Speech's Side Effects
Language, at its core and as presented on this blog, is a tool for sharing joint attention in contemplation of a topic. By now it has other functions as well, but the definition I just offered is thesine qua non of the phenomenon. When language appeared, it suddenly became possible to discuss or at least report matters of mutual interest. Most definitions ignore the business about joint attention and say something like language is a tool for communicating with symbols. But I have become persuaded that focusing on symbols misses language’s key feature, the harnessing of attention.Symbol-based theories of language origi...
Source: Babel's Dawn - November 12, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Language's First Use
Why do people talk? That is the central question of this blog: what was the purpose of the utterance, the first time somebody said something? I have been taking it for granted that the first intention wasinformative, as inenemy orcarcass thataway. But other ambitions are possible. Maybe language began with acurse or aprayer. I seem to recall reading in Stephen Pinker that cursing uses a different part of the brain, so perhaps we can toss that purpose aside. But was the first utterance a prayer?That doesn ’t look impossible. ImagineHomo earlymus on a vast, grassy plain surrounded by barking hyenas. It looks like a good ti...
Source: Babel's Dawn - October 28, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Rejecting the Axioms of Olde
When I began this blog, I assumed the big step in developing language was the creation of the first word. I took it for granted that this was accomplished by yoking a sound and a meaning together to give us something likechair. I no longer believe either of those things.Today I believe that the big step towards language came when our ancestors were willing to share their knowledge, and that language began when we started pointing things out to one another.The change in my thinking resulted from a doodle I created early in the blog ’s history: the speech triangle. Its corners mark a speaker and a listener who focus join...
Source: Babel's Dawn - September 27, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
How Does Language Work?
These days we expect our sciences to have a practical side. We understand how things work and make use of the knowledge.Science began as common sense put into theoretical shape by Aristotle. Thus, pretty much every advanced science has begun by showing what common sense missed and Aristotle got wrong. So common sense says the sun revolves around the earth. Then Aristotle developed a theory of physics that took common sense observations for granted. Aristotle ’s physics, however, was purely theoretical without practical benefit.Copernicus, Galileo and Newton overturned that common sense and introduced a more modern physic...
Source: Babel's Dawn - August 16, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
How Old is Speech?
This blog takes the position that language, in the sense of two or more people focusing together on a topic, is quite old. Archaeologists, Chomskyites and others tend to put it as a more recent in the human lineage, about 100 thousand or fewer years. I put it at approaching 2 million years. My main grounds for thinking such is based on cooperativeness and the idea that it took a long time to create the verbal environment that we now take for granted.Slow evolutionI noticed anarticle from a couple of weeks back about the “truly” bilingual child, and I came across this passage, “Pediatricians routinely advise parents t...
Source: Babel's Dawn - August 2, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
