London - 1912. By age 35, Winston Churchill had already arrived.
Winston Churchill said Russia was a “riddle wr/apped in a mystery inside an enigma.” The same can be said of the origins of language. It is not just one puzzle but several and they are tangled together. Language itself rests on a unique social structure that provides a unique function. It is build up from a system of sounds, symbols, and syntax that have nothing else like it, perhaps in the world, certainly not among primates. Thus, instead of having to explain the origin of one or even two novelties, we need to understand the appearance of a series of remarkable developments, sorting out the riddle, the mystery, and the enigma as we go.
In the part of the quotation that usually goes ignored, Churchill ended his observation by saying, “but perhaps there is a key.” This blog has long persisted on the assumption that there are two keys to unlocking the tangle—the theory of evolution and the speech triangle. Last week’s post (here) described a series of innovations proposed by Ray Jackendoff and analyzed in a paper by Willem Zuidema and Arie Verhagen. I wonder what would happen if we combined that paper’s logic with my possible keys.
Continue reading "The Riddle, the Mystery, and the Enigma" »
A week ago a commenter challenged my remark that, “We have direct links between the brain and our vocal apparatus.” The commenter asked:
Animals also have vocal apparati. Aren't the links between their brains and their vocal apparati direct? If not, what is the difference between in the linkages? How does one determine neurologically whether there is voluntary control or not?
My remark had been a quick response another comment and this direct challenge sent me back to the books so that I might better know what the heck I was talking about. I was pretty sure I had gotten the information originally from Terrence Deacon’s The Symbolic Species and sure enough chapter 8 has the story in painful detail along with some useful diagrams.
Continue reading "Brains and Vocalization" »
Ray Jackendoff has proposed stepping stones from ape cries to full language. A new paper considers that process and looks for ways to describe the steps formally and begin accounting for the transitions between stages.
Some years ago Ray Jackendoff put together a list of linguistic innovations that had to be introduced to move the human lineage from primate communications to modern speech. Left out of the account was a way to get from one stage to another, but the current issue of Adoptive Behavior has a paper by Willem Zuidema and Arie Verhagen that looks at formal ways to model the move through the innovations (see: “What are the unique design features of language? Formal tools for comparative claims,” abstract here). They believe they at last have found an approach to the path to full language.
Continue reading "Step by Step from Apes to Shakespeare" »
The current issue of Adaptive Behavior is devoted to computer models of the evolution of language and should be read in its entirety by everyone seriously interested in language origins. Computer models are mistrusted by many people, but they fill the same role as calculations and the papers make a strong case for models that depend on empirical data. The editorial introducing the special issue says, “Our aim is to encourage more and better interaction between empirical studies and computer modeling” [p. 5]. The papers offer much food for thought on just how such evolution might work.
Continue reading "The Laws of Evolving Animal Communications" »
A baboon can make only a few calls, but its can learn many things by listening shrewdly.
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Forget syntax and semantics for a moment; how far did people have to come to master the physical acts of speaking and listening.?I had a short post the other day (here) in which zebra finches appeared to be alert to phonetic categories. I’ve been wondering how apes fit into this story. A new volume, Primate Ethology, includes a chapter by Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L Cheney titled “Primate Vocal Communication” and apparently the whole chapter is available on Google books (here p. 84). It provides a handy survey of what our primate ancestors brought us before we started to speak..
Continue reading "Apes are Shrewd Listeners" »
I'm glad people feel that deep time can be inspiring and impressive. But I'm still wondering how to tell the story so that readers feel their lives are part of a process not just an insignificant line of sand on a two-thousand foot wall. I'm looking for a metaphor that can express the dependence of all generations on the ones that came before. Any suggestions? Anything in Dante? The Bhagavad Gita?
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