ANTH 493: Linguistic Anthropology

Here’s an example of Hocket’s design feature interchangeabiliy – only male crickets chirp.  Slo-mo Cricket Chirps Reveal Secret Seranades discusses the chirp patterns of different species of crickets.  Overall, NPR’s Wild Sounds series is pretty interesting.

And, monkeys lie:  White Face Capuchin lies 

Here, crows crack nuts:  Wild crows in the city;  Here, a crow makes a tool:  Tool-making crow;  And crows teach each other to recognize danger:  Crows recognize faces

Both American Sign Language and Plains Indian Sign Language are independent of spoken language.  But ASL is a complete language equal in power to spoken language.  Plains Indian Sign Language is probably a trade language – reduced in scope, more iconic than abstract.

Very interesting set of videos on Plains Indian Sign Language:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JST8l3ilsSQ

I’m a big fan now of b storm – the repetition of signs in his Marilyn Manson cover is interesting and I like the way pitch is represented in the ‘0h, 0h, 0h’ section of Pump It:  http://www.youtube.com/user/st0rmfx

I’m a big fan of myhappyhands:  http://www.youtube.com/user/MyHappyHands

Listen to the Whistle Spanish of La Gomera of the Canary Islands http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPY60UceJQ

Compare it to the Whistle Mazateco of Oaxaca, Mexico http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfl-NJTgUzI

Note that in addition to being based on different languages, the whistles themselves  sound different.

Here is a bit of Twi (Akan) drum language:  http://www.philtulga.com/Drum%20Language.html

Madeleine Albright has just come out with a book titled Read My Pins.  How is ‘reading’ Albright’s pins different from actual reading?  How is interpretation of the pins different from language?

National Public Radio interview with Allbright:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113278807

Here is a short clip of the Australian bowerbird building a nest to impress a mate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA

Cats use their bodies, their vocalizations, and their pheromones to communicate.

The University of Arizona University Animal Care has prepared a learning module on cats. Visit their Domestication page of the module and scroll down a bit to see the faces of happy, angry, frightened, playing, and ecstatic cats. My cat, Pua, half closes her eyes and sticks out her tongue when shes very happy.

In the article Cat talk? Cornell News reports on Nicholas Nicastro’s study of vocalization communication between cats and humans.

The message source is a dog. The channel is body, face, and vocalization. What’s the message? Find out here:

How to Interpret Your Dog’s Body Language, Facial Expressions and Vocalizations

Nova’s Tales from the Hive

Bees communicate the location, quantity, and quality of food to their hivemates. This Nova site provides video of bees performing a round dance to indicate that a food source is close and a waggle dance to indicate that food is further away. Bees also carry the scent of the food source to their hivemates.

The University of Michigan’s Animal Communication site provides diagrams of bee dances and their meanings.