（中文）语言与人类大脑

Teacher

Hunter Hatfield

First day of classes

5 July

Last day of classes

10 July

Course Credit

2

Course Description

Course Introduction

Humans uniquely are the big-brained animals with language. Explore what language is, how your mind makes it happen, and thereby what it means to be human. In thiscourse, we will take perspectives from linguistics, biological anthropology, literary studies, game studies, and computer science all to understand human language and, thereby, humans. What does our language ability tell us about how our minds differ from those artificial ones?

Objective

(1)Summarise arguments from complex resources

(2)Differentiate theories of the human mind and language

(3)Propose a model of the human language faculty

(4)Apply language and psychology concepts to life

Assignments (essay or other forms)

Test: 50%

Presentation:30%

Project: 20%

Text Books and Reading Materials

A selection of book chapters and journal articles will be provided as a course reader：

Bergen, B. K. (2012).Louder than words: The new science of how the mind makes meaning. Basic Books.

Clark, H. H. (1996).Using language. Cambridge university press.

Graziano, M. S. (2013).Consciousness and the social brain. Oxford University Press.

Fuentes, A. (2017).The creative spark: How imagination made humans exceptional. Penguin.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008).Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago press.

May, T. (2020).A significant life: Human meaning in a silent universe. University of Chicago Press.

Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017).The enigma of reason. Harvard university press.

Scott-Phillips, T. (2014).Speaking our minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Yeshurun, Y., Nguyen, M., & Hasson, U. (2021). The default mode network:Where the idiosyncratic self meets the shared social world.Nature reviews neuroscience,22(3), 181-192.