11 Language Origins, and Development

1
11Language Origins, and Development
2

• The linguistic whats and neurophysiological
  hows are incomplete without the evolutionary
  whys.
• Most species are not intelligent, which suggests
  that natural selection didnt favor high
  intelligence.

3

• The heart of Chomskys argument is that the human
  brains are predisposed to use certain types of
  syntax and not others.
• The language specializations of the brain are not
  exclusive the same areas of the brain have a lot
  to do with inventing oral-facial and hand-arm
  movement sequences, and with judging sounds
  sequenceand these functions probably evolved
  together.

4

• Part of the language instinct could turn out to
  be something very simple.
• E.g. a real fascination of the young human with
  discovering any hidden patterns in the sensory
  environment some of which can be remembered by
  patterns in the brain.

5

• Selection favoring one function may well benefit
  another function.
• E.g. Selection for language abilities benefited
  musical abilities, because it is hard to figure
  out what evolutionary circumstances would have
  rewarded four-part harmony
• The minor product may turn into the major one in
  the long run.

6

• Among the first tasks of early childhood are the
  discovery of four levels of organization in the
  apparent chaos of the surrounding environment.
• Infants discover phonemes and create standard
  categories for them.
• With a set of basic speech sounds, babies start
  discovering patterns amid string of phonemes,
  averaging nine new words every day.

7

• Between 18 and 36 months infants start
  discovering patterns of words called phrases and
  clauses, adding s for plurals, adding ed for
  past tense.
• After syntax, they go on to discover the rules
  about narrative having a beginning, middle and
  end.
• Thus in four years, children pyramid four
  levels organization, each with its own rules that
  are causally decoupled from the underlying
  levels rule.

8

• Words
• The word chair is not a chair, but the word
  word is a word.
• The correct identification of things in the
  worldcorrect in terms of the consequences we
  predict from them, rather than in any sense of
  absolute truthis adaptive, in the evolutionary
  sense of the term.

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• Misidentifying genes would not make it as far in
  the future.
• Because of their evolutionary value, these
  processes of identification, these fine
  discriminations in terms of stored sensory
  impressions, began very early in evolution, long
  before mammals walked the earth.
• In us these processes may seem to have reached a
  higher pitch of refinement.

10

• Words represent something somehow. They serve
  focus our minds on some aspect of reality.
• Words have properties. (adjectives, nouns, verbs,
  )
• My mental representation of apple is only a
  collection of neurons, all of which are also used
  for other purposes on occasion. Still, they form
  an organization that functions pretty well for
  recognizing apples, eating apples, pronouncing
  apple and so forth.

11

• Most of the animal calls are analogous to our
  exclamations.
• One of the evolutionary puzzles is how our
  ancestors made the transition from a few dozen
  vocalizations, each with an assigned meaning, to
  our present system of meaningless phonemes (about
  40 in English) that have meaning only in
  combination with each other.

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• We may want to think of standard exclamationsand
  most primate callsas involving an older, more
  primitive system, located far away from those
  left lateral brain areas that seem to be
  important in our kind of syntactic language.
• We may think in terms of a second language
  system, operating in parallel with an older one,
  and not necessary an intensification of the first
  system.
• The second system could have its origins in
  something like face recognition and social
  relationship, rather than producing vocalization.

13

• Words must be able to combine one another, at
  least in the minimal subject/predicate mode
  (NP/VP).
• The subject focus on the object of discourse
  while the predicate on a property/action
• We cannot do it with calls. The latter simply
  trigger readiness for a certain behavior. No way
  that calls can be linked to one another.

14

• It is words, not sentences that dramatically
  distinguish our species from others no animal
  can learn things that fall outside its biological
  capacity.
• A word is the combination of a mental
  representation of something, which may or my not
  exist in the real world, with a mental
  representation of a set of symbols (phonetic,
  orthographic, manual).
• What one utters are not words, only the
  orthographic representation of words.

15

• Categories of words, such as proper names, are
  easy for us, but thats because our brains have
  some specializations for them in the front end of
  the temporal lobe, just in front of where the
  specialization for facial recognition are
  located.
• In all mammals the frontal lobe is used to move
  and prepare for movements, so it isnt surprising
  to find verbs there, at least verbs for when one
  is the actor.

16

• Terms like subject and object can only be
  defined over a syntax that already exists.
• Before syntax existed, they were meaningless.
  For that matter ancestral humans are very
  unlikely to have had words like on or the.
• Even today the first words of children dont
  contain them. (e.g. they dont contain
  determiners like some, few, all, many).

17

• Protolanguage
• Before syntax all that existed was a kind of
  protolanguage.
• Protolanguage looks like the production of apes
  that have been taught to use sign or symbols, or
  at early stage pidgin languages.

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• Protolanguage varieties
• Can only string together a small handful of
  words at a time.
• Can leave out any words they feel like leaving
  out.
• Often depart from the customary word order
  unpredictably and for no obvious reason.

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• Cannot form any complex structure, whether these
  be complex noun phrases or sentences more than a
  clause long.
• Contain, if they have any at all, only a tiny
  fraction of the inflections and the grammatical
  wordsthings such as article, prepositions and
  the likethat make up 50 of true language
  utterances.

20

• Protolanguage characteristically consists almost
  exclusively of nouns and verbs, without any
  modifiers
• If adverbs appear they are usually
  whole-utterance modifiers, not modifiers of
  single words.
• This means that all units are of equal value
  every words for itself. Hence, no syntactic
  structure, no parsing.

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• No structure vs. structure
• John kissed Mary John
• kissed Mary

22

• This shows thats happening in the brain.
• If the brain is working in a protolanguage mode
  each words is sent separately to the part of the
  brain that controls the motor organs of speech,
  and each word is uttered separately.
• There is also a difference in speed between
  protolanguage users and language ones.
• E.g. In Hawaii the old-timers spoke about tree
  times slower than their own kids.

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• If the brain is working in a language-mode, words
  are put together in whole phrases and clauses and
  even sentences before theyre sent to the speech
  organs to be pronounced.
• The second diagram also illustrates the order in
  which words are put together.
• One parses sentences to find out their meaning
  (cf. resolution of syntactic ambiguity).

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• Parsing is something we all do every time
  anything is uttered. But it works quite
  differently depending on whether whats uttered
  is language or protolanguage.
• If it is protolanguage, it is a good question
  whether one can be said to parse at all.
• We cant decide what the structure is if there
  is any structure.

25

• In protolanguage what one does is just the second
  part of the operation, i.e. determine the meaning
  directly from the words (and the context).
• This is much harder since there is no structure
  to help.
• With structure we rarely need context to figure
  out the meaning of true-language utterances,
  whereas we almost always need context to get the
  meaning of a protolanguage utterance.

26

• Empty categories.
• In true-language the antecedent is always there
  somewhere in the sentence, and there are rule to
  help you find it (e.g. anaphoric resolution,
  ellipsis).
• In protolanguage the empty categories in nowhere
  in the utterance to be found. Without structure,
  there cannot be empty categories.

27

• If all there was an epigenetic rule that said
  Seek structure amid chaos, there would be no
  Creole languages.
• Creole languages come into existence when
  parents who speak a structureless early-stage
  pidgin pass it on to their children.
• The children change the original pidgin in a
  single generation into a full-fledged language.
  If they were seeking structure in the pidgin,
  they wouldnt find any they impose structure
  from within their own minds.

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• We may have acquired the capacity to create
  structure in language and that capacity then
  generalized to apply in other spheres.
• The language function was likely to be mixed up,
  location-wise, with some other functionsthat
  language cortex isnt only doing language
  tasks.
• There is an enormous overlap with oral-facial
  and hand-arm sequencing, for example, suggesting
  that improvements in one might have benefited the
  others, at least at some stage in hominid
  evolution.

29

• Phrases and clauses
• They were born as twins, and something different
  has to underlie both phrases and clauses.
• Argument structure does it the basic task of
  language is telling you who did what to whom (as
  well how and occasionally why).
• Each participant in the state of action has a
  specific role to play (PATIENTS, TEHMES and
  GOALS, i.e. thematic roles).

30

• Before there was syntax there were only
  semantics.
• So if one looks for the first stages in the
  development of syntax one must look in semantics
  for whatever is the most syntax-like thing.
• Argument structure is the most plausible
  candidate (e.g. PATIENT vs. AGENT).

31

• Aphasic patients
• Some can swear like sailors. So exclamation
  seems to survive when the usual lateral language
  areas (just above, and in front of, your left
  ear) are damaged.
• Only damages to a rather distant area of cortex,
  in the midline above the corpus callosum, affects
  exclamations as welland thats about where the
  cortical aspect of monkey vocalizations seem to
  live, too.

32

• This seems to suggest that our kind of language
  didnt arise from some intensification of the
  usual ape vocal repertoire.
• Several reasons for that
• on top of the distance between the two areas,
  there is also the meaninglessness of our
  phonemes, in contrast to one-sound-one-meaning
  obligatory interpretation of chimpanzees
  vocalization.

33

• The emergence of Protolanguage
• It was likely to be a language system similar to
  what can be taught to apes.
• Homo habilis and Homo erectus were probably
  closer to apes in their behavior They had
  brains bigger than those of apes, brain that grew
  steadily throughout the last several millions
  years to a size within the range of modern
  humans, made tools etc. None of this makes it
  certain that they had protolanguage then, but,
  given that they brains were not that much smaller
  than ours, it is reasonable to suppose that they
  did.

34

• There must have been an intermediate state
  between no language and full language.
• Any theory of cooperation suggests that, as a
  prerequisite, you have to be able to identify
  individuals.
• Unspoken proper namesand particularly for
  individuals that you dont see everydaymight be
  a good start for evolving words.

35

• Proper names were also needed to keep track of
  those individuals for mutual support and judge
  social interactions/situations.
• Cf. signature whistle of dolphins that seem to
  be used like names for identification purposes.
• But getting names doesnt buy you words monkeys
  already recognize one another as individual and
  indeed have a clear map in their head that tell
  them which individuals are related to one
  another, without any kind of language to help
  them.

36

• Social intelligence
• Its the favored explanation for the trigger
  that set language going.
• The most remarkable thing about apes society is
  that it does so closely resemble our own. We see
  the same maneuvering for status, the same family
  feuds, we see parental and filial affection, the
  forming and reforming of alliances, altruism,
  loyalty, revenge, betrayal.

37

• Acts of calculation and deception on the part of
  several primate species become more frequent
  among species closer to us.
• It seems hat the act of staying successfully
  selfish within a social community, and competing
  with individuals some of whom were as smart or
  smarter than oneself, required a lot more
  intelligence than hunting or making tools.

38

• Complex social interactions/ competitions/
  deceptions may have triggered a theory of mind.
• This is a prerequisite for language as we know
  it.
• The capacity to understand another as an
  intentional individual seems to be linked to
  linguistic capacity.

39

• From protolanguage to language
• Once protolanguage had emerged and has reached
  an appropriate (not necessarily a very high)
  level of sophistication, it was enthusiastically
  co-opted for manipulation, deception, enhancement
  of individual prestige, social grooming, gossip,
  and all the other functions that social
  intelligence theorists have rightly assigned to
  it.

40

• There are, though, good reasons to think that
  protolanguage has very little to do with social
  intelligence.
• If you take language away, its far from clear
  that our social lives are any more complex than
  those of chimpanzees or bonobos.
• The selective pressure for language has to come
  from something that was unique to hominids and
  something that required the exchange of factual
  information.

41

• We have to look at hominid ecology and how it
  differs from that of apes, ancient or modern.
• Apes live mostly in heavily forested regions of
  the wilderness tropics.
• This mean that in their daily life they dont
  have to devote the time and energy that many
  creatures do to the business of watching for and
  evading predators.
• Chimps arent strictly vegetarian, but meat is a
  rare luxury.

42

• On both predation risk and food availability the
  lives of the first hominid were very different.
• They inhabited grassy savannas with isolated
  stands of trees and what gallery woods. There
  is an obvious tradeoff between bipedal walking
  and the ability to climb trees. Our ancestors
  start walking on two legs at least 2 millions
  years before any serious brain enlargement, so
  they were probably relatively poor tree climbers
  by the time even protolanguage emerged.

43

• Savannas were, like today, prime predator
  country.
• Ancestors of 2 millions years ago, however, were
  much smaller than we are. Yet, just like us, they
  lacked the natural offensive weapons. A species
  so ill-equipped would soon have gone extinct if
  its members hadnt devoted far more time to
  predator detection and predator avoidance than
  apes do.

44

• Pragmatic intelligence
• Predator detection and predator avoidance depend
  not on social intelligence but on what we might
  call pragmatic intelligence.
• This is the noting of interpretation of clues in
  the environment (footprint, crushed vegetation,
  and so on), something that apes dont seem to
  have.

45

• Social life didnt get more complex for our
  remote ancestor.
• What did get more complex was the interaction
  between our ancestors and their environment.
• The strongest selective pressure would have come
  from the brute exigencies of survival.

46

• Anything, even the crudest and most limited form
  of protolanguage consisting perhaps of a handful
  words and/or gestures, has to have had an
  immediate payoff for the individuals who used it.
  
• If it didnt the behavior wouldnt have
  continued and certainly not have been fixed into
  the genotype.

47

• Indirect evidence/support
• Most of the first 50 words any child learns are
  nouns like leopard.
• Not words like hello, good bye, please,
  thank you, we would predict if the language had
  arisen to cement social networks.
• Cf. also hunting human accuracy compared to that
  of primates.

48

• Syntax
• Its the distinctive feature of human language.
• It derives from social intelligence.
• People usually didnt sharply divide the
  emergence of protolanguage from the emergence of
  syntax.
• These are entirely different things even if one
  did eventually lead to the other. The events
  werent even close in time.

49

• Syntax and semantics
• Syntax couldnt have emerged as a pure novelty.
• There was semantic before syntax, and if some
  aspect of semantics could be expressed in terms
  of syntax, then these aspects make the prime
  suspect for the source of syntax.

50

• Semantic/thematic roles AGENT, THEME, GOAL.
• E.g.
• With verbs like sleep, run you have to
  express one role
• With verbs like make, break you have to
  express two roles.
• With verbs like give, persuade you have o
  express three roles.

51

• Given a verb one knows in advance if one ought to
  look for one, two, or tree obligatory arguments.
• The number of thematic roles is in the vicinity
  of seven.
• The more often obligatory are AGENT, THEME,
  GOAL.
• Then we have the optional ones TIME, PLACE,
  BENEFICIARY, and INSTRUMENT.

52

• Syntax began when people began to map thematic
  roles onto their protolinguistic output.
• By mapping argument structure onto utterances,
  you get recursion for free. And recursion is one
  of the defining characteristics of true language
• S ? NP VP
• VP ? V (NP)

53

• Linearization is not something we wanted it has
  been forced to us by the physical medium for
  linguistic communication we cannot make more
  that one sound at a time.
• The really crucial relationship in language are
  not horizontal but vertical horizontal linear
  relationships cannot explain why Bobs sister
  hurt herself is grammatical while Bobs sister
  hurt himself isnt.

54

• There are very fast links between verbs and the
  nouns people habitually associate with them if
  you say knife one says cut, bicycle-ride,
  
• Argument structure on its own cannot remove all
  ambiguities from syntax. Hence the need of
  parsing.

55

• Minimalism
• Chomsky removed the distinction between deep and
  surface structure. We now have just one level of
  syntax which is a projection of the lexicon.
• This mean that in the dictionary of your own
  language that you carry around in our head,
  stored in the distributed patterns of neural
  resonances, there is stored along with each words
  all the features of that words.

56

• A words features include its meaning, its
  number and gender (if it has one), the word-class
  or classes it belongs to, its function (if its a
  grammatical morpheme), the thematic roles it
  assigns (if its a verb), etc.
• Some of these features take the form of
  requirements (e.g. the requires a NP after
  it). What happens is that one tries to merge
  words to make larger units (phrases and clauses)
  by matching features. If the positive features of
  one word match the requirements of the other, you
  can merge them and move onto the next merger. If
  not, the derivation crashes.

57

• This model is a lot closer to how the brain
  works, i.e. how it handles language than the old
  (deep/surface structure) model.
• It makes no neurological sense to say that the
  brain first shaped up some very abstract sentence
  structure and then fooled around with them to
  make something completely different come out of
  your mouth, which is that the old
  deep-structure/surface-structure model was
  implicitly claiming.
• Brains arent that subtle. If they can do it the
  straightforward way, they do it the
  straightforward way.