the lower frequencies, along the lines of 'Mee-O-O-O-O-O-W!' Whereas, the sounds rated as more pleasant (or less demanding) tended to be shorter, with the energy spread evenly through the high and low frequencies. These sounds started high and went low, like 'MEE-ow.'"

An urgent or demanding call "is the kind we hear at 7 a.m. when we walk into the kitchen and the cat wants to be fed. The cat isn't forming sentences and saying, specifically, 'take a can of food out of the cupboard, run the can opener and fill my bowl immediately,' but we get the message from the quality of the vocalization and the context in which it is heard," says Nicastro, a two-cat owner who has been exposed to plenty of context.

A pleasant or appealing sound might be heard from a cat at the animal shelter if it hopes to be adopted by a soft-hearted human, Nicastro says. "In that context, it would not be to a cat's advantage to sound too demanding. The pleasant-sounding cats are the ones most likely to be adopted, while the demanding ones risk being left behind."

The Cornell study examined the evolutionary process of "artificial selection," which Charles Darwin pondered on the way to developing his theory of natural selection, Nicastro notes. "I was interested in learning how humans have shaped cat vocal behavior by artificial selection, and how cats have evolved to exploit pre-existing human perceptual tendencies. Seven thousand years ago, when we think the ancestors of our domesticated cats began wandering into Egyptian granaries and offering to trade rodent-control services for shelter, it was probably the pleasant-sounding cats that were selected and accepted into human society."

Curious about vocalization in the wild ancestors of the house cat, Nicastro visited South Africa's National Zoo in Pretoria and recorded African wild cats. Their calls were neither pleasant nor appealing, he reports. "Those cats sounded permanently angry. If they were looking for affection, they weren't expressing themselves very well. The first individuals to be accepted for domestication must have been exceptional, but of course that's the point from which things start to evolve."

Having said that, Nicastro turns off the lights in his Cornell office and heads home, where urgent calls for the can opener await. "They're not little people," he observes, "and they're not using true language because, among other reasons, cats do not know the meaning of their own meows. Humans (or at least well-trained cat people) can assign meaning to sounds with various acoustical qualities because, through long association with cats, we have learned how they sound in different behavioral contexts.

"Cats are domesticated animals that have learned what levers to push, what sounds to make to manage our emotions," Nicastro says. "And when we respond, we too are domesticated animals."

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It's the cat's meow: Not language, strictly speaking, but close enough to skillfully manage humans, communication study shows

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After more than 5,000 years of human-feline cohabitation and enough elaborations on "meow!" to fill a dictionary, cats still haven't mastered language. But a Cornell University evolutionary psychology study - analyzing people's reactions to feline vocalizations - shows that cats know how to get what they want. (May 20, 2002)

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Una canción popular con una translación en Latín

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Una canción popular con una translación en Latín

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Nunca oí el uso del latín hablado. Hay muchas estudias de científicos y linguistas que reconstruir los sonidos de la lengua antigua, y la estudia es similar a reconstruir el inglés antiguo en el teatro Globe durante la representación de Shakespeare. Cuando estuve escuchando a esta chica y la canción, creé que la lengua parace mucho al fracés y tiene sonidos similares a la lengua.

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El uso de ADM (DNA) para descubrir el origen del vasco

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El uso de ADM (DNA) para descubrir el origen del vasco

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Este artículo es un artículo interesante que demuestra la relación entre las ciencias y el desarollo de la lengua. Los vascos son una población interesante porque tienen una lengua muy diferente y sin raíces de latín. Este fenómeno se llama "el isolaciónismo de la lengua", y los raíces de Eurskera - la lengua de los vascos - son misteriosos. Usando el ADM de los vascos, los científicos descubrieron que había una población del agricultores Ibéricos antiguos que desarolló antes de la subida de agricultura y después, la población era isolada de otros poblaciones.

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DNA from ancient remains seems to have solved the puzzle of one of Europe's most enigmatic people: the Basques.

The distinct language and genetic make-up of the Basque people in northern Spain and southern France has puzzled anthropologists for decades.

One theory proposed that they were an unmixed pocket of indigenous hunters.

Now, a study in PNAS journal suggests they descend from early farmers who mixed with local hunters before becoming isolated for millennia.

The Basques have unique customs and a language - Euskera - that is unrelated to any other spoken in Europe, or indeed the world.

Nestled in a mountainous corner of Atlantic Europe, they also show distinct genetic patterns to their neighbours in France and Spain.

It seemed logical that they were representatives of an older layer of population settlement, but just how far back their roots went has been a topic of debate.

Mattias Jakobsson from Uppsala University in Sweden analysed the genomes of eight Stone Age human skeletons from El Portalón in Atapuerca, northern Spain.

These individuals lived between 3,500 and 5,500 years ago, after the transition to farming in southwest Europe.

The results show that these early Iberian farmers are the closest ancestors to present-day Basques.

Go west

Comparisons with other ancient European farmers show that agriculture was brought to Iberia by the same migrant groups that introduced it to central and northern Europe. These pioneers expanded from a homeland in the Near East, sweeping across Europe about 7,000 years ago to usher in the period known as the Neolithic.

Once the farmers settled down, they mixed with local hunter-gatherers - the descendants of people who lived in Europe during the last Ice Age.

Indeed, the El Portalón individuals had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than pioneer farmers from Germany, Hungary and Spain who lived several thousand years earlier.

The new study also goes some way to explaining some of the differences between the Basques and their neighbours in France and Spain.

After the initial farmer-hunter mixture was set, the ancestors of the Basques became isolated from surrounding groups - perhaps due to a combination of geography and culture.

"It's hard to speculate, but we've been working with Basque historians and it's clear from the historical record that this area was very difficult to conquer," Prof Jakobsson told BBC News.

This means the Basque area was largely unaffected by subsequent migrations that shaped genetic patterns elsewhere in Europe.

Migration and isolation

One of these movements occurred in the Bronze Age, when pastoralists from the Steppe - on the eastern periphery of the continent - travelled west en masse. This migration probably spread Indo-European languages across Europe, affecting the central and northern parts of the continent to a greater extent than the south.

While the genomes of French and Spanish individuals showed evidence of this eastern genetic input, those of Basques did not.

Another migration served to further differentiate Basques from their Spanish neighbours. In AD 711, a Muslim army crossed from North Africa into Iberia, beginning an occupation that lasted more than 700 years.

Again, while a small amount of North African and Sub-Saharan ancestry can be detected in the Spanish, it is largely absent from the Basques.

Previous studies have shown that people native to the Italian island of Sardinia are most genetically similar to the pioneer farmers of central Europe.

The Sardinians also became isolated after the agricultural transition, but they lack the additional hunter-gatherer ancestry that characterises the Basques.

Paradoxically, while archaeology shows that Europe's earliest farmers hailed from the Near East, populations living in that region today do not particularly resemble them genetically.

This is because genetic patterns in Turkey and the Middle East were re-shaped by migrations from surrounding areas after the Early Neolithic.

The proportion of hunter-gatherer ancestry varies across Europe, peaking at about 30% in Estonians and Lithuanians, but no "pure" indigenous Europeans remain. They appear to have been assimilated by the Neolithic migrants, who probably had greater numbers.

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DNA from ancient remains seems to have solved the puzzle of one of Europe's most enigmatic people: the Basques. The distinct language and genetic make-up of the Basque people in northern Spain and southern France has puzzled anthropologists for decades. One theory proposed that they were an unmixed pocket of indigenous hunters.

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Este video contiene animaciones que demuestran las teorías antes de la evolución de la lengua. Explica que todos las lenguas del mundo pueden formar grupos de relación y todos las lenguas del mundo que se derivan de unas lenguas antiguas. También, el video explica algunos de las prácticas incorrectas de estudiar la lengua, como usar palabras que sueñan similar en dos lenguas para estudiar la relación entre los dos. Es más fácil y correcto comparar lenguas con frases básicos o los términos para números, pronombres y términos de familia.

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Este video es uno de Tim Doner, un adolescente que aprendió 20 lenguajes. Este fenómeno se llama ser un polígloto, o alguien quien puede aprender muchas lenguajes. Aquí, Tim explica que su interpretación de lengua y su fascinación con el arte de aprender lenguajes no se presenta con su representación en los medios de comunicación. En realidad, los lenguajes tienen muchos tópics interesante de cultura, religiones, y el entendimiento entre humannos, pero a los medios de comunicación no importan mucho.

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Breaking the language barrier | Tim Doner | TEDxTeen 2014

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El origen biológica del desarollo de sintaxis

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El origen biológica del desarollo de sintaxis

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Este artículo es muy interesante porque tiene evidencia para el uso del sintaxis como un método de controlar la comunicación sin elementos de linguística. El autor se usa la perspectiva exaptationista para explicar sus tres hipótesis: el control manual del tracto corticespinal, el fascículo arqueado y los orígenes con imitación vocal, y finalmente unas partes especializadas de la area de Broca con los funciones no linguísticas.

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Introduction

Naturalizing the linguistic brain

Human language, in its mature state, is a complex system that allows us to encode and communicate thoughts and experiences via hierarchically structured signals called sentences. Humans, apparently uniquely among living animals, are born with a capacity to acquire such systems readily and without the need for explicit tutelage: an instinct to learn language. The capacity for syntax is a central component of this system.

The traditional textbook picture of the neural circuitry underlying the human capacity for language involves premotor speech and syntax areas in Broca's region, posterior temporo-parietal areas involved in comprehension, and connections between them involving the arcuate fasciculus. Current opinions about this three-component model vary from tacit acceptance in many studies to flat-out rejection by a few (e.g., Lieberman, 2000). Today, it seems clear from modern brain imaging work that parts of this model were right all along (e.g., that Broca's area, especially Brodmann's Area (BA) 44 and BA 45, play an important role in language). Other parts are only partially correct (e.g., brain regions involved in language, especially production, tend to be biased toward the left hemisphere, but earlier scientists erred in seeing this bias as a complete left localization). The "connectionist" (in the Lichtheimian nineteenth century sense, not the twentieth century neural network sense) component of the model has had new life breathed into it by comparative diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI) research (Catani and Mesulam, 2008; Rilling et al., 2008). While the importance of left-lateralization, or the precision with which "Wernicke's area" can be localized, may be questioned, the basic notion that Broca's area and its connections with parietal and temporal cortex play an important role in language, both in speech and in syntax, seems rather clear. In this article I will take this for granted, and inquire into the evolution of these linguistic circuits.

When we inquire into the evolutionary changes characterizing human language, our most solid point of reference will always be differences between human brains and brains of other primates, whether in brain anatomy or in brain function. That is, in evolutionary terms, we are seeking human autapomorphies (traits which differentiate us from our closest relatives, and were not present in the last shared ancestor). Cladistically speaking, the correct comparisons are with our nearest living cousins, the great apes, though both technical and ethical problems with ape neuroscience often force us to rely heavily on more distant primate cousins, especially macaques, to identify evaluate human specializations. So, given the evident absence of language in apes, the fundamental question is "what derived features underlying language arose in the human lineage after it separated from our last common ancestor (LCA) with chimpanzees?" This search for differences, for derived traits, is thus a search for human autapomorphies.

However, in asking this question about human specializations we obviously should not ignore the vast amount of neurobiology that we share with other primates, or other vertebrates more generally. Modern neuroscience is full of neural synapomorphies (traits we share with relatives, by common descent). With other vertebrates we share virtually all aspects of neurotransmitter chemistry, neuronal morphology, and brainstem circuitry, along with many detailed aspects of neural processing (e.g., the circuitry of the retina or superior colliculus, or the layout of motor circuitry in the cerebellum or basal ganglia). With other mammals we share the possession of a six-layered neocortex and the strongly conserved pattern of connectivity between its layers. When it comes to chimpanzees, it is no exaggeration to say that virtually all known aspects of neuroanatomy appear to be shared, aside from gross size differences, and there are actually few known differences between apes and other Old World primates (for an exception see Nimchinsky et al., 1999). So whatever the neural differences underlying the human capacity for language are, they must always be viewed in the context of an ocean of similarity. Human neural autapomorphies are needles in a synapomorphic haystack.

From a biologist's viewpoint, there is of course nothing special about being "special." Every living species possesses autapomorphies of some sort (otherwise it would not be recognizable as a species), and these specialities always are understood in the context of a much larger set of synapomorphies. We should be no more surprised by human neural autapomorphies tied to language than we are to find that star-nosed moles have a highly specialized somatosensory cortex for their nasal "fingers" (Catania, 1999), or that echolocating bats have specialized auditory regions for their echolocation calls (Suga et al., 1987). It is thus unfortunate that when considering our own specializations, humans have a tendency to invest them with especial significance. This is a mistake. Biologists and neuroscientists should not allow our investigation of neural autapomorphies to be conflated with philosophers' long-running search for defining features of humanity, features that, as a modern replacement to the uniquely human soul, might be misused to justify moral or ethical stances. An ethics built upon empirically determined autapomorphies is built upon shifting sands, as scientific findings might demand change at any point. Thus it is important to divest our investigations of any neural differences that exist from larger, and essentially philosophical, questions about why humans are "special" in ethical or moral senses.

Our task, as neurobiologists, is simply to identify the various neural mechanisms underlying language and, using the comparative approach, to determine which are synapomorphic and which are not. And, given that language relies on widely shared neural foundations, we should not be surprised to find abundant synapomorphies, nor should we take such findings as evidence against the existence of autapomorphies. My goal in this paper is to explore the evolution of human neural autapomorphies involved in language, with a focus on syntax. This exploration will adopt a fully comparative approach, using what is known from research on non-human primates, mammals more generally, and birds, to contextualize whatever few autapomorphies humans possess in terms of the much wider foundation of shared synapomorphies.

Furthermore, I will attempt to clarify and defend one particular approach to the evolution of novelties, based on the idea of exaptation: that complex structures, evolved in one functional context, can change their function, and be put to work in new domains, often carrying with them traces or constraints due to their prior function. This exaptationist perspective is in full accordance with the truism that evolution has no foresight, or with the evocative image of evolution as a "tinkerer," that gets by with whatever parts or raw materials happen to be available (Jacob, 1977, 1982). Nonetheless, the notion of exaptation when applied to human cognitive evolution has evoked skepticism or even hostility (e.g., Dennett, 1995; Buss et al., 1998; Newmeyer, 1998; Pinker and Jackendoff, 2005), even by those who accept the more general notion of evolution as tinkerer. Thus I will start with a brief exploration of the general concept of change of function (which was a cornerstone of Darwin's model of evolution) and its resurrection in the term "exaptation" by Gould and Vrba, and then very briefly outline some of the objections that have been made to this concept, and the closely related concept of "spandrels," as applied to human cognition and language.

Next, I will outline in detail three exaptive hypothesis concerning human language, which illustrate how an explicitly exaptive model, built on a firm comparative foundation, can both make sense of human specializations and provide further testable predictions for neuroscientists "on the front line" of comparative and functional neuroscience. These hypotheses are, for the most part, built upon the ideas of other scholars, though they are not always framed in the context of exaptation. Although I find each of these hypotheses plausible, my goal here is not to convince anyone that they are true. Rather, my purpose is to demonstrate that exaptive hypotheses about language evolution are plausible, and are part and parcel of a standard biological approach. Further, I detail some testable predictions in the hope that some future neuroscientists will attempt to test such models. In the final part of the paper, I will briefly describe the virtues of a broad comparative approach, incorporating research on both mammals and primates (to discern homologies and ancestral states) and birds (to exploit the hypothesis-testing power of convergent evolution). I believe that there is real value to be gained for evolutionary neuroscience in adopting the rigorous and explicit comparative approach that evolutionary biologists have perfected in the last few decades (complete with the admittedly somewhat ungainly terminology of synapomorphies and autapomorphies).

Naturalizing the human brain demands that we acknowledge both its widely shared foundations with other animals, and recognize at the same time its unique specializations. Our understanding of ourselves will be incomplete without a clear-eyed acceptance of both classes of traits. My goal in this paper will be to investigate how autapomorphies characteristic of our species, and specifically involved in language, might have evolved. More specifically, I aim to defend the proposition that change in function, one of Darwin's favorite evolutionary phenomena, might have played an important role in language evolution and particularly for syntax. From this "exaptationist" perspective, I will argue with many others that precursors for some language functions will be found not in primate communication, but in other aspects of behavior such as motor control or thought. This is by no means a new suggestion, but I will attempt to clarify this exaptive perspective by offering three quite specific models of possible exaptive phenomena, where a circuit built for one function is put to use in another, that are tied to human language.

Exaptation and Change of Function

Darwin was famously a gradualist, suggesting that his entire theory would fall apart if one example of evolutionary leaps, or saltations, could be shown. Gradualism, at its simplest, is the assumption that the distribution of phenotypes across evolutionary time is smooth and continuous (like body mass or height) rather than discrete and discontinuous (like eye or flower color). This is a commitment to a continuum of phenotypes. Darwin's gradualist perspective was weakened considerably in the modern evolutionary synthesis of genetics and evolutionary theory, initially by the fact that genes are, by their nature, discrete. More recently, the assumption of a smooth relation between genotypic and phenotypic change has been challenged by the discovery of homeotic "master control genes" like HOX or PAX genes in which small genetic changes have drastic phenotypic effects. Nonetheless, a smooth continuum of phenotypes appears to be common in many traits, and such smoothness is assumed to be operative by many models of selection (e.g., the Price equation). So gradualism survives, but in a weaker form than Darwin considered to necessary.

A different kind of potential "smoothness" in evolution involves continuity of function. In this case, Darwin was a discontinuist, for he gave multiple examples of "changes in function," and he saw these as exemplifying a major driving force in the evolution of complexity. For example, in discussing the evolution of vertebrate lungs, Darwin proposed that these structures first evolved as complex swim bladders involved in buoyancy control in ancestral fish. As our aquatic ancestors became air breathers, the function of these ancestral swim bladders was converted to that of lungs, which function in the respiratory exchange of gases. Darwin cited several other examples of change in function, including the separate use of the swim-bladder in hearing in some fish, and from flowers and barnacles. Although Darwin gave no specific term to "nascent" traits in which function changed, later authors termed the precursor versions "pre-adaptations." More recently (Gould and Vrba, 1982) objected to the term "pre-adaptation" because of its teleological connotations of evolutionary foresight, and coined the term "exaptation" for the end-product of an evolutionary change in function. Gould and Vrba argued convincingly that such changes in function are ubiquitous in evolution, so much that most complex traits have gone through at least one change in function.

Darwin recognized the exaptive process of evolutionary change of function, combined with gradualism, as a crucial factor in the evolution of complex organs for a simple reason: it is often difficult to see how a small rudiment of an organ could have any adaptive function until it exceeded a certain size or complexity. What good is a tiny lung, that could only fulfill a small proportion of the individual's respiratory needs? What good is a tiny wing, that could never allow an organism to become airborne (Kingsolver and Koehl, 1985)? By the assumption of continuity of function, these are big problems. But as soon as we consider the possibility of change of function, the answer becomes obvious: lungs started out as swim bladders (where a little buoyancy might still be useful) and wings as temperature regulators (where a small radiating or insulating surface might make a considerable contribution). For further examples of change of function (see Gould and Vrba, 1982), and for a critique and clarification of some of the conceptual issues this raises (see Reeve and Sherman, 1993; Dennett, 1995). It should be noted that it appears that Darwin was incorrect in his swim-bladder example about the direction of change. It now appears that lungs evolved first (in early fish, who also possessed gills) and were later converted to complex swim bladders in later fish radiations [see Fitch ( 2010) for this and other examples of exaptations related to speech].

Exaptation in cognitive evolution

Given the established fact that organs can change their function, and the importance of this fact for evolutionary theory, it is somewhat surprising that exaptation has been dismissed (or worse, ignored) by many researchers interested in human cognitive evolution (cf. Gould, 1991; Buss et al., 1998). This is particularly true in language evolution, where a continuity of a function in communication is assumed by many (e.g., Pinker and Bloom, 1990; Pinker and Jackendoff, 2005) while changes in function are seen by others as an explanatory necessity (e.g., Berwick, 1997; Chomsky, 2010).

Part of this debate can be readily resolved by adopting a multi-component perspective, wherein human language capabilities enlist several interacting but independent mechanisms. Many of these mechanisms will be shared with other animals, but several appear to have changed considerably since the LCA of humans and chimpanzees (hereafter, the LCA), including those involved in signaling, syntax, and semantics (cf. Fitch, 2010). From a multi-component perspective it is perfectly plausible that some novel aspects of language (e.g., speech production or hearing) are fully continuous in function from the LCA, whereas others may constitute exaptations where function has changed. Prominent candidates for exaptive change are the computational mechanisms subserving linguistic syntax, the topic of the current article. But to illustrate the point I will start with a less controversial and better understood example, drawn from the neural circuitry underlying language. First it is necessary to clarify how a multi-component perspective on contemporary language circuits leads to implications for a multi-stage model of language evolution.

Exaptation and differing models of protolanguage

A logical concomitant of a multi-component perspective on language evolution is a notion of intermediate stages during human evolution in which certain components of language were present, while others were either lacking entirely or not integrated into a linguistic system. For those novel aspects of language that evolved since the LCA, the term "protolanguage" is often used to denote such a precursor system, an evolutionary way-station on the path to full modern language. The term "protolanguage" was first used in an evolutionary context by anthropologist Gordon Hewes ( 1973), who introduced it in the context of a gestural protolanguage hypothesis, by which early stages of linguistic signaling were in the manual/visual domain. It was further popularized by linguist Derek Bickerton, who used the term to denote a lexical model of protolanguage, in which spoken words formed the first stage of language evolution (Bickerton, 1990, 2000, 2007). One of the oldest models of protolanguage dates back to Darwin ( 1871), who suggested that the earliest stages of human language were musical, with no semantic content. This notion of "musical protolanguage" or "prosodic protolanguage" has more recently been embraced by a number of scholars (Richman, 1993; Brown, 2000; Mithen, 2005; Fitch, 2006). For more detail on these and other conceptions of protolanguage (see Fitch, 2010).

Different models of protolanguage constitute different hypotheses about the nature of the mechanisms involved in modern language, along with an implied order in which these mechanisms were acquired during human evolution. Often, these models also offer, whether explicitly or implicitly, hypotheses about the function(s) subserved by different mechanisms as well. For example, Bickerton ( 2010) suggests that the first words served the communicative function of displaced reference (allowing early hominins to communicate about distant food sources), and that this putative function has remained continuous since that time. In contrast, Darwin's model suggests that the initial function of complex, learned signals was courtship and territorial defense, in direct analogy to birdsong. Darwin's musical protolanguage model thus entails a change of function, from non-verbal communication to semantic communication of propositional knowledge, during hominin evolution. Bickerton's model is thus continuist in this respect, while Darwin's is exaptive, involving a change in function.

Peter MacNeilage, a speech scientist, has offered an exaptive hypothesis for the evolution of speech, where the oscillatory lip, jaw, and tongue movements involved in producing consonant/vowel alternations in human speech we co-opted from the basic mammalian circuitry controlling chewing, licking, and suckling (MacNeilage, 1998). Like Darwin's swim bladder example, MacNeilage's hypothesis suggests that the complex and coordinated motor activities used in speech were taken over from the already complex and coordinated motor control that had evolved, over tens of millions of years, in ancestral mammals to subserve feeding. In the commentary following this article, many critics suggested that a continuity of function was more likely (and thus that human speech evolved from primate vocalizations), but none of them questioned the general plausibility of MacNeilage's exaptive explanation.

Another prominent exaptive model for language evolution is due to Noam Chomsky ( 1968, 1976, 2010), who argued that the roots of the generative capacity of language should be sought in private conceptual abilities, rather than in communication of knowledge between individuals. His argument, echoed by various prominent biologists like Jacques Monod and Salvador Luria, is that language is far more powerful than it needs to be for communication. Thus, the vast reach of language into all aspects of human cognition cannot be explained by a step-by-step expansion of communication abilities, because most of the sentences we can generate and understand would have no conceivable selective advantage (cf. Piattelli-Palmarini, 1994; Berwick, 1997). In contrast, a flexible and extendable system of thought would always be of considerable adaptive value, because even small advantages in thought can prove valuable if they allow an individual to out-think conspecifics (cf. Jolly, 1966; Humphrey, 1976; Byrne, 1997). In other words, language appears to be more powerful than needed for everyday communication but appropriately powerful as a medium for creative, generative thought. Again, this is simply an exaptive hypothesis like many others, where the function of one aspect of language has changed, over evolutionary time, from conceptual to communicative, but this particular exaptive hypothesis has been singled out for criticism by many authors (Pinker and Bloom, 1990; Newmeyer, 1998; Jackendoff and Pinker, 2005; Pinker and Jackendoff, 2005), so much so that linguist Frederick Newmeyer confessed to finding Chomsky's ideas on this front "utterly implausible" (Newmeyer, 1998).

As this brief review illustrates, there is considerable disagreement about the importance of exaptive change in function in the evolution of human language, and opinions are particularly polarized in the domain of syntax. Of course, one's model of language evolution depends on one's conception of contemporary language, and some real disagreements stem from such underlying theoretical biases. On the other hand, the many examples of change of function in other evolutionary domains force us to consider exaptive hypotheses concerning language with an open mind. The conversion between swim bladders and lungs, or between radiators and insect wings, may not appear intuitively plausible, but both are taken very seriously by contemporary evolutionary biologists.

Furthermore, when continuity of function is simply assumed without argument, this assumption may conceal further problematic assumptions. For example, Clark ( 2011) shows how Bickerton's model of language evolution, based on continuity of communicative function, makes several problematic implicit assumptions that Bickerton himself fails to consider. Furthermore, the assumption of functional continuity may block consideration of alternative hypotheses. For example, it was assumed for many years that the only plausible explanation for the descent of the human larynx was for speech communication (Lieberman, 1968, 1975, 1984). This led researchers to overlook examples of laryngeal descent in multiple animal species (e.g., Fitch and Reby, 2001; Weissengruber et al., 2002; Frey and Riede, 2003), all of which lack speech, and which clearly demonstrate that a descended larynx can serve adaptive functions other than spoken language (see below for the importance of convergent evolution in such inferences).

Thus, rather than formulating the problem of language evolution as the transition from non-human primates to modern human language, in all its glory, we should rather investigate models in which several stages of protolanguage existed. It is less important to know when these different stages occurred (e.g., in Australopithecus or Homo erectus) than it is to construct plausible scenarios in which specific novel abilities evolved, building on pre-existing mechanisms but extending them in the required direction. For example, we know that humans evolved novel speech control mechanisms, so one stage in human evolution must certainly have involved this capacity. However, many organisms have vocal imitation but lack language, so we must further posit additional evolutionary events in which syntactic or semantic abilities evolved. It is of course possible that multiple capacities evolved simultaneously, but to me it seems much more likely that each of these capacities evolved at different times, involved different circuits, and possibly served different adaptive functions. It is equally possible that some of these stages were exaptive (building on non-communicative precursors) while others were characterized by continuity of function.

Three Exaptive Hypotheses in the Evolution of Language

In the rest of this article I will consider the evolution of the various mechanisms underlying modern linguistic abilities, taking seriously the possibility of one or more changes in function.

Exaptive hypothesis 1: Speech motor control and direct cortico-ambigual connections

While humans are gifted vocal imitators, picking up words and melodies in their environment spontaneously, other primates are not: a chimpanzee raised in a human home will never learn to speak or sing (Yerkes and Yerkes, 1929; Hayes, 1951). This is not due to their peripheral vocal anatomy: most mammals can dynamically lower their larynx to a position that would allow different vowels to be produced (Fitch, 2002, 2010). Furthermore, vocal tract deficiencies would not account for the failure of chimpanzees to imitate melodies, which would require only laryngeal control. Thus, the biological explanation of the lack of complex vocal learning in non-human primates must have something to do with brain structure.

A prominent hypothesis for what, precisely, accounts for the difference between humans and other primates was developed by Uwe Jürgens and his colleagues, on the basis of initial observations by the comparative neuroanatomist Hans Kuypers, and I thus call it the "Kuypers/Jürgens direct connections hypothesis" (Kuypers, 1958a, b, 1973; Jürgens et al., 1982). Kuypers explored the connections from motor cortex to subcortical motor systems in the brainstem and spinal cord, and compared these between cats, non-human primates (chimpanzees and macaques), and humans. He used Nauta/Gygax staining to document axonal degeneration after lesions (in animals) or strokes (in humans) to the motor cortex. He examined in particular the motor neurons controlling laryngeal muscles, located in the nucleus ambiguus of the medulla. He found that there were projections from cortical motor neurons directly onto these motor neurons only in humans. In cats or non-human primates, only multi-synaptic indirect connections were present to ambigual motor neurons. Interestingly, Kuypers found that chimpanzees and macaques do have direct connections to brainstem nuclei controlling the face (lips and jaw), while cats lack these.

This argument is consistent with lesion data: while lesions to motor cortex can induce long-lasting mutism in humans, matched lesions have no effect upon vocal production in monkeys (Sutton et al., 1974; Aitken, 1981; Jürgens et al., 1982). Lesions to lateral cortex often severely disrupt human speech, but spare innate species-typical vocalizations like laughter and crying (Foerster, 1936; Groswasser et al., 1988). Finally, since non-human primates have direct cortico-motor connections to the jaws, tongue, and lips, the frequent use by chimpanzees of learned, un-phonated "vocalizations" like jaw clacks, lip smacks, and lip buzzes ("raspberries") in volitional, goal-directed communication (Marshall et al., 1999; Reynolds Losin et al., 2008) is consistent with the general idea that direct connections are needed for learned, volitional communication. All that is missing in chimpanzees is laryngeal control. These data, and other convergent data from birds (see below), has led many comparative neuroscientists to endorse the idea that direct cortico-motor connections to the larynx play a key role in human speech abilities (e.g., Myers, 1976; Deacon, 1992; Holstege and Ehling, 1996; Striedter, 2004).

How did humans develop direct connections that are lacking in other primates? In this case we have a very clear candidate for a mammalian "pre-adaptation" for this human situation: the cortico-spinal tract. The cortico-spinal tract is a major descending pathway from motor cortex down to motor neurons within the spinal cord. Cortico-spinal axons originate in pyramidal neurons in layer V of the neocortex, mostly in primary motor cortex but also from premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area (SMA), cingulate gyrus, and somatosensory cortex. A clear homolog of the cortico-spinal tract is present in all mammals. A closely related set of cortico-motor projections make up the cortico-bulbar tract, which project from cortex down to various brainstem motor nuclei found in the trigeminal (CN V, controlling the jaw), facial (CN VII: lips and other facial musculature), and hypoglossal (CN XII, controlling the tongue) nuclei. Thus, in primates, the cortico-bulbar and cortico-spinal tracts together innervate motor neurons above and below the key laryngeal motor neurons located in the nucleus ambiguus (CN X, containing the motor neurons of the vagus nerve complex, including the superior and recurrent laryngeal nerves). I suggest that either, or both, of these tracts provided a precursor of the direct cortico-ambigual connections found in humans. Specifically, I propose that the developmental processes underlying axonal growth and synapse-formation in the cortico-spinal tract were "exapted" to generate cortico-ambigual connections found in adult humans and which play a key role in speech.

Why do such direct connections develop in humans but not other primates? An intriguing hypothesis has been put forward by Terrence Deacon, involving competition between an innate call system based in the brainstem, and the cortico-motor system. Most mammals share a basic system for producing species-typical calls, involving a "control center" in the periaqueductal gray (PAG) of the midbrain (Jürgens, 1994; Holstege and Ehling, 1996). This system can produce the entire species-typical vocal repertoire of cats or squirrel monkeys, or innate vocalizations like laughter and crying in humans, and does not rely upon cortical input (hence, anencephalic human babies who lack a neocortex can still smile, laugh, and cry normally). Deacon has suggested that, during development, there is competition between this prepotent brainstem system and cortical axons projecting down through the brainstem, which transiently connect to laryngeal motor neurons in the nucleus ambiguus, but are out-competed by the innate vocal system projections from PAG and other centers (Deacon, 1992, 1997). By Deacon's hypothesis, evolving the kind of direct cortical control over vocalizations typical of humans would require a reduction in the innate call system, and perhaps also the innate call repertoire. This hypothesis has various testable predictions, and even suggests that direct cortico-motor connections could be elicited experimentally in other mammals, if the innate call system was reduced by lesions at the right stage of development (along the lines of Roe et al., 1992).

Obviously, speech motor control is closely tied to the auditory/vocal modality of communication, and speech is not synonymous with, or even necessary for, human language. However, this aspect of speech does provide a simple, clear example of how a particular neural circuit involved in spoken language might have evolved via exaptation of a pre-existing motor circuit found in other primates. While the Kuypers/Jürgens hypothesis is the best available explanation of human vocal control capacities at present, the exaptive hypothesis sketched above remains speculative at present. However, it is clearly both testable, and consistent with a considerable body of knowledge from comparative neuroscience.

Exaptive hypothesis 2: Intracortical connections involved in speech

While the previous example focused on speech motor output, another well-known example of an important circuit involved in spoken language is provided by the arcuate fasciculus connecting temporal/parietal regions to motor and premotor cortex. This white-matter fiber tract was originally discussed in Wernicke's analysis of "conduction aphasia" (Wernicke, 1874), but its importance was highlighted in some classic papers by Norman Geschwind ( 1965, 1970). Wernicke's original argument concerned the necessity, in speech, of an exchange of information between auditory areas which store the sound of a word and motor areas which mediate the motor outputs capable of generating that sound with the articulators. This idea was (over)extended by Lichtheim and Geschwind to include a third hypothetical association area in the angular gyrus. But Wernicke's basic notion that the ability to learn to vocally produce heard sounds (such as words or melodies) requires connections between auditory and motor centers is sound, and has withstood the test of time. For a detailed history of this discussion (see Catani and Mesulam, 2008).

The advent of DTI and in vivo tractography has breathed considerable new life into these old ideas, documenting differences between human brains and those of other primates (Rilling et al., 2008). As in the previous example, there appear to be significant differences among species in the intracortical white-matter connections between temporal, parietal, and frontal regions that are plausibly related to speech motor control (see Petkov and Jarvis, this issue). In particular, Rilling and colleagues found that while the macaque homolog of the arcuate fasciculus makes only specific and limited connections between the superior temporal gyrus and regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex, the human arcuate makes rich and extensive connections to the middle and inferior temporal gyri as well. This expansion of the connectivity from prefrontal regions to essentially the entire temporal lobe may be linked to a relative expansion in humans of both frontal (Deacon, 1997; Schoenemann et al., 2005) and temporal regions (Rilling and Seligman, 2002). This expanded connectivity was also found, but to a limited degree, in one of the four chimpanzee brains scanned.

The expansion and elaboration of the arcuate fasciculus in humans has a more interesting implication in the context of the current topic of exaptation, because many have noted that this pathway is involved not only in speech imitation but also in some aspects of syntax processing. Although Broca himself viewed his eponymous area as primarily involved in speech output, it has become abundantly clear that premotor areas such as BA 44 are also involved in auditory comprehension, and syntax processing in particular (e.g., Caramazza and Zurif, 1976; Grossman, 1980; Friederici et al., 2000). Because this issue is more thoroughly reviewed elsewhere in this issue, I will not go into the details here.

My main point is to suggest that these two functions - auditory/motor exchange and syntax production and comprehension - are not unrelated. Specifically, I hypothesize that reciprocal auditory/motor connections that initially evolved in the context of vocal imitation (an output function) could later be exapted for use in syntax comprehension (an input function). The logic underlying this suggestion is similar to that underlying the motor theory of speech production (Liberman et al., 1967; Liberman and Mattingly, 1985; Galantucci et al., 2006; Feenders et al., 2008; Pulvermüller and Fadiga, 2010) or more recent ideas about the role of the mirror neuron system in linking motor action and visual perception in the support of social cognition or empathy (di Pellegrino et al., 1992; Arbib, 2005; Iacoboni et al., 2005; Keysers and Gazzola, 2006). The prefrontal component of this system is, at birth, concerned basically with motor control. It develops, through babbling and later practice with speech production, a quite complex repertoire of automatized vocal actions. This initially occurs with auditory guidance, but has little significance for auditory comprehension itself. However, once such a learned cortical repertoire exists, it could provide a useful, highly articulated basis for auditory phonetic comprehension (knowing what a sound is based on the actions that would be needed to produce it) and, at a higher level, syntactic, or semantic (knowing what a sentence means based on the structures that would be needed to generate that meaning).

As phrased above, this hypothesis could apply either to ontogeny (during individual brain development) or phylogeny (during the evolution of the required neural circuits in the species). However, one reason to doubt a purely ontogenetic interpretation of syntactic circuitry is provided by studies of signed language (Bellugi et al., 1990). Although the output modality of sign is obviously different from that of speech (involving mostly limb movements, and monitored via vision and somatosensory systems), the syntactic processing of sign nonetheless relies on a brain region identical to, or at least greatly overlapping, Broca's area in spoken language (Horwitz et al., 2003). This suggests that the appropriate connections develop reliably in all humans, regardless of linguistic modality, and thus suggests an influence of an evolved pattern of connectivity in addition to the role of cortical plasticity during individual development.

Exaptive hypothesis 2 thus suggests that the intracortical connections of the human arcuate fasciculus initially evolved for the specific purpose of vocal imitation. These connections, once in place, were then again exapted for use in the more complex task of syntactic comprehension, and particularly between premotor control regions and posterior regions involved in semantic interpretation. This exaptation would have constituted a second evolutionary event, occurring afterward and perhaps for different selective reasons from the first.

Exaptive hypothesis 3: The evolution of broca's area (BA 44 and 45)

The third exaptive hypothesis considered here is closely related to the previous one, and concerns the evolution of specific cortical regions involved in syntax. While the previous hypothesis is hodological, concerned with connections, this one is cytoarchitectonic, and concerned with the computational specializations of specific cortical regions. This hypothesis builds largely upon the work of Angela Friederici and her colleagues (Friederici et al., 2006; Anwander et al., 2007; Bahlmann et al., 2008). It is widely recognized that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), the traditional site of "Broca's area," is subdivided into multiple regions distinguishable on the basis of cytoarchitecture, receptor distributions, and connectivity (Amunts et al., 1999; Zilles, 2004). Four core regions can be distinguished, the first three designated by their BA:

The inferior portion BA 6 - premotor and supplementary cortex;

BA 44 - "pars opercularis" - just anterior to BA6;

BA 45 - "pars triangularis" - anterior to BA 44;

"Deep frontal operculum" - inferior to BA 44, and curling under the temporal lobe.

BA 44 and 45 are the core of Broca's area, as classically defined. In an important study, Horwitz et al. ( 2003) investigated brain activation during signing and speech by fluent bilinguals, and then correlated the brain activation patterns with cytoarchitectonic maps. They found that BA 44 was activated not only during speech or sign production, but also during complex, volitional movements of the limbs or vocal apparatus with no linguistic content. In contrast, BA 45 was activated only during the production of either spoken or signed language (complex narratives, so including phonological, syntactic, and semantic components). In both cases, activations were significantly above baseline only in the left hemisphere. These data suggest that Broca's region is parcellated into regions that differ in the degree to which they are tied to motor control.

The idea that Broca's area is made up of computationally distinct regions receives strong support from neuroanatomical research on both humans and monkeys (Rempel-Clower and Barbas, 2000; Anwander et al., 2007; Gerbella et al., 2010). Cytoarchitectonically, each of the four regions above is distinct in terms of the granularity of layer 4 of neocortex. BA 45 has a well-developed granular layer 4 (it is "granular"), while layer 4 is present but poorly developed in BA 44 (which is thus termed "dysgranular"). The deep frontal operculum and BA 6 are "agranular": they lack any distinct layer 4 (a trait typical of motor regions).

Connectivity also varies among these regions. Tracer studies in macaques, which remain the "gold standard" for analysis of connectivity, clearly show that differences in granularity reflect fundamental differences in connectivity (Rempel-Clower and Barbas, 2000), and such studies also show that BA 45 in macaques clearly divides into two distinct components. BA 45B is heavily connected to eye movement circuitry such as the frontal and supplementary eye fields. While BA 45A also makes extensive frontal connections, it is unique in having strong connections to superior temporal and auditory areas (Gerbella et al., 2010) and seems more directly homologous to human BA 45. Human tractography, using DTI and related methods, also reveals a clear parcellation of Broca's area (Anwander et al., 2007), with BA 44, BA 45, and the deep frontal operculum having distinct patterns of connectivity.

There are two distinct exaptive hypotheses about the evolutionary origins of language-specific functions in Broca's region, and particularly BA 45. The first, which I will dub the "premotor origins hypothesis," continues a long line of suggestions that the underlying computations of human language syntax are related in some way to motor control and motor planning. Many theorists have suggested that the hierarchical nature of linguistic structures is related in some way to the hierarchical nature of motor planning (e.g., Lashley, 1951; Lieberman, 1984; Kimura, 1993; Allott, 1994; MacNeilage, 1998). This suggestion leads to a more concrete suggestion in the current context: that the premotor functions of BA 6 and the deep frontal operculum (with their agranular layering pattern) provided the precursor of computations more directly characteristic of language through a gradual "granularization" of gray matter, and strengthening of pre-existing connections to other regions of cortex (e.g., via the arcuate fasciculus to parietal and temporal regions). Starting with BA 44, and progressing to BA 45, this would lead to a broader and more abstract computational role for Broca's area, culminating in the amodal, granular BA 45.

A second (and not mutually exclusive) hypothesis has not, to my knowledge, been previously suggested. Apes and Old World primates like chimpanzees and macaques have binocular vision and trichromacy, reflecting an increased importance of the visual modality relative to sound and olfaction. This is reflected specifically in a heightened awareness of the gaze of others, and volitional control of one's own eyes, both of which play important roles in Old World primate social behavior and understanding (Scaife and Bruner, 1975; Emery et al., 1997; Emery, 2000). For review of the importance of gaze and visual cueing in the evolution of cognition and language see (Fitch et al., 2010). While the movement of the eyes is clearly a motor function, its control requires strong intracortical communication from visual and multi-modal areas. When such visual dependency is combined with intense social pressures, we might expect the computation of eye movements to have a more abstract and generalized component than limb or hand movements. Since, in the macaque, one portion of BA 45 is closely linked to eye movements, while the other makes long-distance cortical connections, I suggest that the abstract and amodal computations involved in language (whether spoken or signed) had a pre-adaptive foundation in the social and visually guided aspects of gaze that are, by hypothesis, subserved by BA 45B.

These two hypotheses may in fact be complementary, in the sense that the special role of BA 44 in language production and processing may represent a kind of fusion of the two flanking regions, specifically the hierarchical premotor functions of BA 6, and the multi-modal, integrative, and social functions of BA 45. The result would be a more abstract computational process than hierarchical motor planning: an operator that can combine or unify pre-existing conceptual units (motor actions, vocalizations, or visual objects) to freely create a discrete infinity of modality-independent cognitive structures. Such an operator shares the key functionality required by modern theories of language, such as Merge in minimalist approaches (Chomsky, 1995; Hendrick, 2003; Berwick and Chomsky, 2011) or "unify" in tree-adjoining, construction grammar or other unification grammars (cf. Hagoort, 2005b). Whether during comprehension or in production, such an operator must quickly retrieve items from memory (e.g., retrieve the phonological form of words from the lexicon), combine them in a context-relevant fashion (e.g., using background information and current context) into flexible, temporary, goal-relevant structures that can be parsed semantically (in comprehension) or produced motorically via some serialization process (during production). As emphasized by Hagoort, such an overarching computation is consistent with both the neuroanatomy of Broca's area, as discussed above, and a wide variety of brain imaging results focused on language comprehension (Hagoort, 2005a, b).

Could hierarchy-building circuitry in BA 6 and the deep frontal operculum, evolved in the context of motor planning and dedicated to motor control, be exapted to produce a general purpose, amodal, two-way circuit that can perform the computational equivalent of Merge or Unify? While this hypothesis clearly remains speculative at present, it has several points to recommend it:

We know from the brain imaging studies cited above that amodal, language circuitry exists in Broca's region and is involved in language production, regardless of output modality;

The modality-general portion of this circuitry appears to center on BA 45;

We know from both lesion and brain imaging studies that Broca's area more generally (BA 44 included) is involved not just in production by also in perception;

Studies of macaque mirror neurons and the human mirror system provide a plausible foundation for the two-way nature of this system, building on a pre-existing mirror system for interpreting the actions of others;

We know that Broca's area, broadly construed, can be activated in non-linguistic tasks, consistent with a generalized, amodal role of the LIFG in selection of appropriate action or items, and suppression of irrelevant alternatives.

Not only is this exaptive hypothesis consistent with the data above, but it makes several specific testable predictions about the structure, connectivity, and function of BA 45:

BA 45 in humans should be more amodal than other components of the LIFG, and in particular its white-matter connections should be longer, and fan out more widely, than those of other regions;

Anatomically, the cytoarchitecture of BA 45 should be less motor-driven, more perceptually embedded, and thus more suited to amodal cognition than BA 6 or BA 44 (as already suggested by its granular layer 4);

In monkeys, cells in BA 45A should fire in a much wider variety of situations than BA 44 or BA 6 (including in particular social cognition tasks).

I conclude that exaptive hypotheses about the origins of syntax, far from being "utterly implausible," are consistent with a wide range of neuroanatomical and functional data. I see such hypotheses, when built upon a solid foundation of comparative neuroscientific data, as presenting numerous testable predictions and avenues for profitable empirical investigation. Of course, "plausible" plus "testable" does not equal "true." But I hope to have convinced the open-minded reader that there are good reasons for considering exaptive hypotheses in research on the evolution of cognition, and that the mistrust or outright hostility such hypotheses have evoked from some quarters is unjustified.

Testing Exaptive Hypotheses: The Role of Comparative Research

I will end with a brief attempt to clarify the role of comparative research in testing evolutionary hypotheses in general, and exaptive hypotheses in particular. In brief, we can use comparison of homologous traits in closely related species to derive inferences about ancestral states. This is an important first step in testing any exaptive hypothesis: we must first understand the ancestral state that served as a putative "pre-adaptation." When considering the evolution of language, and neural components in particular, the comparison set here will typically be non-human primates, or sometimes mammals more generally.

The second set of comparisons involve "analogies" - similar traits that have evolved independently, via convergent evolution (such traits are one member of the broader class termed "homoplasies" by comparative biologists). Convergent evolution plays a central role in testing evolutionary hypotheses, because each example of a convergently evolved trait represents an independent evolutionary event, and thus an independent data point for statistical testing (Harvey and Pagel, 1991; Pagel, 1992). In contrast, a trait that is homologous among a group of species has, by definition, evolved only once in that clade, and even if there are hundreds of species sharing the trait, they constitute only a single independent data point.

The clade used most frequently in comparative tests regarding language evolution are birds, Class Aves, which have evolved numerous traits convergently with some mammals (e.g., homeothermy or "warm bloodedness," or large brains) and specifically with humans (e.g., biparental care, vocal imitation, or bipedalism).

Homology: Inferences about ancestral state

A homologous trait is one that is shared among a group of related organisms by virtue of its presence in their common ancestor. When attempting to build a phylogeny, systematists distinguish between two classes of homology. "Synapomorphies" are traits that are shared in a particular clade, but lacking in other close relatives, while "symplesiomorphies" are more broadly shared (due to their present in a more ancient shared ancestor). Feathers are a synapomorphy among living bird species (all birds have them, and all living non-birds lack them), while the possession of a heart or a mouth are symplesiomorphies (all birds have them, but so do all other vertebrates). However, in the current context we are concerned with rebuilding ancestral states, however far back they might go, and so we will discuss homology in general.

Homology is a relative concept: it depends on what trait is being examined, and what particular clade is being discussed. Thus, for example, the wings of birds and bats are homologous as forelimbs (because they both derive from the forelimb of the shared tetrapod ancestor of birds and mammals) but are convergently evolved analogs as wings. Furthermore, correct determination of homology depends upon the level of mechanistic detail being discussed. The complex, image-forming eyes found in insects, octopus, or vertebrates evolved convergently (Allman, 1999) but their location is nonetheless controlled by a homologous transcription factor Pax-6 (Quiring et al., 1994; Gehring and Ikeo, 1999; van Heyningen and Williamson, 2002). Such a situation has been termed deep homology and appears to play a surprisingly important role in human evolution (cf. Carroll, 2008; Fitch, 2009; Shubin et al., 2009).

Careful examination of homologous traits in multiple species allows us to reconstruct traits that were present in the common ancestor of those species. For example, the corpus callosum is found in all placental mammals (eutherians), but is absent in marsupials and monotremes. This allows us to conclude that the corpus callosum was not present in the common ancestor of all mammals, but arose in the LCA of living eutherians. In contrast, the anterior commissure is found in marsupials, and more widely among vertebrates including birds, suggesting that it evolved rather early in tetrapods. Such inferences about ancestral states depend on solid comparative neuroanatomy in living organisms, and no fossil evidence is required to roughly date such evolutionary events.

A broad comparative analysis is also important to determine the directionality of any evolutionary changes in different lineages. It is important to note that traits can be lost as well as gained in evolution. There is no way to know, based on a simple comparison of two species that differ in some trait, what the directionality of change might have been, and this requires outgroup comparisons with other related species. For example, one might think that the sexual swellings surrounding the vaginal area in female chimpanzees are a primitive feature of primates, given that such swellings are also seen in macaques and baboons. This would lead to the conclusion that humans have lost such swellings in our recent evolutionary history. An outgroup comparison, looking at gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons (the other members of our own ape clade) refutes that intuitive inference: none of these apes shows sexual swellings. Thus in this case humans retain the primitive state, and it is chimpanzees that have evolved a novelty (convergently with moneys and baboons). This example illustrates both the need for rigorous outgroup comparisons when analyzing homology, and also illustrates that the LCA of humans and chimpanzees was not a chimpanzee. In this case, and presumably many others, chimpanzees have evolved, just as we have, in the last 6 million years.

Convergence: Testing hypotheses about mechanism and adaptive value

Homologies play a crucial role in constructing phylogenies and rebuilding extinct ancestors. For such problems, convergent evolution is a nuisance and a distraction. But for a different set of more abstract evolutionary problems, convergent evolution provides one of the most powerful tools at our disposal, and thus the second main arm of the comparative method. These are problems involving statistically valid tests of evolutionary hypotheses, whether of mechanism or evolutionary function.

In some cases convergent evolution of a similar trait can lead us to new hypotheses about function. Consider the example of the descended human larynx, which was until recently believed to be uniquely human, and therefore assumed to be directly tied to human speech abilities. The recent discoveries of a permanently descended larynx in several deer species, big cats such as lions and tigers, koalas, Mongolian gazelles, and goitered gazelles clearly demonstrates that a descended larynx can serve some purpose other than speech (Fitch, 2010). In this case, analyses strongly suggest that the purpose is an exaggeration of the size conveyed by vocalizations, so that animals with a descended larynx seem larger to listeners. Because this explanation also applies to humans, it offers a clear alternative to the standard idea that the descended larynx is an exclusively speech-related trait. This is particularly true since the human larynx descends a second time, at puberty, but only in males. This sexually dimorphic descent seems unlikely to be tied to speech abilities, since teenage males do not undergo any improvement in these: instead it is simply part of a deeper, richer, and more impressive voice timbre, quite similar to the red deer's roar.

In other cases convergent evolution of mechanism can corroborate mechanistic hypotheses. A nice example is given by the evolution of direct motor connections in birds. As discussed above in hypothesis one, a plausible reason chimpanzees and other primates cannot talk, and humans can, is because humans possess direct cortico-motor connections for laryngeal control, and other primates do not. This is a correlational argument: humans have speech and have direct connections, and other primates do not. Therefore, direct connections are involved in speech motor control. While plausible, such arguments are never particularly convincing. However, in this case, data from birds strongly support the argument, because direct connections from the avian equivalent of motor cortex (area RA) indeed have direct monosynaptic connections onto the motor neurons controlling the muscles of the syrinx (the birds primary organ of voice). These connections are lacking in bird species incapable of vocal learning (Wild, 1993a, b). This case, where an analogous mechanism is present in species which have convergently evolved the analogous ability, lends great credence to the Kuypers/Jürgens hypothesis. What is more, there are many other relevant species in which to test this prediction, including all the mammals who have convergently evolved vocal learning.

Many other examples of the power of convergent evolution could be drawn from the genetic level, already explored in previous work. For example, the role of FOXP2 in vocal control and vocal motor learning has been elegantly explored in birds by Constance Scharff and colleagues (Haesler et al., 2004, 2007; Scharff and Haesler, 2005), and provides the first example of deep homology yet known in the domain of vocal motor control (cf. Fitch, 2009; Scharff and Petri, 2011). Research on axon guidance has examined the development of a set of connections in the avian brain that may be the analogy of the arcuate fasciculus, and suggests that a set of broadly shared axonal guidance molecules, the cadherins, may play a key role in this (Matsunaga and Okanoya, 2008, 2009). An intriguing possibility is that these same molecules, or close relatives, might also play a role in the development of intracortical connections that underlie syntax or spoken language more broadly.

In summary then, both analogy and homology will always have a role to play in the comparative method, and the importance of convergent evolution for testing evolutionary hypotheses means that research on the avian brain will continue to be extremely important in analyses of traits that make humans unique among primates.

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The Evolution of Syntax: An Exaptationist Perspective

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Human language, in its mature state, is a complex system that allows us to encode and communicate thoughts and experiences via hierarchically structured signals called sentences. Humans, apparently uniquely among living animals, are born with a capacity to acquire such systems readily and without the need for explicit tutelage: an instinct to learn language.

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La sintaxis poética del chino en un poema en chino

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La sintaxis poética del chino en un poema en chino

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Cuando era niña, mi poema favorito en el chino era una de regresar a la ciudad natal. Asistía a la escuela de chino con programas al dentro de una escuela intermedia aquí en Austin. En la escuela, necesitamos memorizar un poema, y yo eligí este poema de He Zhizhang que se llama "Regresar a Casa". Este poema no tiene muchas caracteres de chino que demuestran la gramática, sino que solamente usa susantivos, verbos y adjetivos. Esto demuestra el poder de una lengua que puede formar ideas sin caracteres de gramática.

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The following poems were written during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD). They are from a well known collection call the "Tang 300 Poems", or TangShi SanBaiShou. The pronunciations given in the second column are all in Mandarin Chinese. Some of them still rhyme, and all can be read even though its has been around 1200 years or more since they were written.

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Las similudes entres lenguajes hablados y lenguajes de programación

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Las similudes entres lenguajes hablados y lenguajes de programación

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Este artículo habla de que el sintaxis de una lengua no importa mucho para comunicarse con otros. En realidad, el propósito original de una lenguaje es para comunicar ideas y no es una cosa con estructura apropiada que refleja la educación relativa de una persona, pero ahora vivimos en una sociedad a que le gusta burlarse a personas que no usan la gramática apropiada.

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Speaking a language fluently is impressive, and speaking many languages is impressive, but ultimately, it's not about the words. Talking is about communication. This applies as much to programming as to speaking. Switching to Spanish or Cantonese won't help if you don't know how to form and organize meaningful thoughts about a subject, and knowing all the syntax and semantics of C++ won't help if you don't know how to write organized, meaningful code. Learn the principles that apply in many languages, and the rest will follow. Don't just learn a programming language. Learn to program.

Consider: computer science professors lecture about concepts and algorithms, then assign homework in languages they haven't taught. Recruiters hire candidates who don't know the languages they'll use on the job. The very beginning of Atomic Object's careers page says, "Atomic doesn't ask that you know a certain language or use a certain process." It's not about language. It matters to professors that students grasp important ideas, not just how to write compilable code, and it matters to recruiters that new employees have the right values, technical skills, and experience, not the right list of languages.

Programming languages are still important. Picking the wrong language can make a program run too slowly, take too long to implement, or use too much memory. Some languages are easier to learn than others, some are easier to write in, some have better documentation, some are in higher demand, and some are simply more elegant.

But with all these considerations, why is it possible to get a computer science degree without mastering every nuance of at least one language? Why is it still possible to get a job without knowing more languages than the other candidates? It's possible because picking up languages is the easy part. All the syntax, rules, and built-in functions are documented in books and online. The hard part is knowing what to do with that information.

Programming languages are built on a common conceptual foundation. Understanding this foundation makes it possible to write good code even in a new language. A programmer who remembers all the keywords and function names in every language but never learned how to organize them is not as valuable as one who can use abstraction and encapsulation, who understands time and memory tradeoffs and asymptotic complexity, and who knows ways to make code readable, robust, and maintainable.

Don't become an expert in the intricacies of any particular language without also learning the ideas that apply universally. Some languages are widespread, some are trendy, and some even bring higher average salaries, but it's not about picking up a popular language, or even a well-grounded, long-standing language. It's about using the core concepts of programming to write good code no matter what the language.

There is always a tradeoff between different priorities, including performance, learning curve, and ease-of-use, so choosing and learning the languages that fit projects will always be crucial. Knowing just one language might work for a while, but there is no single best language, and even if there were, it wouldn't last. The languages that look best now can become useless in ten years. If all goes well, computers and programming will keep advancing, and newer, better languages will supplant most of what we have now.

This tumult would be disastrous if holding a job depended on being a specialist in the right language. We'd have to guess the right one or start over again and again. Fortunately, programming skills are transferrable between languages. Computer science ideas carry over from one language to the next, and as you learn them, it gets easier to pick up new languages. Learning the broad theories of computing makes it possible to use many languages effectively.

Never feel bad for needing to look up how to iterate over an array or where to put commas and colons. Never let being new to a language make you feel like an incompetent programmer. Never feel limited to the languages you already know. Pursue projects and careers regardless of the languages they use, and always be willing and eager to try new languages. It's not about the syntax; it's about the concepts. Don't just be a C++ programmer, a Lisp programmer, or a Ruby programmer. Be a good programmer.

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It's Not About the Syntax - Why Language Doesn't Matter

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Speaking a language fluently is impressive, and speaking many languages is impressive, but ultimately, it's not about the words. Talking is about communication. This applies as much to programming as to speaking.

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Este video demuestra la discusión entre perspectivistas y descriptivistas. El problema es que el uso incorrecto de la gramática todavía puede comunicar el significado de una frase. Entonces, ¿hay una necesidad para imponer las reglas en la habla común? También, el video describe la diferencias entre la habla y la escritura. Finalmente, el narrador describe la complejidad de la lengua como una razón de apreciar la lengua

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Does grammar matter? - Andreea S. Calude

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Creo que la cosa más interesante de hablar más de una lengua es el conflicto entre las significancias en una lengua y las significancias en otra lengua. Por ejemplo, este video describe unas desafios de ser bilingual. En el chino, hay muchas expresiones que no tienen sentido en inglés. También, la naturaleza del humor en el chino es muy diferente del humor aquí en los Estados Unidos.

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Esta lengua que se llama Toki Pona fue inventado por una lingüista canadiense y solamente tiene 123 palabras. En este artículo, el autor habla de la importancia de contexto en una lengua tan simple. En Toki Pona, las palabras para una coche pueden significar "un espacio que mueve" o "una cosa firme que me golpó". También, la lengua enfoque en la simplicidad de lengua y no tiene prioridad para describir todo en muchas detalles.

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Test your knowledge with amazing and interesting facts, trivia, quizzes, and brain teaser games on MentalFloss.com.

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Una lista de las lenguas más difíciles de aprender para los angloparlantes

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Una lista de las lenguas más difíciles de aprender para los angloparlantes

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Esta lista describe unas lenguas comunes que, en teoría, son fáciles de aprender para los angloparlantes. Por la mayoridad, las lenguas más fáciles son lenguas que parecen mucho a inglés en la estructura y muchas de las palabras. Por otro lado, tres de las cuatro lenguas abajo y más difíciles son lenguas asiáticas que parecen a sí mismas pero no parecen mucho a inglés.

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On National Doughnut Day, the holiest of high fat holidays ( hole-y, get it?), we celebrate the delicious pastry, from the plain to the just plain crazy. Not only can you get your grubby hands on free doughnuts today, you're getting a bunch of regional doughnut lingo right here. With the editors of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), we explore the different ways people say doughnut across the United States and bring you a dozen to sink your teeth into.

1. CHOKER HOLE

Choker hole is originally a logging term from the Pacific Northwest. It refers to a small hole dug under a log so that a choker-a rope or wire formed in the shape of a noose-can go under the log for hauling. Due to its resemblance, loggers nicknamed the doughnut "choker hole."

2. COOKIE

If you really want to confuse your friends, call a doughnut a cookie. Popular in the Southern and South Midland states, this term probably comes from the Dutch koekje, meaning a "small sweetened cake."

3. FETTIGLICH

In German communities in Missouri, you might hear doughnuts referred to as fettiglich. The word probably comes from the German fettig, meaning fatty or greasy. According to a quote in DARE, a fall tradition in Missouri involved masked children going door to door, saying, "Fettiglich, fettiglich," to which people would respond by giving them doughnuts, a practice which should definitely be revived for Doughnut Day.

4. OLYKOEK

Olykoek is an early term for doughnut that hails from the Hudson Valley in New York. One of the earliest recorded usages is from Washington Irving in his 1809 book A History of New York: "The table ... was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called dough nuts, or oly koeks." Olykoek is a variation on the Dutch oliekoek, which translates as "oil cake."

5. SUBMARINE

While a submarine is familiar as a sandwich in some parts of the U.S., it has also been a name for a doughnut in states like Kansas, Minnesota, West Virginia, and New York. Alternatively called a sinker, the name submarine comes from the idea of a doughnut being submerged in oil or fat, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

6. FRIED NUT

If you're ever in New Hampshire and get offered a fried nut, take it! It's an old-fashioned term for a doughnut. The "nut" of fried nut (and of doughnut, for that matter) comes from the idea that earlier doughnuts-which didn't have holes-looked like nuts.

7. CYMBAL

An old-timey New England term, cymbal refers to a doughnut without a hole, according to a quote in DARE. A doughnut with a hole might have come from a sea captain, at least according to an early 1930s quote from the Linguistic Atlas of New England. Boston native Oliver Wendell Holmes called the cymbal "a kind of genteel doughnut."

8. COLD SHUT

Ever bite into a tough, day-old doughnut? That might be called a cold shut in the Pacific Northwest. Cold shut was originally a welding term referring to a link that was closed "while cold" and without welding.

9. KOLACKY

A kolacky is a doughnut with a sweet filling, as well as a pastry made of pie dough and topped with something sweet. The term is chiefly used in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest states, and is a variation on the Czech kolač, which comes from kolo, meaning wheel or circle. DARE's earliest recorded use of a form of kolacky is from Willa Cather's novel My Ántonia, which is about a family of "Bohemian" immigrants: "Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans don't have those ... Mother uses them to make kolaches."

10. BERLINER

In Wisconsin and craving a jelly doughnut? Ask for a Berliner. If wreath-shaped pastries are more your thing, you can find the Berliner kranser in Scandinavian settlement areas like Minnesota. Despite its German-sounding name, Berliner kranser is actually Norwegian and translates as "Berlin wreath."

11. TANGLE BREECHES

Tangle breeches is a nickname for the cruller in states like Pennsylvania, Maryland, Nebraska, Kansas, and Alabama. What's a cruller? Basically a doughnut in a twisty shape. The term cruller, chiefly used in the North Central and Central Atlantic states, comes from the Dutch krulle, a curled cake.

12. MATRIMONY

The matrimony sounds like a delicious union: two crullers joined by another piece of dough. Such a doughnut might be found in Massachusetts and Rhode island.
This story originally ran in 2016.

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What Languages Are the Hardest to Learn?

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On National Doughnut Day, the holiest of high fat holidays ( hole-y, get it?), we celebrate the delicious pastry, from the plain to the just plain crazy. Not only can you get your grubby hands on free doughnuts today, you're getting a bunch of regional doughnut lingo right here.

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En este artículo, el autor pregunta la diferencia entre el accento en Inglaterra ("Received Pronunciation" o PR) y el accento de los Estados Unidos (GenAm accent). Hay una teoría de que en los 1700s, ambas personas en las colonias y personas en Inglaterra usaban una accenta muy rotacisma con el sonido duro del r. Pero durante el siglo XIX, los ciudadanos de clases superiorer empezaron a hablar con una accenta no rotacisma para mostrar el estado en la sociedad.

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Readers Nick and Riela have both written to ask how and when English colonists in America lost their British accents and how American accents came about.
There are many, many evolving regional British and American accents, so the terms "British accent" and "American accent" are gross oversimplifications. What a lot of Americans think of as the typical "British accent" is what's called standardized Received Pronunciation (RP), also known as Public School English or BBC English. What most people think of as an "American accent," or most Americans think of as "no accent," is the General American (GenAm) accent, sometimes called a "newscaster accent" or "Network English." Because this is a blog post and not a book, we'll focus on these two general sounds for now and leave the regional accents for another time.

English colonists established their first permanent settlement in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, sounding very much like their countrymen back home. By the time we had recordings of both Americans and Brits some three centuries later (the first audio recording of a human voice was made in 1860), the sounds of English as spoken in the Old World and New World were very different. We're looking at a silent gap of some 300 years, so we can't say exactly when Americans first started to sound noticeably different from the British.

As for the "why," though, one big factor in the divergence of the accents is rhotacism. The General American accent is rhotic and speakers pronounce the r in words such as hard. The BBC-type British accent is non-rhotic, and speakers don't pronounce the r, leaving hard sounding more like hahd. Before and during the American Revolution, the English, both in England and in the colonies, mostly spoke with a rhotic accent. We don't know much more about said accent, though. Various claims about the accents of the Appalachian Mountains, the Outer Banks, the Tidewater region and Virginia's Tangier Island sounding like an uncorrupted Elizabethan-era English accent have been busted as myths by linguists.

Talk This Way

Around the turn of the 18th 19th century, not long after the revolution, non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper and upper-middle classes. It was a signifier of class and status. This posh accent was standardized as Received Pronunciation and taught widely by pronunciation tutors to people who wanted to learn to speak fashionably. Because the Received Pronunciation accent was regionally "neutral" and easy to understand, it spread across England and the empire through the armed forces, the civil service and, later, the BBC.

Across the pond, many former colonists also adopted and imitated Received Pronunciation to show off their status. This happened especially in the port cities that still had close trading ties with England - Boston, Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah. From the Southeastern coast, the RP sound spread through much of the South along with plantation culture and wealth.

After industrialization and the Civil War and well into the 20th century, political and economic power largely passed from the port cities and cotton regions to the manufacturing hubs of the Mid Atlantic and Midwest - New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, etc. The British elite had much less cultural and linguistic influence in these places, which were mostly populated by the Scots-Irish and other settlers from Northern Britain, and rhotic English was still spoken there. As industrialists in these cities became the self-made economic and political elites of the Industrial Era, Received Pronunciation lost its status and fizzled out in the U.S. The prevalent accent in the Rust Belt, though, got dubbed General American and spread across the states just as RP had in Britain.

Of course, with the speed that language changes, a General American accent is now hard to find in much of this region, with New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago developing their own unique accents, and GenAm now considered generally confined to a small section of the Midwest.

As mentioned above, there are regional exceptions to both these general American and British sounds. Some of the accents of southeastern England, plus the accents of Scotland and Ireland, are rhotic. Some areas of the American Southeast, plus Boston, are non-rhotic.

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When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents?

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Readers Nick and Riela have both written to ask how and when English colonists in America lost their British accents and how American accents came about. There are many, many evolving regional British and American accents, so the terms "British accent" and "American accent" are gross oversimplifications.

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La idea de enviar texts como un nuevo forma de escribir

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La idea de enviar texts como un nuevo forma de escribir

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John McWhorter, un lingüista de la universidad de Columbia en Nuevo York, describe la falacia de que el fenómeno de texto está destruyendo la lengua. En el pasado, el acto de hablar en la manera de escribir un discurso, pero ahora tenemos un método de escribir en la manera de hablar informalmente. También, John McWhorter habla de unas expresiones que se usan en texto que no tienen significancia en la lengua hablado.

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John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!

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Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John McWhorter posits that there's much more to texting -- linguistically, culturally -- than it seems, and it's all good news.

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Un episodio de "Good Mythical Morning" de lenguas raras que ahora todavía se usan

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Un episodio de "Good Mythical Morning" de lenguas raras que ahora todavía se usan

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Mis dos humoristas favoritos del Red, Rhett McLaughlin y Link Neal, hablan aquí de lenguas raras que no tienen sonidos typicales o tienen mucha significancia en pocos sílabos. Los dos hablan de Xhosa, una lengua africana con "clics" con la lengua y también hablan de Sylbo, la lengua de silbidos. También mencionan una lengua de un tribu en Brasil con siete consonantes y tres vocales.

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Cuando yo era niña, siempre iba a la escuela de chino los domingos a petición de mis padres. No me gustaba mucho la escuela, pero ahora me da cuenta de que hay un sistema de enseñar el chino a los hablantes nativos del chino y del inglés: el sistema de "pinyin". Este sistema usa letras románticas para describir sonidos en el chino. El sistema no se usa en China porque no hay un sistema que es basado en otra lengua allí.

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On this page I will try to describe the phonetics of Mandarin Chinese so simple that a beginner student should be able to grasp the basics, but still detailed enough to be of help for more experienced students that want to get a better understanding of the forming of the sounds.

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Aqui tenemos un video de Noam Chomsky, un linguista que define mucho de las linguisticas modernas. Él creyó la teoría forma de la lenguaje, que era un descubrimiento revolucionado en la esfera de las ciencias del lenguaje. También, tenemos una mapa de regiones en el cerebro donde se procesa el lenguaje, especialmente las areas de Broca y de Wernicke. La ilustración también muestra el camino de informacion al dentro del cerebro. Del libro, tenemos unos términos importantes para entender las ideas de este capítulo. Finalmente, tenemos unas frases de Papiamentu, una lengua criollo con un forma simple que aprendimos en clase.

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Bon bini - Welcome
Bon dia - Good Day
kon ta bai ku bo - how are you?
danki - thank you
por fabor - please
mi number de telefon ta - my telephone number is...

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reglas prescriptivas - nos sirven para ayudar a los estudiantes para pronunciar palabras
conductismo -  el lenguaje humano no puede ser descrito mediante la creacio n de modelos que caractericen estados mentales, sino que debe ser descrito simplemente como un conjunto de respuestas a un conjunto concreto de estı mulos.
significante - la sequencia de sonidos
significado - el concepto