The Origins of Language Jordan Zlatev

1. Lecture 11 Stages in the origin of language The Origins of LanguageJordan Zlatev

2. The major puzzle in explaining the origins of language • Evolution is based on natural (and sexual) selection giving rise to adapations: (basically) continuous... • However, there is such a wide gap between animal (vocal) signaling and human language, that the evolution of language appears discontinuous! => The “continuity paradox” (Bickerton 1990)

3. Animal signalsvs. language (after Zlatev et al. 2005) ?

4. The need for “protolanguage” If there indeed exists a more primitive variety of language alongside fully developed human language, then the task of accounting for the origins of language is made much easier. No longer do we have to hypothesize some gargantuan leap from speechlessness to full language, a leap so vast and abrupt that evolutionary theory would be hard to put to account for it.(Bickerton 1990: 128)

5. Animal signals vs. proto-language

6. The need for “prerequisites” • There is no plausible evolutionary scenario according to which language could “evolve” from animal signals. • Even present-daytheorists of innate Universal Grammar require some “broad” pre-adaptations/exaptations or prerequisites. Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch (2002)

7. A magical ”macro-mutation” Animal signalsLanguage ?

8. The only (reasonable) alternative Stages in semiotic evolution Animal signals Language

9. Stages in phylogeny and ontogeny • When I speak of a “stage” in phylogeny, I do not have in mind a all-or-none switch in the genotype that yields a discontinuous change in the phenotype, but rather the coalescence of a variety of changes that can be characterized as forming a global pattern that may emerge over the course of tens or even hundreds of millennia. (Arbib 2005: 123) • By “semiotic stage” we here mean a (not necessarily stable) period in development characterized by the clear establishment of a novel semiotic capacity, which may “dominate” the communication of the child at this stage, but does not replace capacities from previous stages. (Zlatev and Andrén 2009: 381)

10. (Semiotic) stage in evolution • Each step in this sequence corresponds to a functional communication system, if not as elaborate and rich as modern human language. And none of the gaps that need to be bridged when going from one step to the next looks anything like the huge chasm commonly pictured between syntax and non-syntax. (Johansson 2005: 236)

11. Donald (1991, 2001) Animal signalsLanguage (and episodic cognition) (and symbolic cognition) (Bodily) mimesis

12. Mimesis ( Memetics) Mimetic skills or mimesis rests on the ability to produce conscious, self-initiated, representational acts that are intentional but not linguistic.(Donald 1991: 168) The important properties of individual mimetic acts include intentionality, generativity, communicativity, reference, autocuing, and the ability to model an unlimited number of objects. (Donald 1991 : 171)

13. An stage-based evolutionary theory Donald’s (1991) model of evolution related to the notion of sign function (based on Sonesson 2007).

14. Problems in Donald’s theory ? What is the precursor to mimesis? How did the ”sign function” (i.e. ”symbols”) emerge? How did grammar evolve?

15. How can we know? • Compare the closest we have to the “last common ancestor” – present day apes – and human beings (especially children) with respect to: • Meaning (“symbols” and “pragmatics”) • Expression Vocalization Gesture • Grammar

16. (1) “Symbols” (Heine and Kuteva 2007: 132) • The term symbol is used in a wide range of works … but it has been defined in a number of different ways: • Signs that, unlike indexical and iconic signs, exhibit an arbitrary relation between a meaning and a form used for its expression; • Objects whose reference is context-independent, including objects displaced in time and/or space (i.e. outside the here-and-now) • A convention, or shared cultural understanding, whereby different symbol users interpret the symbol in the same way; • Signs that are intentional, or at least “functionally referential” • Signs that are connected to other signs of the same kind in a network of internal relations…”

17. Sign (use) or signification(rather than “symbol”, “displacement”, “construal” etc) • X stands for Y for subject(s) S, in a way that: (a) The relation is asymmetrical(X  Y, not X  Y) (b) X and Y are differentiated: X is qualitatively different from Y for S (c) X and Y are connected: in perceiving or enacting X, S conceives of Y

18. So – can apes use signs? • In the wild: Not that we know of.Clearest example: bonobo branches as “path markers” • In captivity (spontaneously): Perhaps…Clearest examples: “imperative pointing” and Sherman and Austin’s “inventions” • “Enculturated” (with language): YesKanzi, Panbanisha, Koko, Chantek – but why so limited (functionally), and with little transmission?

19. So – what is “missing”? • A “language acquisition device”, UG?Hardly: the problem is not with “grammar” per se – but with spontaneous sign use • Pragmatics: • “An infrastructure of shared intentionality” (Tomasello 2008) • “A human-specific urge to learn, or if necessary, create … semiotic systems” (Axel Svahn)

20. The SEDSU project (Zlatev et al. 2006) “Pre-sign” differences between human beings and great apes found above all in: • Imitative capacity: difficulty with do-as-I-do imitation • Intersubjectivity: lower rates of mutual gaze (Zlatev et al. forthcoming), contagion, food sharing (Call et al. forthcoming)

21. Cross-species comparisons

22. Cross-species comparisons Tendency

23. (1) Meaning: conclusions • For spontaneous sign use to evolve, there were adaptations in • Imitation learning • Co-operative communication • Intersubjectivity (beyond “cognitive empathy”) • Motivational and cognitive adaptations • Selective pressures: tool manufacture, pedagogy, displaced communication (all matters of collaborative sociality)

24. (2) Gesture and vocalization • Advantages of gestural protolanguage • More volitional than vocalization in apes • Manual sequences – further selected by tools • Greater transparency (iconicity) • Proto-predications: point + mime • Clearer brain homologues for modern “language areas” • Advantages of vocal protolanguage • “Simpler” route from ape vocalizations (?) • The symbolic potential of ape vocalizations is underexplored • Modern languages are (in normal conditions) spoken

25. (2) Gesture and vocalization • Factors for “transition to speech”: • Multimodal social interaction (hands: “showing”) • More economical • More “arbitrary” – more reliance on conventionality and normativity • For the adaptations for speech (control of the tongue, jaws and breathing, to be adaptive “there and then” (evolution does not plan ahead!) there needs to have been a communication system in place. • Was proto-language at first gestural, or gestural-vocal? Proposal: Bodily mimesis (characterizing Homo erectus culture) was mostly gestural – and only after ca. 2 mil years of evolution were the adapations for “high speed phonology” complete: with Homo sapiens (200,000 YA)

26. (3) Grammar Greenfield and Savage-Rumbough (1990) CHASE (lexigram) YOU (point at person) Despite optimistic interpretations, there is no evidence for any grammatical structure in Kanzi’s productive sequences.

27. Whence grammar? • Exaptations (pre-adaptations): • “where” (x) and “what” P pathways in the visual system, giving rise to P(x): “proto-predication” (Hurford 2003)? • Social scripts: “structured generalized patterns of social behaviour” (Johansson 2005: 231), Aiello (1998)? • Tool-making scripts (Johansson 2005: 231)? • Hierarchical structure in action sequences (Greenfield 1991)?

28. Whence grammar? • Adaptations? • A large protolanguage lexicon, places a burden on memory, and is less efficient for communication • “analytic strategy”: break down “holistic” utterances into components (Wray 2001, Arbib 2003)? • “synthetic strategy”: combine signs for e.g. actions/locations/properties and objects: predication • Note: not even triadic mimesis is totally “holistic”, but allows iconic gestures for actions and pointing gestures to be combined into “proto-predication”

29. Stages in the evolution of grammar • Utterance structure (“two word stage”) • Hierarchical structure, but no recursivity (e.g. no subordination) • Flexible structure: “different ways to express the ‘same’ meaning” (: 234) • Recursive structure: “flows naturally from the ability to handle nested predications” (: 237): “Are you sure that Mary thinks that Joe is impossible” (Harder 2004)

30. Stages in the evolution of grammar • It is far from clear that there are biological adaptations for stages 1-4 (“innate vs. learned”, lecture 9) • Hence, the evolution of grammar, at least from the “two word stage” can have proceeded through processes of historical, rather then biological evolution, during the last 90,000 years since the spread of our common ancestors out of (and throughout), Africa. • Grammaticalization theory (Heine & Kuteva 2002, 2007) can help explain, and chart, this process of cultural evolution.

31. (Cultural) evolution of grammar • Languages spoken 10,000 years ago, typologically not much different from present languages • Push back in historical time, using generalizations concerning processes of grammaticalization (e.g. ‘want’ > FUT) • From lexical to grammatical, and “even more grammatical” • Basically unidirectional • Processes of grammaticalization have been similar in the past: process, not structure, “uniformitarianism”

32. Grammaticalization • ‘body’ (NOUN) > PRON > PASS • ‘back’ (NOUN) > ADV > ADP • ‘here’ (AVD) > DEM > REL • ‘say’ (VERB) > COMP > SUBORD Typical functions/meanings emerging • Question • Location specification (“relative”, “absolute”) • Possession • Personal pronouns

33. “The Earliest Conceivable Language Structure” • Thing-words + Process-words • No morphology or “grams” • Only word order for syntax • Perhaps concepts for location, possession – but not grammatically expressed • No personal pronouns, but names, roles A very “minimal syntax” indeed!

34. Stages: from LCA to present • LCA: vocal signals and “flexible”, but not human-like gestures • “Lucy”: Larger groups: vocal grooming, mutual gaze (extended mother-child communication)? • Homo erectus: pantomime and pointing, “vocomimesis”? • Homo hielderbegensis/neanderthalensis: gestural-vocal proto-language • Homo sapiens: vocal-gestural protolanguage (“Stage X”) • Modern human beings: complex, grammatical, and multimodal language (speech, gesture) • Technological human beings: writing, internet etc.

35. Next stage?