How Can You Recognize Language?
Coach signals a play. Is that language or something else?
This is a blog about the origins of speech, but what began? How can we tell it when we see it? Parents usually say their children have started talking when they have a couple of words. Linguists tend to look for some hint of grammar. Some experts look for a favorite generative procedure. So there is room for argument even before we come up with a single fact about the beginnings.
I have always taken a functional approach. When I started this blog I could not have said precisely what I was looking for, but now I know what I want. I call it language when a speaker a...
Source: Babel's Dawn - July 25, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Blogger Interviewed
The Grammarist is an entertaining blog on all things language-related. I have enjoyed their posts on word usage and spelling. Spelling! Can you believe that. It has always been my weakest suit, but they cover it well. They surprised me recently by emerging from the aether to interview me. The curious can check out the results right here. (Source: Babel's Dawn)
Source: Babel's Dawn - July 14, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Forget Communication; Study Cognition
Leonard Talmy is an interesting fellow who has spent the past several decades exploring the way languages express thoughts. Can we have thoughts that we cannot express verbally? Many poets spend their lives trying to express the inexpressible. We know too that there are many ideas which can be expressed mathematically, but not verbally. How about the reverse; are there things we can think in words but not in other ways?
For instance, language allows us to think it terms of what grammarians call mood. Talmy calls this a topic's "reality status." That's something not included in mathematical expressions. English allows ...
Source: Babel's Dawn - July 9, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
I’m Tired of Chomsky (Part III)
Kant combined Aristotle's dependence on the senses with a few Platonic prejudices.
In two previous posts I summarized Chomsky's theory of language (Part I) and an alternative theory (Part II). In this final section I wrap up.
So …
Besides having the experimental evidence on its side, the alternate theory is more in keeping with what we have learned from natural history and its evolutionary backbone.
It seems impossibly naïve to rely on a single mutation to account for human uniqueness. Mutations occur all the time and are part of every generation. If a single mutation was all it took to produce Chomsky's Merge, ...
Source: Babel's Dawn - June 18, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
I'm Tired of Chomsky (Part II)
Aristotle taught that all knowledge comes through the senses.
Part I summarized Chomsky's theory of internal language and said that an alternate theory is possible. In this part I present that alternative.
Alternate Theory: Community
First, we can say there are several fundamental differences between humans and other primates, not just one.
Humans can have parents from culture A but, when raised by members of culture B, they act like members of culture B. Chomsky often mentions this point, yet he never puzzles over what a strange fact this is. If you try to raise a wolf as a dog, you get a wolf. Birds who try to rai...
Source: Babel's Dawn - June 17, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
I’m Tired of Chomsky (Part I)
Plato also believed that concepts are more real than reality.
I recently watched a long YouTube video of Chomsky speaking pretty familiar stuff. The part on language origins was especially trite; it left me unsure whether to laugh or shake my head. So much for that old man, thought I.
Then Christina Behme posted a comment on this blog with a link to her book review denouncing Noam Chomsky's The Science of Language. For a moment I thought perhaps the linguistics world had come full circle. Chomsky's stardom had begun with a take-down book review, so it might end. Of course the review does not satisfy those anticipations. ...
Source: Babel's Dawn - June 16, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Descartes v Natural Selection
The father of modern philosophy.
Really, the opposition to natural selection by so many orthodox linguists is a scandal. The latest example is in Biolinguistics (here) in which the authors seek to refute Derick Bickerton's paper (PDF here), which I discussed in Biology Without Darwin? Bickerton's point was that even if a process is self-organizing rather than genetic, it becomes fixed in the species only through selection.
I have often thought that if I could just get a grip on the reason Chomskyans have such a distaste for natural selection, I would have a much clearer grasp of what at lies at the root of our disagreem...
Source: Babel's Dawn - June 1, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
A Fourth Component of Language
If there is one thing Chomsky has taught us about sentences, it is that they are unbounded. A clever person can always write a longer sentence. So I was interested when I read British anthropologist Robin Dunbar's latest paper on language origins (here) and found this sentence, "it may be no coincidence that the levels of intentionality that adults can cope with is the same as the level of embedding that we can cope with in sentences." [p. 56] With this concept of coping, Dunbar seems to be hinting that he believes sentences are bounded after all—maybe not by syntactic rules, but by psychological ones.
Chewing over D...
Source: Babel's Dawn - May 4, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Apologies
Thhis blog was unavailable for days, apparently due to some denial of service attack. I am also disturbed by Typepad's poor handling of the situation. They completely botched their obligation of keeping me informed of what was happening, and I assume they were equally awful toward their other clients. (Source: Babel's Dawn)
Source: Babel's Dawn - April 24, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Biology without Darwin?
Variety is both the spice of life and the basis of evolution. Varieties are what survives natural selection's perpetual test. So without variety there can be no evolution.
I see that Derek Bickerton has a paper in the latest issue of Biolinguistics (PDF here). Bickerton is an interesting man who has done major work on pidgins and creoles, and he has thought hard and creatively about languag origins. He is interesting too because he combines an excellent knowledge of generative linguistics with a questioning ear. As he puts it, "Fears [are] widespread… that biolinguistics may turn out to be merely a more scientific-soun...
Source: Babel's Dawn - April 7, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Sentences and Events
Does a martial-arts action strike you as a well-executed ballet or a confusing oleo of hands and feet?
The current thesis favored on this blog is that language is a system for directing one another's attention so that we can share perceptions, real, imaginary or metaphorical. As it stands now I propose that human evolution began with the formation of communities based on cooperation and sharing. Once our ancestor moved from social to communal arrangements the normal, individualistic, Darwinian impediments to sharing gave way to the group benefits of cooperation and trust. Language became a part of the new order in which, ...
Source: Babel's Dawn - March 25, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Speech Without Words
In the past I have argued that perhaps, before we had words, we had emotional babbling. Here is a video of what that might look like. (Source: Babel's Dawn)
Source: Babel's Dawn - January 14, 2014 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Elephants and Pointing
The two animal types I keep an eye on for signs of langage are elephants and crows. You cannot talk unless you can draw attention to something specific, and the easiest way to do that is by poining. So today's NY Times caught my eye with a story about elephant pointing. The data is promising but so far limited to human-elephant interactions. We'll need to confirm that elephants use their trunks/ears/tusks/something to direct their fellows' attention and resolving ambiguities will be difficult work. (Is the pictured elephant eating or pointing?) Meanwhile, we're lucky elephants don't have hands. With them, those big thin...
Source: Babel's Dawn - October 11, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Children as a Source of Language
Important story in the New York Times today about Australian children creating a new language. (Source: Babel's Dawn)
Source: Babel's Dawn - July 16, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Early Butchers
The latest issue of the Journal of Human Evolution reports finding butchered remains from 1.8 million years ago. The site, in modern Algeria, includes bones that were scarred by tool cuts and tools that show signs of wear and tear.
I'm taking this find as supporting archaeological evidence for collaborative behavior amongst Homo pre-sapiens. (Source: Babel's Dawn)
Source: Babel's Dawn - January 13, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
