Babel's Dawn

Where Do We Stand with FOXP2?

A humanized mouse can teach us many things but is  unlikely to actually talk,

I've just read a review article about the Foxp2 gene and its role in the evolution of language and am happy to have been brought up to date. The big assertion in this paper is that Foxp2 is critical for learning vocalizations, maybe not so critical for other aspects of speech and language. (Wolfgang Enard, "Foxp2 and the role of cortical-basal ganglia circuits in speech and language evolution.") The paper is most notable for its presentation of specific facts that support the picture of Foxp2's role:

Looking for a Unified Story

David Brooks is a New York Times columnist who for some time now has been pondering over the changing view of human nature which this blog has been reporting. Last week he had a column ("Nice Guys Finish First") that considered this issue again and concluded that "cooperation permeates our nature" and that "a rigorous 'scientific'" analysis of human origins or behavior cannot be based on selfishness alone. Brooks is a political conservative and his remarks are aimed chiefly at the free-market thinkers who favor unmitigated competition. They could, however, be aimed at this blog as well.

More Evidence against Grammatical Universals

Thomas Bayes died in 1761, but 250 years later his impact is growing.

There are two dominant theories that try to explain why children are able to learn their mother tongue with such little apparent effort. One proposes that a system for using and learning language is built into the brain and consequently produces some linguistic universals. The other says that language and brain co-evolved, so that the two are adapted to each other. Instead of learning inborn universals, children learn languages quickly because they evolved to be learnable. Finding the correct solution to the ease-of-learning puzzle has strong implications for how language began.

Big Shots Discuss Artificial Intelligence

Thanks to the Replicated Typo blog I've been alerted to an MIT page summarizing a recent panel discussion on artificial intelligence. Besides Noam Chomsky, giants like Steven Pinker, Marvin Minskyand Sydney Brenner. The topic was artificial intelligence, not something this blog focuses on, although my latest post seems to have sparked some such comments. But it was interesting to see that the linguists complain that machines won't get anywhere until they can penetrate to language's meaning.

• Barbara Partee: "Really knowing semantics is a prerequisite for anything to be called intelligence,"
• Noam Chomsky derided researchers in machine learning who use purely statistical methods to produce behavior that mimics something in the world, but who don't try to understand the meaning of that behavior. [Of course there is a big difference between the meaning of a sentence and the meaning of a behavior.\

The Language Arch

Arches are part of nature. They just need a keystone to support the two sides.

What's the relationship between cooperation and understanding? I ask because I've been reading a paper about simulating cooperation that studies the way verbal cooperation aids understanding. (Carl Vogel, "Interaction of Levels ofCooperation and Group Cohesion in a Social Model of Language Evolution") The simulation took a naïve form, as is commonly imposed by efforts to mimic human interactions on a computer. When you think how much computational effort is required to support a machine playing chess or Jeopardy, you realize that it will be some time before even sophisticated ape interactions can be simulated, let alone plausible human conversations. Even so, these small efforts encourage a thought. Language is the keystone that brings cooperation and understanding together.

Is Speech as Old as Language?

 

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Gestures
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Stephen Colbert not only talks about gestures, he makes them throughout his talk. My favorite is the gesture accompanying the reference to a foaming mug of pinot grigiot.

One of the steady disputes on this blog concerns the role of gesture (hand signs) in language origins, so I always welcome new evidence on this issue. PlosOne has recently published a paper titled, "Chimpanzee Signaling Points to a Multimodal Origin of Human Language," by Jared Taglialatela, Jamie Russell, Jennifer Schaeffer, and William Hopkins. Alert regulars at Babel's Dawn may recall previous discussions of work by Taglialatela. He is investigating speech origins by studying chimpanzee brains and determining how language-ready the ape brain was. (See: Broca's Area in Chimpanzees?; Ape Cries are Complex; How Different are Ape Brains from Ours?) This latest paper argues that from the beginning human language has combined vocalization and gesture. That's in keeping my arguments on this blog, but how much confidence can we have in this latest work?