How and When is Language Possible?

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How and When is Language Possible?
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How is Language Possible?

• Theories
• Defining language
• Primates
• Humans
• When is language possible?
• How is language possible?.

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Theories About Beginnings

• Early speculative theories
• philosophical
• 1700s gestures, social contracts
• 1800s imitations, emotions, natural sounds,
  group work
• Bow wow, ouch, ding dong, yo-he-ho
• 1866 Linguistic Society of Paris bans discussions
• Contemporary data-based theories
• anthropological, holistic
• using all four subfields of anthropology.

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Contemporary Theories

• Theoretical linguistics
• Still speculative
• Language too complicated to have evolved over
  time
• Language developed all at once and is innate
  feature in humans
• Children born with universal grammar
• Only need to acquire specifics
• Linguistic anthropology
• Uses all four fields of anthropology
• Language too complicated to have developed all at
  once
• Language probably evolved slowly along with
  culture
• Children born with ability to learn language
• Learning takes place in social situations.

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Defining Language
Language Communication
Sending Yes Yes
Receiving Yes Possible
Responding Yes Possible
Socially learned Yes No
Complex grammar Yes No
Lies, games, etc. Yes No
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Defining Language

• Hocketts Design Features of language
• 1960s
• Defining what is unique to humans
• Thirteen features
• Four are unique to human language.

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Design Features of LanguageNot Unique to Humans

• Vocal/auditory channel
• Broadcast transmission / directional reception
• Rapid fading
• Interchangeability
• Total feedback
• Specialization
• Semanticity
• Arbitrariness
• Discreteness

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Design Features of LanguageUnique to Humans

• (according to Hockett)
• Displacement
• Productivity
• Traditional transmission
• Duality of patterning
• / k æ t s /.

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Design Features and the Emergence of Human
Language

• The idea of blending
• Combining calls to establish productivity
• Starting from closed calls (limited, specific)
• A B A B
• danger food danger food
• Moving to blended calls (prelanguage)
• A B AB
• danger food dangerous food
• breakfast lunch brunch
• Making duality of patterning possible
• Isolation of units for recombining
• A B C ABC, CBA, BAC, ACB
• /kæts, ækts, skæt, tæks, æskt/.

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Primate Communication

• Experiments
• Chimpanzees
• Gorillas
• Bonobos (video)
• What this tells us about language
• Duality of patterning is uniquely human
• What it tells us about language origins
• Pre-language abilities of humans and other
  primates probably similar.

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Children and Language

• 3 days recognizing parents sounds
• 3 months cooing, playing with intonation
• 6 months babbling, playing with sounds
• 9 months beginning signs
• 1 year recognizable spoken words
• 15 months naming explosion
• 2 years simple sentences, displacement
• Then negatives, questions, clauses.

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Theories about Language in Children

• Innatist theories
• Language hard-wired in brain
• Language acquisition device helps w adjustments
• Behaviorist theories
• Stimulus and reward
• Doesnt explain mouses
• Cognitivist theories
• Concepts come first
• Research suggests simultaneity
• The theory theory (active construction of a
  grammar theory)
• Children observe and build theories
• Different languages - different theories?
• Korean vs English, verbs vs nouns.

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Anthropological Observations

• Ochs and Schieffelin
• Stress ethnographic field studies of children
• Language learned in social settings.
• Encouragement by adults is not universal
• Baby talk is not universal
• Becoming part of a speech community
• Learning how and when to use language
• Ideas about language learning
• Bilingualism vs monolingualism
• Can adults learn more languages?
• Adult impatience
• Classwork vs fieldwork.

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WHEN is Language Possible?

• Connected to HOW
• Involves research into brain
• And vocal tract
• And origins of culture.

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The Human Brain

• Cortex
• The convoluted surface of the brain
• Two millimeters thick
• Surface area 1.5 square yards
• Contains 100 million neurons

• Oldest part of cortex
• Controls long term memory
• And emotion
• Newer part of cortex
• Neocortex
• Controls language
• 80 of human brain
• Divided (by sulci) into lobes
• Frontal
• Temporal
• Parietal
• Occipital.

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Lateralization Language

• Two cerebral hemispheres
• Connected by corpus callosum

• Right hemisphere
• touch
• space
• music
• contexts for language use

• Left hemisphere
• association
• calculation
• analysis
• language

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Language Areas of the Brain

• Brocas area
• Clarity of speech
• Function words
• Some word order
• Wernickes area
• Understanding words
• Producing sentences.

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The Fossil Record

• Koobi Fora, Kenya
• Brocas Wernickes areas present
• In Homo habilis 1.8-2 mya
• But not in Australopithecus (Paranthropus)
• 1.26-1.8 mya

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The Human Vocal Tract

• Lowering of the larynx
• Where vocal cords are located
• Lengthening of the pharynx
• More space for tongue
• Increased vowel resonance
• Differentiation of vowels i a u
• Human infants born with high larynx
• Begins to lower at three months
• Reaches adult location by 3-4 years
• Except in adult males further descent at
  adolescence.

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The Fossil Record

• Evidence from basicranium
• Where muscles attach
• More curved lower larynx
• Australopithecus (1.5 mya) not curved
• Homo habilis (2 mya) no data
• Homo erectus (1.6 mya) some curve
• Premodern Humans (400,000 ya) definite curve
• Modern Homo sapiens (125,000 ya) ditto
• BUT Neanderthal (130,000 ya) somewhat different.

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Origins of Culture

• Associating language with complex tools
• evolution of tool design provides clues
• complexity of Upper Paleolithic tools
• requires description (vs imitation)
• Associating language with cultural complexity
• art, music, ritual, cooperative
  hunting/childcare.

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Archaeology and The Fossil Record

• Robust forms of Australopithecus (1.5 mya) tool
  use?
• Homo habilis (2 mya) Stone Tools
• Homo erectus (1.8 mya) bifacial tools, organized
  hunting?
• Premodern Humans (400,000 ya) shelters
• Modern Homo sapiens (200,000 ya) increased tool
  complexity
• Neanderthal (130,000 ya) burials, music.

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Tools and Language?

• Language and complex behaviors
• Remembering steps
• Transmitting instructions (teaching and learning)
• Mirror Neurons
• Italian researchers were studying motor neurons
  in F5 area of macaque brains seemed to find
  motor activity almost formed a kind of
  vocabulary when -
• They found, by accident, that certain neurons not
  only fire when the animal engages in motor
  action, but fire when observing others engage in
  the same action. F5 area is in same location as
  Brocas area in humans!
• So, learning and observing tool making may be
  similar to learning language.

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Putting it all Together

• Using all four fields of anthropology
• Culture (tools) possible 2.5 mya, early H.
  habilis
• Signed language possible 2mya, H. habilis
• Spoken language possible 125,000 ya, H. sapiens
  perhaps much earlier.

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Somehow, Closed Systems Became Open Systems

• How do you open a closed call/sign system?
• Through blending (Hockett)
• Situations requiring communicating two ideas
  dangerous food
• Through play? (Ottenheimer)
• Mimicking, pretending, discovering symbolism
• How do you discover/use duality of patterning?
• Through identifying discrete recombinable units
• Also through play?
• Playing with symbols
• Playing with language
• Shintiri, other Pig Latins.