The Axioms of Language Evolution

Fractals are generated by building on the same  equation time and again. Speech is also built by combining sounds time and again. Can one compute the other?

The British journal Science Progress has published a paper by William Abler that tries to derive language origins (and much else) from first principles, the way Euclid deduced his geometry and Newton set forth his Principia. Einstein's first relativity paper also argued from a couple of axioms. I mention Euclid, Newton, and Einstein to show that science can be based on assertions as well as experiments, and also as a caution. It takes a mighty big brain to begin with a priori laws and still get the science right. Abler is betting the farm that he belongs in that class.

Why not rely on the existing data, or at least start with it? The problem, as Abler sees it, is that more than half a century after Chomsky startled the world with Syntactic Structures "there is no agreement as to whether universal grammar exists, or whether language or such exists at all." [p. 403] I get his point, and report on it all the time. People disagree over all the fundamentals and often act as though other perspectives didn't exist. How to get around that? Abler's method is to point to some fundamentals taken from outside linguistics and use them as his axioms.

Just to be persnickety, I'll point out that there is another way to approach this confusion: ask questions about empirical facts. Several are possible. How is it that human children quickly develop the ability to speak their parents' language? Why don't apes use language in the wild since experiments have proven they are smart enough to be trained to use sign language, at least in its simplest form? Why don't any other animals cooperate on the basis of a speech triangle?

Having said that there is no agreement on whether there is or is not a universal grammar, Abler performs a thought experiment and asks, "What if there were ten supposed language universals and 10 languages were found, each lacking a different one of the 10 supposed universals in language. Would that show that there are no universals of language?" [406]

He answers, "Probably not. It would show, instead, that language is not a machine, like a watch that stops functioning when one of its parts is removed." I like that and suspect that I will probably steal it on future occasions. He goes on, "Language is a system that continues to function because a single missing part can be inferred from the other nine." Apparently, by language, Abler is referring not just to French or Sanskrit, but instances of usage as well. Thus, "John told Tom to cut the grass, and Jim the weeds," is a case of inference even though the second clause lacks a subject [Tom] a verb [told] and a secondary verb [to cut].

When we understand language that broadly, it seems as though no universal universals are going to be found. Language, especially in its oral form, is subject to all kinds of ad hoc shortcuts. But then Adler does propose a universal universal, "the property of discreteness, which characterizes language at every level of its organization." [406] I don't think he will get much argument on the point. The fact that every language comprises combinations of a small set of sounds well known. I have previously reported that any learned system of vocalizations is combinatorial, even if the learner starts with holistic sounds. (See: Apes Don't Imitate; People Do) Abler asserts, "On the basis of discreteness, then, we may reasonably expect to place the scientific study of language onto a theoretical basis." [407] Give the man credit for building on an unquestioned fact: phonemes give us morphemes which give us words which give us sentences which give us paragraphs which give us stories which give us literature.

Having identified the scaffolding of literate civilization, Abler then abandons it with very little cause that I can see. He tells us that "language and mind must have their source in some more ancient natural system…" wait a minute! Where did mind enter the story?

Well, bler is really interested in mind, not language. He titles his paper, "The Human Mind: Origin in Geometry," and asserts that, "any theory of mind and brain must begin with a theory of language." [405] Is that true? Certainly many theories of brain don't start with language, and until rather recently in the history of philosophy theories of mind didn't start there either. However, I'm going to move on because it would be perfectly acceptable for Abler to have said, "I want to understand the human mind, and my gateway will be through understanding language first."

Yet I'm still balking: "must have their source…" Why not sources? Must language and mind have a common source? I proceed with trepidation. But I'm encouraged by the fact that he is looking toward a natural history explanation. Language (I'm skipping mind in this discussion) "must be derived, through a process of descent with modification, from some other system that already existed …" [407] Good. I'm with him.

What system might that be, he wonders. And quotes from Pinker and Bloom's famous paper, pointing to simpler languages like pidgin, baby talk, etc. Abler protests that these cannot really be the source of language, and mostly I agree. The Pinker and Bloom paper legitimated the search for language origins and triggered much research that has moved beyond their starting point. A standard reaction has been, "Pinker and Bloom say X, but that cannot be right. So what is right?" And more research follows.

Abler's reaction is more unusual. He rejects the problem of looking for sources of descent through modification! "Since language is not a mechanical device like a watch, it is probably not an organ, like an eye, that is built up gradually as its component parts take shape. Instead, it is probably a system, like geometry, whose structure shows evidence of design, and which emerges only a little at a time (Euclid, ca 300 BC), but did not evolve by natural selection. Internal processes in the formation of sentences remain completely hidden." [408]

What!? Earlier when he contemplated universal he said that language isn't like a watch because users can infer missing elements. Now he talks about the gradual build up of component parts. What happened to phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences, paragraphs, stories, literature? Those are built up from parts. I thought he was going to build his theory from them?

Then we get, "Instead, it is probably a system, like geometry…" Probably! At best I could tolerate, "Instead, it might be a system like geometry…" But that is hardly the only choice. What happened to, instead it might be a learned behavior, like birdsong; or, instead it might be a suite of competencies, like playing baseball; or, instead it might be a human invention, like baby slings? Abler may well have his reasons for saying it is probably a system, but he has to explain it a bit better. I kept on reading, but mainly in the hope of learning why he thinks language did not evolve by natural selection.

No such luck. Abler has irretrievably jumped to a new track and instead of deriving a theory of language and mind from the build up of discrete elements, he talks (very nicely) about the relation between algebra and geometry, then the relationship between algebra and language (formalism galore), and then says the antecedents of language "do not lie in behaviour or psychology… [but] in the pre-biological properties of geometry and arithmetic." [419]

It often happens that basic biological structure reflects some sort of geometric simplicity. Why are daisy petals arranged as they are? Look not to adaptation but geometry; yet even there the petals have some history concerning function, genes, and evolution. The biological history of the geometry of language—assuming there is such a thing—still needs to be accounted for.

Too bad, because I liked seeing see his original proposition laid out so explicitly: any idea about the evolution of language has to account for the appearance of phonemes, then words, then sentences, then more.

Comments

[Uzza]

"an unquestioned fact: phonemes give us morphemes which give us words which give us sentences"

How do you reconcile this assertion with polysynthetic languages where words and sentences are indistinguishable, or signed languages where phonemes only arguably exist?
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BLOGGER: The point is that languages work by combining a number of discreet sounds (or other elements). Polysynthetic languages have a great many morphemes per word/sentence and are not an interesting challenge to that concept. I don't know enough about signed languages to comment, although from your remarks they too sound combinatorial.

[Uzza]

Fair enough, but it might be well to reword your last sentence (among others) as it indicates a specific sequence.

It could very well be sentences which give us morphemes, which give us features, instead of the other way around. Elissa Newport's work for example.
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BLOGGER: I agree with you in general, but this is a blog where even at the level of Babel's Dawn a certain overgeneralizing brashness is used to pepper the reports. In my book--where I do have a thing or two to say about combinations--I hope I'm more precise.

[RileyMcArdle]

It seems to me that self-awareness has similarities to the speech triangle.

In self-awareness, the speaker is one's inner monologue. The listener is, to extend the monologue metaphor, one's inner audience. The topic is one's own thoughts.

Before the advent of language, the inner monologue could have consisted as a stream of evoked feelings and memories. The key, though, is the mind drawing its own attention to those thoughts instead of being a passive observer.

Perhaps the speech triangle developed as an extension of this.

Other great apes have been shown to have a theory of mind, but does that necessarily mean they have self-awareness? Perhaps their lack of the proto-speech triangle of self-awareness is why they don't use speech in nature. They can be trained to emulate it, but could it be that this is just one step above training a parakeet to talk?
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BLOGGER: Thanks for the comment. I have given this material some thought even though it gets beyond the scope of this blog. I do suspect (don't really know) that apes have some self awareness, in the sense that they know they are an individual among several other individuals, and they know what they are doing (at least some time) and that it is they who are doing it. If that makes any sense.

Where the speech triangle probably comes in as a source of uniqueness is in its ability to turn the self into a topic. With language we can direct our attention to a topic and contemplate it.

As for which came first, the point is debatable but I lean toward the notion that internal, verbal thinking is an internalized version of speech. In my own case I remember pretty clearly that as a boy I worked things out by speaking aloud. Eventually I internalized the process and after that my internalized blabbermouth never really shut up. Of course Chomskyans have it exactly the other way: speech is an externalized form of what was already going on internally.

[Uzza]

With language we can direct our attention to a topic and contemplate it.

Without language we can do this as well. The best description of it is still Susan Schaller's book, A Man Without Words, 1991, University of California Press.
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BLOGGER: Uzza is a good example of how blogs work (at there best). The blogger says something genera;a commenter raises a sharp point. The two go back and forth and (one hopes) matters clarify.

It is certainly true that people today can contemplate topics without resorting to language. Nobody can write a book about how Einstein thought without llearning that. Duke Ellington is another example. I don't know the book Uzza mentions, but I'll put it on my list.

Thinking about topics in any detail beyond watching them closely requires shifting attention and even focusing on two things (e.g., subject, predicate) simultaneously. I suspect (hypothesize) our ability to do this evolved with the evolution of the brain supporting language. The power to shift attention comes from connections between different parts of the brain. Apes may be able to do this on occasion, but humans have circuits that make it all much more efficient, which means less exhausting and more persistent. Now that we have a long history of the brain and language co-evolving we can take control of our attention without language. Some people are very good at this, others (me for example) are weak. But when discussing the origins of something like self-awareness we are talking about a species of Homo rather earlier than our own. In those days dependence on speech to control attention was likely more dependent on speech and less on brain circuits.