Abel on The Functions of Language

1. What are the functions of language? Just provide the main ones Abel describes.

The main functions of language are cognitive, expressive, and performatory.

2. What is the significance about the story of the tribal boys and the table?

The purpose of this story was to show the difficulty that goes along with having everyone make the same connection between words and objects or movements, which posses the question of how language was able to be created and understood.

3. What is the “inscrutability of reference”?

The inscrutability of reference is the issues involved in learning what a word means by being shown the objects they denote.

4. What does Abel when he says that “Words are mere breaths of air, or scribbled pencil marks, but as used in a ‘language game’ by a speech community they are not arbitrary”?

What Able means is that even though words may only physically be sounds or groups of symbols, mentally they mean much more to us and that affects the way in which we use them and makes it difficult for us to look at them as just words.

5. What is the difference between Animal and Human Language?

The difference is that Animal Language is fixed signals that are controlled by external stimuli and internal states, while Human language is always learned and is not restricted to the communication of information but can be innovative and creative.

6. What is Chomsky’s argument on how humans learn language? Be specific about linguistic competence.

Chomsky argues that language and linguistic competence come from a special ability humans possess when they are born to understand language.

7. What does Abel thin about Chomsky’s argument?

Abel thinks that Chomsky’s argument is possible but that there is no way of really knowing.

8. How would you answer Abel’s question: “Would an infant learn to speak, though isolated from adults, if he were constantly within earshot of a radio?”

I would say that the infant would be able to produce the sounds he heard from the radio which may even add up to full sentences, but without the experience of someone showing the infant what the purpose of the sounds were, the infant would not be able to comprehend the meaning of the words and therefore would not be able to logically communicate them back to other humans. He would just be making meaningless sounds.

9. Why does Abel believe that “language is not in fact unique in the spectrum of human capacities?”

He believes this because language is a part of an enormous range of social intercourse that embraces many aspects of human life.

10. What does Abel mean when he says: “We all learn these codes of stance, mannerism, gesture, tactility, interpersonal behavior… yet we are equally unable to state them fully”?

Abel means that all humans learn certain social behaviors that are accepted in their culture but they cannot explain why these behaviors are preferred from other behaviors or why this preference exists.