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Chapter 2 – Origins of Human LanguageNativist view
Language as a genetically driven instinct.
- Not only are humans genetically programmed to have a general capacity for language,
particular aspects of language ability are also genetically specified.
- We are born with language and learn more about grammar etc. later.
- Common view: humans have some innate capabilities for language as adaptations.
- Language is not different than other cognitively complex or physically complex things that
human are able to do. Also, humans are not a-prior special or unique or genetically disposed
to do or learn something.
Anti-nativist view
Language is a tool.
- The ability of humans to learn language is not the result of a genetically programmed
‘language template’, but it is an aspect of our extensive cognitive abilities, including general
abilities of learning and memory.
What is Language (Daniel Everett)
Language is a tool invented human beings than an innate behaviour such as the dance of honeybees.
- Tool for soling certain problems that all humans have - foremost being how to efficiently
transmit information to each other.
2.1 Why us?
Language of bees: it is a symbolic representation: they’re drawing a map while shaking their bodies.
What can we learn from the communication of honeybee’s?
It shows that a complex behaviour capable of transmitting information about the real world can be
encoded in the genes and innately specified through an evolutionary process.
Hockett’s design features
A set of characteristics proposed by linguist Charles Hockett to be universally shared by all human
languages. Some, but not all, of the features are also found in various animal communication
systems.
The list in indented to be a sort of counter point to the nativist theories that where very strong.
It is a list that all language has, do and are.
,Hockett’s design features of human language
Vocal-auditory channel Language is produced in the vocal tract and transmitted as
sound. Sound is perceived through the auditory channel.
Broadcast transmission and Language can be heard from many directions, but it is
directional reception perceived as coming from one particular location.
Rapid fading The sound produced by speech faded quickly
Interchangeability A user of a language can send and receive the same
message
Total feedback Senders of a message can hear and internalize the
message they’ve sent
Specialization The production of the sounds of language serves no
purpose other than to communicate
Semanticity There are fixed associations between units of language
and aspects of the world
Arbitrariness The meaningful association between language and the
world are arbitrary
Discreteness The units of language are separate and distinct from one
another rather than being part of a continuous whole.
Displacement Language can be used to communicate about things that
are not present in time and/or space
Productivity Language can be used to say things that have never been
said before and yet are understandable to the receiver
Traditional transmission The specific language that’s adopted by the user to be
learned by exposure to other users of language; its precise
details are not available through genetic transmission
Duality of patterning Many meaningful units (words) are made by the
combining of a small number elements (sounds) into
various sequences. For example, pat, tap and apt use the
same sound elements combined in different ways to make
different word units. In this way, tens of thousands of
words can be created from several dozen sounds.
Prevarication Language can deliberately be used to make false
statements
Reflexiveness Language can be used to refer to or describe itself
Learnability Users of language can learn to use a different language.
Design features related to Design features related to the Design features related to the
channel communication interactive aspect of language** content and structure of
language
- Vocal-auditory channel - Interchangeability - Semanticity
people talk, and - Total - Arbitrariness
people hear* - Traditional transmission - Discreteness
- Broadcast transmission; - Learnability - Displacement
directional reception - Productivity
- Rapid fading - Duality of patterning
- Specialization - Prevarication
- Reflexiveness
,* But: many languages are sign languages, just as complex as spoken languages, that are true and
valid languages as well. So it is a feature of many languages but not of all natural languages.
** What happens with all human languages is that it is learned an acquired and thought, it goes
from one person to the other person
*** The patterns, the rules, the facts that there is form and meaning (everything from 1 stlecture).
Hockett was wrong about some of the channel-specific features:
- Vocal-auditory channel
- Broadcast transmission; directional reception
- Rapid fading
Primate vacalizations: Humans learn words through the process of cultural transmission, but velvets
learn by being genetically wired to make specific sounds that are associated with specific meanings.
Productivity: The ability to use known symbols or linguistic units in new combinations to
communicate ideas.
Evolutionary adaptions: A genetically transmitted trait that gives its bearers an advantage.
Specifically, it helps those with the trait to stay alive long enough to reproduce and/ or to have many
offspring.
Differences between apes and humans
- What linguistic ability we attribute to primates is often in the eye of the beholder.
- Universal acquisition in children; variable acquisition in apes.
- Children tend to innovate and try out things quite a bit, they learn patterns that occurin
language. Apes copy.
- Children babble; Apes don’t
- As utterances (uitlatingen) grow longer:
o Children: grammar becomes more complex
o Apes: signs are repeated
- Humans apply grammatical rules consistently
- Apes apply grammatical rules inconsistently
- Humans use words to comment and express intentions; Apes use signs as a tool to get things.
- Apes interrupt far more than humans.
Some critical notes on animal studies
o Because you show some behavior, that doesn’t mean you know how or why you behave like that.
Behavior isn’t equal to knowledge.
o Because you observe someone that doesn’t show some behavior, it doesn’t mean they don’t
know. Absence of behavior isn’t equal of absence of knowledge.
o The fact that people don’t show certain behavior, doesn’t mean they don’t know how it works.
o More and more evidence of human-like non-language behavior in animals, so humans may not
be so special after all.
2.2 The social underpinning of Language
Understanding the communicative argue
Argued by some scientists: a rich communications system is built on a foundation of advanced skills
in social cognition. Among humans, these skills evolved in a super accelerated way, far outpacing
other gains we made in overall intelligence and working memory capacity.
, Skills for a complex social world
Humans are inclined to share information with one another, whereas other primates seem not to
have discovered the vast benefits of doing so.
Humans are not genetically driven to produce specific sounds triggered by specific aspects of our
environment. Our words are quite literally figments of human imagination, and they have meaning
only because we all agree to use the same word for the same thing.
Joint attention
Humans (and only humans have) need to have the capacity for joint attention: the awareness
between two or more individuals that they are paying attention to the same thing.
What keeps our primate relatives from creating languages or laws of their own?
1. Lack of social motivation: they’re simply less motivated to engage in complex social behavior
than we humans are.
2. They lack a specific cognitive ingredient that would allow them to engage in complex social
coordination.
3. They lack the capacity for joint attention.
2.3 The structure of Language
The art of combination:
1. Combining Units
Combining smaller elements to make larger linguistic units take place at 2 levels:
1. Making words from sounds
2. Combine meaningful elements (such as separate words) to make other, larger meaningful
elements. Assembling sentences out of their component parts that would make their
meanings clear from their structure.
Syntax: in a given language, the set of ‘rules’ that specify how meaningful linguistic elements are, put
together so that their meaning can be clearly understood.
2. Structured patterns
- Chomsky has argued that humans are pre-packaged with knowledge of the kinds of structures
that make up human languages.
- Universal grammar: “an innately (aangeboren) understood system of combining linguistic units
that constrains the structural patterns of all human languages”. The shape of any given human
language is constrained by certain universal principles or tendencies.
Claims about an innate universal grammar have meT with resistance on several fronts:
1. Many researchers have argued that nativists have underestimated the amount and quality of the
linguistic input that kids are exposed to and, especially, that they’ve lowballed children’s ability
to learn about structure on the base of that input.
2. Some of the knowledge that was thought to be language-specific has been found to be available
to other animals, not only humans.
3. Some of the knowledge that at first seemed to be very language specific has been found to have
a basis in more general perception or cognition, applying to non-linguistic information as well.
4. Earlier claims about universal patterns have been tested against more data from a wider set of
human languages, and some researchers now argue that human languages are not as similar to
each other as many have been believed.
5. Researchers have become more and more sophisticated at explaining how certain common
patterns across languages might arise from the fact that all languages are trying to solve certain
communicative problems.
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