Week 4: The Origin of Language

 

                                                                  Homo Timeline:

Check Week 4 Powerpoint for the rest of the images (they wouldn't paste to here)

The Origins of Language (maybe)

• The shortage of direct, empirical evidence has caused many scholars to regard the entire topic as unsuitable for serious study: in 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris banned any existing or future debates on the subject
• Since the early 1990s, a number of linguists, archaeologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and others have attempted to address this issue with new, modern methods
• Assumptions are based on fossil records, archaeological evidence, studies of language acquisition, comparison between human language and systems of communication among other animals (other primates)
• Chomsky: discontinuity theory = a single chance mutation occurred in one individual around 100k years ago, instantaneously installing the language faculty in a near-perfect form
• Pinker: continuity theory = language faculty must have evolved in the usual gradual way
• Tomasello: continuity theory = language as a socially learned tool of communication, developing from the cognitively controlled aspects of primate communication, these being mostly gestural as opposed to vocal

The Divine Source

• In most religions, a divine source gives language to the humans
• Nearly all divine theories believe that languages originated from a single source and are thus monogenetic theories of language origin
• Over the ages, people carried out experiments to rediscover this original God-given language

Christianity

• Christians believe(d) that God "confounded" the one language and scattered people around the world

Hinduism

• Hindus believe(d) that in the centre of the earth grew the 'world tree', which wanted to keep all of humanity together under its branches. The creator-god Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth. They grew into wata trees and this made different beliefs, customs and languages

The Americas

• The Aztecs' belief maintains that a great flood occurred and only one man and one woman survived. They ended up on land and had many children, who were first unable to speak but were endowed with language upon the arrival of a dove, although each is given a different language meaning that they cannot understand each other

Africa

• The Wa-Sania, a Bantu people of East African origin have a tale that in the beginning the peoples of earth knew only one language, but during a famine a madness struck the people causing them to wander in all directions, jabbering strange words, and this is how different languages came about

Australia

• In remote times a woman named Wurriri lived towards the east and generally walked with a stick in her hand, to scatter the fires around which others were sleeping. When she died, messengers were sent everywhere with news of her death and people came to celebrate. The first group started eating her, speaking a new language immediately after. Other groups came and took turns eating her, with each of them speaking a new language as they had eaten a different body part.

Some not-so-wrong theories by linguist Max Muller (umlaut on the u but I don't have a German keyboard)

• The natural sound source: bow-wow
• Primitive words started as imitations of the natural sounds early humans heard around them (bow wow theory)
• The imitations of sounds were then used to refer to the things associated with the relevant sound (onomatopoeia still exist in our language today).
• Criticism
• How would soundless things and abstract concepts have been referred to?
• Language is more than only a set of names
• The natural sound source: pooh-pooh
• Original sounds may have started as natural cries of emotion such as pain, anger and joy (pooh-pooh theory)
• Criticism
• These are produced with sudden intakes of breath, which is not the case for ordinary speech
• Emotional reactions contain sounds not otherwise used in speech production
• The social interaction source: yo-he-ho
• Language arose out of the rhythmical grunts of people working together, involved in physical effort that has to be coordinated (yo-he-ho theory)
• Early humans may have developed a set of grunts, groans and curses used when lifting and carrying trees/mammoths
• Makes sense as early humans must have lived in groups, which require some form of organisation and hence communication to maintain -> development of language placed in a social context
• Criticism
• Apes and other primates also live in groups and use grunts etc. without having developed the capacity for speech

The Gossip and Grooming Hypothesis

• Gossip, according to Robin Dunbar in his book Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language (1996), does for group-living humans what manual grooming does for other primates: it allows individuals to service their relationships and so maintain their alliances on the basis of the principle: if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours
• As humans began living in increasingly larger social groups, the task of manually grooming became so time-consuming as to be unaffordable. In response to this problem, humans developed 'a cheap and ultra-efficient form of grooming': vocal grooming. To keep allies happy, one now needs only to 'groom' them with low-cost vocal sounds, servicing multiple allies simultaneously while keeping both hands free for other tasks. Vocal grooming then evolved gradually into vocal language, initially in the form of 'gossip'
• Dunbar's hypothesis seems to be supported by the fact that the structure of language shows adaptations to the function of narration in general. However, critics of this theory point out that the very efficiency of 'vocal grooming would have undermined its capacity to signal commitment of the kind conveyed by time-consuming and costly manual grooming. A further criticism is that the theory does nothing to explain the crucial transition from vocal grooming - the production of pleasing but meaningless sounds - to the cognitive complexities of syntactical speech.

Key Elements in Language Evolution

• Erect bipedalism
• A modified oral apparatus
• A bigger brain?
• A symbolic communication?
• Mind reading?

"Putting the Baby Down" Theory

• As prehistoric mums began to live a vertical lifestyle, the anatomical rearrangement that accompanied it turned childbirth into a risk
• Evolution favoured smaller and more immature babies. But these little newborns were too weak/tiny to cling to their mother's tummy
• Mothers instead had to carry their little ones to maintain physical contact, which is what all babies want more than anything but to gather food women had no choice but to lay their babies down. Deprived of the protection and comfort of their mother's body, babies start to fuss
• To maintain contact and soothe their kids, mothers invented the precursor to language: baby talk (Dean Falk, 2010)

The Physical Adaptation Source

• Transition to upright posture and bipedal locomotion = front limbs free
• Differences between the skull of a gorilla and Neanderthal - Neanderthal may have been able to produce some consonant-like sounds
• Fossilised skeletal structures that begin to resemble modern humans -> partial adaptations that appear relevant for speech -> features are more streamlined compared to other primates
• Features themselves may not have triggered speech but give good indication that the creatures possessing them were capable of speech

The Physical Adaptation Source: Teeth

• Upright position, not slanting outwards like those of apes
• Roughly even in height
• Good for grinding and chewing
• Very helpful in making sounds such as 'f' or 'v'

The Physical Adaptation Source: Lips

• More intricate muscle interlacing
• More flexible
• Capable of a wider range of shapes
• Suitable for making sounds such as 'p' or 'b'

Physical Adaptation Source: Mouth and Tongue

• Relatively small mouth compared to other primates: can be opened and closed more rapidly
• Smaller, thicker and more muscular tongue that can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds
• Airway through the nose can be closed off to create more air pressure in the mouth

The Physical Adaptation Source: Larynx and Pharynx

• Due to upright position, head moved directly above the spinal column and larynx dropped to a lower position
• As a result, the pharynx (cavity abobe the vocal folds, acts as resonator) became longer - increased range and clarity of sounds
• Disadvantage: due to lower position of pharynx, humans may choke more easily on food - ability to speak must have outweighed this disadvantage for humans

Evolution of Vocalic Sounds

• The vocal sounds of all terrestrial mammals are generated by filtering a source of acoustic energy through an airway through which maximum energy passes at frequencies termed "formants" (Fant 1960)
• For phonated sounds the source is a quasi-periodic series of puffs of air generated by rapidly opening and closing the vocal folds or cords of the larynx
• The larynx provides the source of acoustic energy for vowels and other phonated speech sounds; the superalaryngeal vocal tract acts as an acoustic filter that determines the phonetic quality of the sounds
• The range of area functions and the overall length of the supralaryngeal vocal trat determine the formant frequencies that it can generate. One monkey species can produce two-formant frequency pattersns that approximate a human [a], but these vocalizations lack the third formant that would result in an [a]-like supralaryngeal vocal tract

Vowels

Quantal Vowels (H. Neanderthal)

• Quantal vowels [i], [u] and [a], that could be found in most languages: speech sounds with perceptually salient acoustic properties that can be produced with certain degree of articulatory sloppiness. The task of speech production is simplified when it is possible to produce a stable acoustic signal without having to execute exceedingly precise articulatory manoueveres. The task of speech perception is also more robust if the resulting acoustic signals are maximally distinct

The "Quantal Factor"

• The quantal factor can perhaps be illustrated through the following analogy. Suppose that the owner of a restaurant wants to have his waiters transmit diners' orders with acoustic signals. Should he use handbells or violins? If he wants to minimize the chance of errors, he will opt for hand bells, each of which produces a distinct acoustic signal without requiring precise manual gestures

Evolution of human vocal tract (as observed in babies)

• The skeletal structure that supports the roof of the mouth rotates toward the back of the skull
• The human tongue gradually descends into the pharynx, changing its shape from relatively long and flat to posteriorly rounded. As the human tongue descends, it carries the larynx down with it
• The human nexk gradually lengthens. Neck length is critical in that a larynx positioned below the neck at the level of the sternum would make it impossible to swallow

Gesture First Theory

• Humans started making tools and manipulating objects using both hands
• Manual gestures may have been a precursor of language: oral gesture theory

From Gestural to Vocal

• Use of tools - hands occupied, and no linger used for gesturing
• Manual gesturing requires the "speakers" to be visible to each other
• Probably, early language took the form of part gestural and part vocal mimesis, combining modalities because all signals still needed to be costly in order to be convincing <- mirror nuerons, which have the potential to privide a mechanism for action-understanding, imitation-learning, and the simulation of other people's behaviour (imitation without comprehension)
• Also -> Ritual/speech co-evolution theory: emerging of language as the consequence of some kind of social transformation which, by generating unprecedented levels of public trust, liberated a genetic potential for linguistic creativity

Language as a "mirror" system?

• A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus the neuron "mirrors" the behaviour of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate species. In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal cortex. Mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. They help us understand the actions and intentions of other people; they are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy

Mirror Neurons in Humans

• Functional MRI studies have reported finding areas homologous to the monkey mirror neuron system in the inferior frontal cortex, close to Broca's area, one of the hypothesized language regions of the brain. This has led to suggestions that human language evolved from a gesture performance/understanding system implemented in mirror neurons. Mirror neurons have been said to have the potential to provide a mechanism for action-understanding, imitation-learning, and the simulation of other people's behaviour. Rates of vocabulary expansion link to the ability of children to vocally mirror non-words and so to acquire the new word pronunciations. Such speech repetition occurs automatically, fast and separately in the brain to speech perception.

The Genetic Source

• This applies to all language in general, not one specific language
• Crucial mutation in human genetics, special "language gene" that only humans possess
• This would mean that language did not result from a gradual change but happened rather quickly as a crucial genetic mutation (unlike physical adaptation, for example)
• No certainty when this genetic change might have taken place and how it may relate to physical adaptation
• If we have a special gene for language, can other creatures also learn language?
• Young babies go through developments: small brain, larynx higher in throat -> changes take place -> Almost automatic set of development
• Even children who are born deaf become fluent speakers of a sign language -> claim that human offspring are born with a special capacity for language (innateness theory)
• Capicity for language genetically hard-wired into newborn humans

The FOXP2 Gene

• This gene belongs to a family of forkhead proteins (abbreviated as FOX), which have the task of 'turning on' and 'turning off' 116 other genes
• It was discovered almost casually, when in a London family the Canadian linguist Myrna Gopnik found a mutation which had influenced the regular functioning of FOXP2
• In reality FOXP2 was not the "language gene", but rather behaved like an orchestra conductor, since it was responsible for regulating the functioning of other genes, including those predisposed to gold-motor control
• To put it with Constance Scharf and Jana Petri, the FOXP2 gene would simply be part of a kit of molecular tools that has effects on areas of the brain crucial for sensorimotor development (not only in humans; see songbirds) i.e correct articulation and for learning sounds

Multimodality

• Our communication system would inherit its holistic character and its manipulative nature from the communication of the apes, to which two other characteristics should be added: multimodality and musicality. The first feature refers to the simultaneous use of voice and gestures for communication purposes. The second would have its roots in the communication system of the gelada baboon and the gibbon, and would include characteristics that are typical of human language: rhythm, melody synchronization and shifting (that is, the ability to engage in dialogue with other specimens of one's own species). All four of these properties would be present simultaneously in hominid communication systems. This would have coincided with (and been made possible by) an extension of the vocal repertoire, made possible by an anatomical development of the vocal tract and more erect posture.