Language evolution: the earliest words and sentences (original) (raw)

2021, Linguistisches Kolloquium 2020/21, Philipps University of Marburg

https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/J3XPK

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Abstract

An explorative and narrative review of the literature on language evolution with an emphasis on the psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics of lexical semantics and syntax. Based on my thesis for an M. A. degree in Linguistics.

The Origins of Language: An Introduction to Evolutionary Linguistics (book review)

Verbum, 2024

The scientific interest in the evolutionary origins of language has grown recently among both researchers from a wide array of fields and in the general reading public. Despite the widely recognized problem of access to evidence, the theoretical importance of the question itself prevents us from setting it aside. Every comprehensive theory of language, not to mention the related fields in the cognitive sciences, faces the question. If the findings from ongoing empirical work cannot at some point consider plausible hypotheses about evolutionary origins that are compatible in some way with the conceptual framework of this work then there is the possibility of a wider inconsistency. Thus, even though the evidence appears as remote, the research problem is irresistible.

From the narrow to the broad. Multiple perspectives on language evolution

Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, 2015

Although many of the recent controversies in the field of language evolution research are empirical, the deepest divides seem to remain theoretical in nature. Specifically, defining language in incompatible ways has led to radically different views on language evolution as a programme, including evaluation of its current success and future progress. Despite recent manifestos from the "narrow" camp (Hauser et al. 2014; Bolhuis et al. 2014), who along the lines of Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (2002) equates language with the syntactic processor, the rival approach seems to be gaining momentum. It embodies a move in exactly the opposite direction, by understanding language broadly and assuming an inclusive perspective on its origins, which results in ongoing expansion of the field of language evolution. New areas of academic reflection (such as normativity) are being brought to bear, new areas of linguistics are being included (such as pragmatics or linguistic politeness); and, interestingly, existing linguistic methods are now being used to inform animal communication studies.

The evolution of syntax: what do we know?

2020

PROLOGUE: do we know anything about language evolution? "For centuries, people have speculated over the origins of human language. […] The irony is that the quest is a fruitless one. Each generation asks the same questions, and reaches the same impasse-the absence of any evidence relating to the matter, given the vast, distant timescale involved. We have no direct knowledge of the origins and early development of language, nor is it easy to imagine how such knowledge might ever be obtained. We can only speculate, arrive at our own conclusions, and remain dissatisfied. Indeed, so dissatisfied was one group of 19thcentury scholars that they took drastic action: in 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris published an edict banning discussion of the topic at their meetings. But the theorizing continues, and these days there is a resurgence of interest, as new archaeological finds and modern techniques of analysis provide fresh hints of what

Language in Language Evolution Research

Biolinguistics

Many controversies in language evolution research derive from the fact that language is itself a natural language word, which makes the underlying concept fuzzy and cumbersome, and a common perception is that progress in language evolution research is hindered because researchers do not ‘talk about the same thing’. In this article, we claim that agreement on a single, top-down definition of language is not a sine qua non for good and productive research in the field of language evolution. First, we use the example of the notion FLN (‘faculty of language in the narrow sense’) to demonstrate how the specific wording of an important top-down definition of (the faculty of) language can—surprisingly—be inconsequential to actual research practice. We then review four approaches to language evolution that we estimate to be particularly influential in the last decade. We show how their breadth precludes a single common conceptualization of language but instead leads to a family resemblance ...

The Ongoing Debate on Language Evolution

How and why language has evolved to become what it is today, is the subject of intense debate. Chomsky long ago proposed that human language competence should be seen as a set of biologically inherited language principles. The adaptationist view suggests that the human cognitive apparatus must be specialized to language and was selected for by evolution. The non-adaptationist view rejects that idea and instead suggests emergence via a non-adaptationist route. Recently a third view language as shaped by the brain suggests that language is easy to learn and use because language has developed in such that it adapted to the capacities of our brains (which developed before language began to emerge). In this view, language acquisition is seen as resting on general cognitive processes, and constraints thereof. An alternative view suggests major aspects of UG are neither biological nor cultural in origin; rather that they reflect universal semiotic constraints inherent in the requirements for producing symbolic reference itself. Details of the evolutionary path of language remain unknown because we cannot revisit the world in ancient times to properly examine the subject of our speculation. A serious obstacle in this debate is the lack of scientific evidence supporting a coherent definition of Universal Grammar. Clarity with regard to this debate requires an in depth understanding of facts, concepts and theories which currently belong to different scientific disciplines.

The Evolution of Human Language

Advances in consciousness research, 2004

presents three perspectives on the evolution of language as a key element in the evolution of mankind in terms of the development of human symbol use. (1) He approaches this question by constructing possible scenarios in which mechanisms necessary for symbolic behavior could have developed, on the basis of the state of the art in evolutionary anthropology and genetics. (2) Non-linguistic symbolic behavior such as cave art is investigated as an important clue to the developmental background to the origin of language. Creativity and innovation and a population's ability to integrate individual experiments are considered with regard to historical examples of symbolic creativity in the visual arts and natural sciences. (3) Probable linguistic 'fossils' of such linguistic innovations are examined. The results of this study allow for new proposals for a 'protolanguage' and for a theory of language within a broader philosophical and semiotic framework, and raises interesting questions as to human consciousness, universal grammar, and linguistic methodology.

The Evolution of Language: Towards Gestural Hypotheses

2019

A publication of the Center for Language Evolution Studies (CLES) NCU Toruń Contents emerged. This area is certainly underexplored, but after the publication of Przemysław Żywiczyński's book Language Origins: From Mythology to Science (2018), we felt there is no reason to repeat what can be found there, in a more extensive form. Funding The translation, editing and publication of this book was financed by a grant from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education within the programme Uniwersalia 2.1 (ID: 347247, Reg. no. 21H 16 0049 84).

Beyond the individual in the evolution of language

2009

I hereby declare that this thesis is of my own composition, and that it contains no material previously submitted for the award of any other degree. The work reported in this thesis has been executed by myself, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text.

A Proposed Neurological Interpretation of Language Evolution

Behavioural Neurology, 2015

Since the very beginning of the aphasia history it has been well established that there are two major aphasic syndromes (Wernicke'stype and Broca's-type aphasia); each one of them is related to the disturbance at a specific linguistic level (lexical/semantic and grammatical) and associated with a particular brain damage localization (temporal and frontal-subcortical). It is proposed that three stages in language evolution could be distinguished: (a) primitive communication systems similar to those observed in other animals, including nonhuman primates; (b) initial communication systems using sound combinations (lexicon) but without relationships among the elements (grammar); and (c) advanced communication systems including word-combinations (grammar). It is proposed that grammar probably originated from the internal representation of actions, resulting in the creation of verbs; this is an ability that depends on the so-called Broca's area and related brain networks. It is suggested that grammar is the basic ability for the development of so-called metacognitive executive functions. It is concluded that while the lexical/semantic language system (vocabulary) probably appeared during human evolution long before the contemporary man (Homo sapiens sapiens), the grammatical language historically represents a recent acquisition and is correlated with the development of complex cognition (metacognitive executive functions).

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Language evolution

2003

The leading scholars in the rapidly growing field of language evolution give readable accounts of their theories on the origins of language and reflect on the most important current issues and debates. As well as providing a guide to their own published research in this area they highlight what they see as the most relevant research of others. The authors come from a wide range of disciplines involved in language evolution including linguistics, cognitive science, computational science, primatology, and archaeology.

A Grammatical View of Language Evolution

akira.ruc.dk

Abstract. Language evolves gradually through its use: over time, new forms come into fashion and others become obsolete. While traditionally a grammar provides a snapshot of an individual's or a society's linguistic competence at a given point in time, our aim is to extend ...

Human language evolution: a view from theoretical linguistics on how syntax and the lexicon first came into being

Primates, 2021

Human language is a multi-componential function comprising several sub-functions each of which may have evolved in other species independently of language. Among them, two sub-functions, or modules, have been claimed to be truly unique to the humans, namely hierarchical syntax (known as “Merge” in linguistics) and the “lexicon.” This kind of species-specificity stands as a hindrance to our natural understanding of human language evolution. Here we challenge this issue and advance our hypotheses on how human syntax and lexicon may have evolved from pre-existing cognitive capacities in our ancestors and other species including but not limited to nonhuman primates. Specifically, we argue that Merge evolved from motor action planning, and that the human lexicon with the distinction between lexical and functional categories evolved from its predecessors found in animal cognition through a process we call “disintegration.” We build our arguments on recent developments in generative gramma...

The major transitions in the evolution of language

The origins of human language, with its extraordinarily complex structure and multitude of functions, remains among the most challenging problems for evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences. Although many will agree progress on this issue would have important consequences for linguistic theory, many remain sceptical about whether the topic is amenable to rigorous, scientific research at all. Complementing recent developments toward better empirical validation, this thesis explores how formal models from both linguistics and evolutionary biology can help to constrain the many theories and scenarios in this field. I first review a number of foundational mathematical models from three branches of evolutionary biology -- population genetics, evolutionary game theory and social evolution theory -- and discuss the relation between them. This discussion yields a list of ten requirements on evolutionary scenarios for language, and highlights the assumptions implicit in the various formalisms. I then look in more details at one specific step-by-step scenario, proposed by Ray Jackendoff, and consider the linguistic formalisms that could be used to characterise the evolutionary transitions from one stage to the next. I conclude from this review that the main challenges in evolutionary linguistics are to explain how three major linguistic innovations -- combinatorial phonology, compositional semantics and hierarchical phrase-structure -- could have spread through a population where they are initially rare. In the second part of the thesis, I critically evaluate some existing formal models of each of these major transitions and present three novel alternatives. In an abstract model of the evolution of speech sounds (viewed as trajectories through an acoustic space), I show that combinatorial phonology is a solution for robustness against noise and the only evolutionary stable strategy (ESS). In a model of the evolution of simple lexicons in a noisy environment, I show that the optimal lexicon uses a structured mapping from meanings to sounds, providing a rudimentary compositional semantics. Lexicons with this property are also ESS's. Finally, in a model of the evolution and acquisition of context-free grammars, I evaluate the conditions under which hierarchical phrase-structure will be favoured by natural selection, or will be the outcome of a process of cultural evolution. In the last chapter of the thesis, I discuss the implications of these models for the debates in linguistics on innateness and learnability, and on the nature of language universals. A mainly negative point to make is that formal learnability results cannot be used as evidence for an innate, language-specific specialisation for language. A positive point is that with the evolutionary models of language, we can begin to understand how universal properties and tendencies in natural languages can result from the intricate interaction between innate learning biases and a process of cultural evolution over many generations.

Language evolution: Current status and future directions

Proceedings of the 10th Language at the University of Essex (LangUE) Conference

The topic of language evolution is characterised by the scarcity of records, but also by a large flow of research produced within multiple subtopics and perspectives. Over the past few decades, significant advancement has been made on the geographical and temporal origins of language, while current work is rather devoted to the underpinnings of language, in brain, genes, body, and culture of humans. Much of this literature is polarized over the crucial dichotomy of nativism versus emergentism. Our state of affairs report also confirms a high degree of speculation, albeit with a decrease for modelling. To tackle the speculation and the large research flow, we propose a more impersonal kind of review, focused on the topic’s questions rather than on particular accounts. Another observation is that novel perspectives are on the rise. One of these highlights the importance of perceptual cognition, often dubbed ‘embodiment,’ in the earlier evolution of language. In following this lead, we adapted a previous experiment that had investigated the relation between certain perceptual features of events, and different grammatical orders arising as participants acted out those events. Replicating that much, we went on to add a contrast between communication based on the body, as gesturing is, and more disembodied communication, such as the writing of symbols on paper. However tentative, our results reveal a greater effect of the embodiment variable, thus inviting further exploration of the role of embodied cognition in the emergence and evolution of linguistic behaviour.

Evolution of Human Language - A Biolinguistic, Biosemiotic and Neurobiological Perspective

2013

An attempt is made here to approach the origin and evolution of human language from the foundational perspective of the faculty of language as a species specific attribute, found nowhere else in the animal kingdom. The rebirth of cognitive psychology started with Noam Chomsky as a major development in attempting a scientific basis of the understanding of language with a major empirical basis in neurobiology and neuroethology. While the study of language still remains a challenging area for philosophical and methodological debate, it enlightens many new areas of cognitive psychology and sets many new neuroscientific agenda for future research.