Prof' dr' sc' Danica kara University of Split dskaraffst'hr PSYCHOLINGUISTICS AND COGNITIVE ASPECTS

1
Prof. dr. sc. Danica karaUniversity of
Splitdskara_at_ffst.hr PSYCHOLINGUISTICS AND
COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

• WEEK 4 LANGUAGE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT
• ANIMAL LANGUAGE

2
What is language?
Language is a purely human and non-instinctive
method of communicating ideas, emotions and
desires by means of voluntrily produced symbols.
Edward Sapir (1921)
3

• A language is a system for encoding and decoding
• information.
• the term refers to the forms of communication
  considered peculiar to humankind.
• In linguistics the term is extended to refer to
  the human cognitive facility of creating and
  using language.

4
Origin and evolution of language

• To ask where language comes from is to raise the
  question of the origin of the cognitively modern
  human mind.
• The evolution of modern human language required
  both the development of the anatomical apparatus
  for speech and also neurological changes in the
  brain to support language itself, but other
  species have some of these capabilities without
  full language ability.

5
(No Transcript)
6

• The frontal lobes are where ideas are created
  plans constructed thoughts joined with their
  associations to form new memories and fleeting
  perceptions held in mind until they are
  dispatched to long-term memory or to oblivion.
• This brain region is the home of consciousness.
  Self-awareness arises here, and emotions are
  transformed in this place from physical survival
  systems to subjective feelings.
• The area of the frontal lobe most closely
  associated with the generation of consciousness
  is in the prefrontal cortex. These four areas,
  which endow human with fucntions are not
  available in other animal

7

• 1) Belief in divine creation.  Many societies
  throughout history believed that language is the
  gift of the gods to humans.  The most familiar is
  found in Genesis 220, which tells us that Adam
  gave names to all living creatures.  This belief
  predicates that humans were created from the
  start with an innate capacity to use language. 

8

• Invention hypotheses. There are several
  hypotheses as to how language might have been
  consciously invented by humans based on a more
  primitive system of hominid communication. 
• Each hypothesis is predicated on the idea that
  the invention of language and its gradual
  refinement served as a continuous impetus to
  additional human mental development.

9

• 1) Warning hypothesis.  Language may have evolved
  from warning signals such as those used by
  animals.  Perhaps language started with a warning
  to others, such as Look out, Run, or Help to
  alert members of the tribe when some lumbering
  beast was approaching. 

10

• Gestural theory
• The gestural theory states that human language
  developed from gestures that were used for simple
  communication.

11

• Each of the imitation hypotheses might explain
  how certain isolated words of language
  developed.  Very few words in human language are
  verbal icons.  Most are symbols, displaying an
  arbitrary relationship of sound and meaning.
  (Example the word tree in several languages
  Spanish árbol French arbre

12

• There are three distinct views of how language
  evolved
• SOCIAL gt Language arose through increased
  socialisation in early settled communities and
  the need for a communication system to support
  hunting and farming.

13

• PHYSIOLOGICAL the human articulators appear to
  be specially adapted to language.
• NEUROLOGICAL A lay view holds that human beings
  are able to master the complexities of language
  because they have developed a higher intelligence
  or a larger brain.

14
Nativists vs. empiricists

• Nativist theories Chomky is the preeminent name
  hereplace the distinctiveness of language in
  specific genetic endowment for a specifically
  genetically instructed language module. Under
  that view, there is minimal learning involved in
  acquiring a language.
• Empiricists like Hobbes and Locke argued that
  knowledge emerge ultimately from abstracted sense
  impressions.

15

• The precise form of language must be acquired
  through exposure to a speech community. Words are
  definitely not inbron, but the capacity to
  acquire language and use it creatively seems to
  be inborn. N. Chomsky calls this ability the LAD
  (Language Acquisition Device).

16
Co-evolutionary theory

• There are also coevolutionary proposals Language
  is not an instinct and there is no genetically
  installed linguistic black box in our brains.
  Language arose slowly through cognitive and
  cultural inventiveness.
• Language began as a cognitive adaptation and
  genetic assimilation. Cognitive effort and
  genetic assimilation interacted as language and
  brain co-evolved.
• We have a vast, open-ended number of frames and
  provisional conceptual assemblies that we
  manipulate.

17

• During the last few years the argument that both
  archaic H. sapiens and Neanderthals had the brain
  capacity, neural structure and vocal apparatus
  for an advanced form of vocalization, that should
  be called language, is compelling.

18
Was there one or more than one original language?
Was there one or more than one invention of
language?

•  There are about 5,000 languages spoken on Earth
  today.  We know that there were even more spoken
  in the past, when most people lived in small
  bands or tribes rather than in large states.

19
Monogenesis vs.  polygenesis

• 1) The oldest belief is that there was a single,
  original language.  The idea of a single ancestor
  tongue is known today as monogenesis.  In
  Judeo-Christian tradition, the original language
  was confused by divine intervention, as described
  in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis.

20

• The hypothesis of multiple linguistic origins
  that often goes along with this hypothesis is
  known as polygenesis.  Each of the original
  languages then would then have diverged into
  numerous forms.  The major language families of
  today would be descended from these separate
  mother tongues.

21
Animal communication

• Transmission of information from one animal to
  another by means of sound, viisble sign or
  behavoiur, taste or odour, electrical impulse,
  touch, or a combination of these.
• The vehicle for the provision of this information
  is called a signal.

22

• Different contexts require different kinds of
  information and thus different signals.
• The number of signals in a species repertoire
  can range from 5 or 6 in the simplest non-social
  animals to 10-20 in social insects, such as bees
  and ants, or to 30-40 in social vertebrates, such
  as wolves and primates.

23
Design features of human language

• The following properties of human language have
  been argued to separate it from animal
  communication
• Arbitrariness There is no rational relationship
  between a sound or sign and its meaning. (There
  is nothing intrinsically "housy" about the word
  "house".)
• Cultural transmission Language is passed from
  one language user to the next, consciously or
  unconsciously.
• Discreteness Language is composed of discrete
  units that are used in combination to create
  meaning.

24

• Displacement Languages can be used to
  communicate ideas about things that are not in
  the immediate vicinity either spatially or
  temporally.
• Duality Language works on two levels at once, a
  surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
• Metalinguistics Ability to discuss language
  itself.
• Productivity A finite number of units can be
  used to create an infinite number of utterances.

25
Animals and language?

• Is language use a uniquely human ability?
• Parrots - can memorize chunks of human speech

Polly wanna cracker

• But are they really producing utterances based on
  an underlying meaning?

26
Animals and language?

• Is language use a uniquely human ability?

• Bird use songs to serve territorial and courtship
  functions.

Tweet chirp chirp warble warble chirp.
Translation this is my tree

• Can songs be used productively?

27
Animals and language?

• Is language use a uniquely human ability?

• Honey bees dance to indicate where a source of
  nectar is.

• Angle of the dance indicates direction
• Rate of looping indicates distance

28
Some examples

• Animals - use a variety of methods to communicate
• Dogs bark
• Birds sing
• Bees dance
• People talk - we use language (as well as other
  methods) for communication

29
Animals and language?

• Arbitrariness
• Displacement
• Productivity
• Discreteness
• Semanticity
• Duality of patterning

30

• Research with apes, like that of Francine
  Patterson with Koko or Herbert Terrace with Nim
  Chimpsky, suggested that apes are capable of
  using language that meets some of these
  requirements. However, no experiment has shown a
  non-human being to be proficient in all of these
  areas.

31
Can Chimpanzees Talk?
32
Conclusion

• It seems that we have a language organ which
  other species do not possess, a segment of our
  brain which is triggered by a storage of
  development.
• The results suggest that while chimpanzees and
  gorillas are quite intelligent they are not
  capable of human language. Rather they have a
  primitive version of the semantic ability
  children use to begin learning language. Human
  beings seem to have a different kind of
  intelligence!
• Language has been shaped over many generations
  into a system which reflects the way human
  thought is structured.