Natural human languages

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Natural human languages

• Bill McGregor

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• My purposes
• Highlight some features of natural human
  languages, distinguishing them from other
  communicative systems
• Mention some functions of language and why
  language has the properties it has.
• Jan focussed on grammar and meaning what is
  internal to language
• I shift focus somewhat, looking outward, to
  language in its contexts.

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Three preliminary remarks

• Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.

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• Speech is primary, writing secondary
• Humans have been speaking for at least 50,000
  years
• Earliest writing is only about 6,000 years old
• All writing represents features of speech, more
  or less
• Speech does not represent features of writing.

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• There are striking differences between speech and
  writing
• Beyond the obvious of aural vs. visual modes.
• Next slide shows wave form for my production of
  the farmer kills the duckling

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Th e f ar m er k I
ll s th e d u ck l i ng
Notice that there seems to be a constant stream
of sound it isnt broken up into pieces like
words and letters of writing.
The same holds true for speech production
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• Strikingly, despite the analogue nature of the
  signal, we interpret it in a digital way
• Called categorical perception, we perceive the
  first sound as a voiced ð rather than a voiceless
  ?
• We dont perceive gradations in the ð as actually
  exist in the sound.
• This feature is illustrated in the following
  artificially generated speech

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• Speech language is not an isolated phenomenon
• It is part of a larger system of communication,
  including
• Gestures
• Eyegaze
• Head movements
• These things go together with language in
  ordinary speech.
• Try tying someones hands, and ask them to tell
  you how to get to the railway station

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Features of natural human language

• Animal communication systems
• Hocketts design features of human language

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• Many animals have systems of communication
• Vervet monkeys have at least 20 different vocal
  calls
• Alarm calls warning of different types of
  predator, including
• high pitched chutter warns of the presence of a
  snake
• a chirp (short but loud barking call) gives
  warning of leopards and lions
• a rraup or short cough-like call is given as
  warning of an eagle
• Also calls indicating emotional states.

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• Animals can learn bits of human language.
• Chimps have been taught to use signs from
  American Sign Language
• In the early 1970s Nim Chimpsky learnt c. 125
  signs, and understood at least 200
• He even made up sentences, his longest was
• give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give
  me eat orange give me you

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• But human language is unique to human beings.
• Perhaps uninteresting barking is unique to
  dogs so what?
• In fact it is a fruitful way of grasping the
  nature and origins of human language.
• The linguist Charles Hockett suggested a number
  of design features of human languages,
  distinguishing them from
• Communication systems of other animals
• Other communication systems of humans
• Formal languages.

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• Hocketts list has undergone changes over the
  years, but it remains basically the same.
• Here are a few, that may be relevant to thinking
  about natural vs. artificial human languages.

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• Reflexivity use of language for communicating
  information about language, as we are doing now.
• Productivity creativity in use of system users
  are not restricted to delimited system of
  possible meanings they can make, but can make
  novel meanings. Language is an open system.
• Interchangeability switching of roles of
  speaker and hearer.
• Feedback users monitor their output/ production.

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• Prevarication messages can be false, deceptive,
  or meaningless (e.g. twas brillig and the slyithy
  toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe).
• Cultural transmission the system is learnt in a
  social context, and is not instinctive (like
  barking of a dog).
• Displacement we often use language to
  communicate about events and things not present.

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• Of these reflexivity seems to be the most robust
  in distinguishing language from other animal and
  human (e.g. traffic lights) communication
  systems.
• No natural communication system of any animal has
  this property
• The vervet monkey calls are not used to talk
  about calls
• No evidence that animals taught human language
  use it reflexively.

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• Productivity, cultural transmission, and
  prevarication are also robust
• Most animal communication systems are closed.
• Most are instinctive even in primates cultural
  transmission is found in some bird songs.
• Deception (prevarication) occurs in other
  primates, but is limited compared to humans.
• These are also limited in occurrence in systems
  taught to animals.

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One illustration of productivity in language
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Ontogenesis of language

• Ive already mentioned cultural transmission
• We arent born to speak Danish, English,
  Gooniyandi, or Mohawk.
• The child learns the language spoken around it,
  regardless of their genetic lineage.
• But we are probably born to speak a language at
  least we have the necessary biological hardware.

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• Children acquire language they are not taught
  it.
• Cf. writing, which is usually taught rather than
  acquired.
• Children acquire language in stages, which are
  fairly comparable from child to child
• In order, though not in timing
• Next slide shows an overview.

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• Attempts to teach children do not work
  effectively, unless the child is ready.
• A well known illustration

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• Strategies for child acquisition
• Conditioned-response learning (behaviourism)
• Not given much credence these days
• Imitation
• Clearly plays an important role
• But is inadequate as a mechanism of language
  acquisition
• Hypothesis testing (theory theory)
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Innateness genetic coding, Language Acquisition
  Device
• But clearcut biological evidence in favour of LAD
  is lacking.

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• Social-interpersonal theories of acquisition
• Various investigators have stressed the role of
  the individuals interactions with others in
  development of human thought and language.
• Vygotsky sophisticated thought and language
  emerges through internalisation of interpersonal
  processes.
• Michael Tomasello and Peter Hobson argue
  compellingly for a social (usage-based) approach,
  though from somewhat different perspectives.
• Both stress the significance of engagement with
  others in development of symbolic thought and
  language.

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• Dyadic engagement with another (generally
  caregiver) in 11 interactions
• Revealed especially in responses and reactions to
  facial expressions.
• Infants are highly attuned to others from a very
  early age.
• Face-to-face dyadic mimicking of behaviour.
• Exhibit reactions to non-reactions on part of
  adult they are engaged with e.g. distress,
  disengagement.

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• Triadic engagement where the child relates to
  another persons relation to things and events in
  the world.
• At about age of 1 year, child begins to engage in
  triadic interactions, where the focus of
  attention is on an external object.
• Both participants constantly monitor one
  anothers attention to the object, and to
  themselves.
• This establishes a joint attentional frame within
  which communication can occur.

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Tomasello 200226 The basic adult-child
communicative situation (slightly emended for
clarity)
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• The childs understanding of other persons
  intentional relations with the world leads them
  to attend to the means by which the adult
  achieves those ends.
• Child imitates the intentional actions of adults.
• Thus leading to role-reversal.
• A major reason for the childs development of
  language and symbolic thought is to affect
  the minds and actions of others.

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• Tomasello
• The childs understanding of adult intentionality
  and role reversal is facilitated by the constant
  imputation of intentionality to the childs
  actions by the adult.

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Why is language as it is?

• Many linguists believe that some features of
  language are not arbitrary
• That there are features of language that reflect
  the uses to which it is put.
• Language is as it is because of the functions it
  serves in the life of man, as Michael Halliday
  has put it.
• Note I said many, not all there are
  linguists who take the view that all is
  arbitrary, i.e. not motivated by external
  considerations.
• Major division between functionalist and
  formalist linguists.

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• In the preceding quote Halliday takes a fairly
  extreme functionalist view everything in grammar
  is functional.
• This seems certainly to be false like other
  biological phenomena, language holds residue of
  a-functional things (like the appendix)
• An example English has a number of prepositions,
  words like to, at, for
• These are functional, meaningful
• But their placement before the noun is not it
  is a residue of historical changes.
• You cant say the dog to or the to dog

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• On the other hand, the possessive s is attached
  at the end of the NP, although it conveys the
  same type of meaning as of
• The person you were talking tos dog died cf. The
  dog of the person you were talking to.
• The horse that fells rider cf. The rider of the
  horse that fell
• Functionally motivated things in grammar are
  however numerous, e.g.
• Word order in many languages

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• Recall Jans discussion of word orders in the
  worlds languages
• SOV
• SVO
• VSO
• VOS
• OVS
• OSV (e.g. Urubú, Nadëb)
• Order can be seen as functionally motivated (in
  fixed word order languages).

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• This is for the following reasons order
  distinguishes who is doing what to who
  (simplifying a lot!)
• Obviously something we need to do in language, if
  it is going to be a useful system in
  communication.
• If we change order of phrases, different meaning
  arises
• The farmer kills the duckling
• The duckling kills the farmer
• Notice the crucial importance of the existence of
  contrasts (absent in the case of preposition
  ordering)

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• The function distinguishing who does what to
  who can be achieved in other ways than word
  order.
• Some languages use case marking instead, and
  leave word order free.
• One of the best known (allegedly) radically free
  word order languages is the Australian language
  Warlpiri.

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• The words of the following sentence can be
  permuted in any way, and the meaning remains
  the same the dog is biting the little child
  with its blunt teeth.
• The only restriction
• ka must be in second position.
• How do we know who is biting who?
• By the case-marking
• And knowledge of the world
• Which precludes interpretations like the tooth
  is biting the little child with its blunt dog

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• One of the crucial problems in grammar in my view
  is to arrive at independent ways of delineating
  between the motivated and unmotivated in language
• Or in other words between the semiotically
  significant and the semiotically non-significant.

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Phylogenesis of language

• Ive already said that we are in some sense born
  speakers.
• Most linguists agree that something is
  genetically encoded.
• The big disagreement is how much
• Genetic encoding of language faculty (one
  extreme)
• Language ready brain (other extreme basically
  my view)

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There has been a rash of work on language origins
and evolution in recent years its a hot topic
but most of the ideas are no better or worse
than this theory
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• Was language invented?
• Perhaps though obviously not by one person
• Could have been a story somewhat like the
  invention of writing, which first emerged
  gradually in Mesopotamia from marks on clay
  representing ideas rather than words.
• Making it like many other cultural artefacts.
• My view inclines this way.

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• I dont have time to get into this issue.
• Suffice it to say that I am currently working on
  a theory of language origins that
• Traces language back to earlier systems of action
  on objects
• Which came to symbolise in increasingly
  symbolic species actions on con-specifics
• We are the only species that act on conspecifics
  by acting on objects
• By processes of abstraction, we arrive at action
  on objects that are themselves symbols, this
  being the crucial step in emergence of natural
  language.
• My guess is that language goes back to c. 60,000
  years, coterminous with the explosion of cultural
  artefacts and processes.

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Languages change

• Languages change rapidly
• Much more rapidly than biological systems
• The basic biological features of plants and
  animals were set down billions of years ago, and
  have not changed.
• Can trace back all living things to single-celled
  forms
• Languages change so rapidly that all traces of
  relatedness disappear within 10,000 years or
  so.
• Beyond that, it is impossible to separate
  retained characteristics from accidental
  similarities.
• In the lifetime of an adult they will be able to
  recognise change in progress in their language.

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• These changes are rarely deliberately engineered.
• Deliberate engineering of language (speech) is
  usually as unsuccessful as teaching the child.
• Most changes come about through unconscious
  consensus of speakers.
• Some variations in speech catch on for one reason
  or another, and are adopted (e.g. the Parisean
  uvular trill in C17)
• Others dont catch on, and die a rapid death on
  their production
• Still others catch on for a while, and die in a
  generation (e.g. slang)

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Conclusion

• The major concluding statement I want to draw
  out, that picks up on various notions scattered
  throughout the paper is
• Natural human language is a mode of action,
  rather than a means for reflection on the world,
  a tool for thought.
• The raison dêtre of language is interpersonal
  to facilitate action on other human beings

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Some references on human language

• Aronoff, Mark Rees-Miller, Janie. 2001. The
  handbook of linguistics. Oxford Blackwell
  Publishers.
• Hudson, Richard. 1984. Invitation to linguistics.
  Oxford Blackwell.
• Matthews, Peter H. 2003. Linguistics a very
  short introduction. Oxford Oxford University
  Press.
• McGregor, William B. 2005. Understanding
  linguistics. Manuscript.