1
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Griebel U, Oller DK. From emotional signals to symbols. Front Psychol 2024; 15:1135288. [PMID: 38629043 PMCID: PMC11020113 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1135288] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/31/2022] [Accepted: 03/13/2024] [Indexed: 04/19/2024] Open
Abstract
The quest for the origins of language is a diverse enterprise, where research from a variety of disciplines brings area-specific ideas and area-specific terminology to bear. This variety often results in misunderstandings and misconceptions about communication in various species. In the present paper, we argue for focus on emotional systems as the primary motivators for social signals in animals in general. This focus can help resolve discrepancies of interpretation among different areas of inquiry and can illuminate distinctions among different social signals as well as their phylogenetic origins in animals and especially in humans. We advocate, following Jaak Panksepp, a view wherein the Seeking System, the endogenous tendency to search and explore, is the most fundamental emotional motivation. The Seeking System forms the basis for flexible, voluntary, and exploratory control of motor systems and makes much of learning possible. The relative lack of vocal learning and expression in nonhuman primates contrasted with extensive vocal learning and expression in humans began, we propose, with the evolution in ancient hominins of a necessary foundation for the many subsequent capabilities required for language. That foundation was, according to the reasoning, naturally selected in the form of neurological connections between the Seeking System and mechanisms of glottal/phonatory control. The new connections allowed ancient hominins to develop flexible, endogenous vocal fitness signals produced at very high rates and including large numbers of discrete syllables, recombinable to form syllable combinations with many prosodic variations. The increasing sociality of hominins supported evolution of massive expansion in the utilization of these flexible vocal forms to allow development of words and sentences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ulrike Griebel
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- The Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- The Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - D. Kimbrough Oller
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- The Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- The Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria
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2
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Arnon I, Kirby S. Cultural evolution creates the statistical structure of language. Sci Rep 2024; 14:5255. [PMID: 38438558 PMCID: PMC10912608 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-56152-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/07/2023] [Accepted: 03/01/2024] [Indexed: 03/06/2024] Open
Abstract
Human language is unique in its structure: language is made up of parts that can be recombined in a productive way. The parts are not given but have to be discovered by learners exposed to unsegmented wholes. Across languages, the frequency distribution of those parts follows a power law. Both statistical properties-having parts and having them follow a particular distribution-facilitate learning, yet their origin is still poorly understood. Where do the parts come from and why do they follow a particular frequency distribution? Here, we show how these two core properties emerge from the process of cultural evolution with whole-to-part learning. We use an experimental analog of cultural transmission in which participants copy sets of non-linguistic sequences produced by a previous participant: This design allows us to ask if parts will emerge purely under pressure for the system to be learnable, even without meanings to convey. We show that parts emerge from initially unsegmented sequences, that their distribution becomes closer to a power law over generations, and, importantly, that these properties make the sets of sequences more learnable. We argue that these two core statistical properties of language emerge culturally both as a cause and effect of greater learnability.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inbal Arnon
- Psychology Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
| | - Simon Kirby
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
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3
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van Boekholt B, Wilkinson R, Pika S. Bodies at play: the role of intercorporeality and bodily affordances in coordinating social play in chimpanzees in the wild. Front Psychol 2024; 14:1206497. [PMID: 38292528 PMCID: PMC10826840 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1206497] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2023] [Accepted: 12/13/2023] [Indexed: 02/01/2024] Open
Abstract
The comparative approach is a crucial method to gain a better understanding of the behavior of living human and nonhuman animals to then draw informed inferences about the behavior of extinct ancestors. One focus has been on disentangling the puzzle of language evolution. Traditionally, studies have predominantly focused on intentionally produced signals in communicative interactions. However, in collaborative and highly dynamic interactions such as play, underlying intentionality is difficult to assess and often interactions are negotiated via body movements rather than signals. This "lack" of signals has led to this dynamic context being widely ignored in comparative studies. The aim of this paper is threefold: First, we will show how comparative research into communication can benefit from taking the intentionality-agnostic standpoint used in conversation analysis. Second, we will introduce the concepts of 'intercorporeality' and 'bodily affordance', and show how they can be applied to the analysis of communicative interactions of nonhuman animals. Third, we will use these concepts to investigate how chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) initiate, end, and maintain 'contact social play'. Our results showed that bodily affordances are able to capture elements of interactions that more traditional approaches failed to describe. Participants made use of bodily affordances to achieve coordinated engagement in contact social play. Additionally, these interactions could display a sequential organization by which one 'move' by a chimpanzee was responded to with an aligning 'move', which allowed for the co-construction of the activity underway. Overall, the present approach innovates on three fronts: First, it allows for the analysis of interactions that are often ignored because they do not fulfil criteria of intentionality, and/or consist of purely body movements. Second, adopting concepts from research on human interaction enables a better comparison of communicative interactions in other animal species without a too narrow focus on intentional signaling only. Third, adopting a stance from interaction research that highlights how practical action can also be communicative, our results show that chimpanzees can communicate through their embodied actions as well as through signaling. With this first step, we hope to inspire new research into dynamic day-to-day interactions involving both "traditional" signals and embodied actions, which, in turn, can provide insights into evolutionary precursors of human language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bas van Boekholt
- Comparative BioCognition, Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabück University, Osnabrück, Germany
| | - Ray Wilkinson
- Division of Human Communication Sciences, School of Allied Health Professions, Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Simone Pika
- Comparative BioCognition, Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabück University, Osnabrück, Germany
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4
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Breithaupt F, Otenen E, Wright DR, Kruschke JK, Li Y, Tan Y. Humans create more novelty than ChatGPT when asked to retell a story. Sci Rep 2024; 14:875. [PMID: 38195660 PMCID: PMC10776760 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-50229-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2023] [Accepted: 12/17/2023] [Indexed: 01/11/2024] Open
Abstract
We compare how humans retell stories to how ChatGPT retells stories in chains of three retellings by different people or different accounts on ChatGPT. ChatGPT provides competent summaries of the original narrative texts in one step of retelling. In subsequent retellings few additional changes occur. Human retellers, by contrast, reduce the original text incrementally and by creating 55-60% of novel words and concepts (synsets) at each iteration. The retellings by both ChatGPT and humans show very stable emotion ratings, which is a puzzle for human retellers given the high degree of novel inventions across retellings. ChatGPT maintains more nouns, adjectives, and prepositions and also uses language later acquired in life, while humans use more verbs, adverbs, and negations and use language acquired at a younger age. The results reveal that spontaneous retelling by humans involves ongoing creativity, anchored by emotions, beyond the default probabilistic wording of large language models such as ChatGPT.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fritz Breithaupt
- Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University Bloomington, 1001 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA.
- Germanic Studies, Indiana University Bloomington, 355 N. Eagleson, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA.
| | - Ege Otenen
- Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University Bloomington, 1001 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
- Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, 901 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
| | - Devin R Wright
- Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University Bloomington, 1001 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
- Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, 901 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
| | - John K Kruschke
- Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University Bloomington, 1001 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington, 1101 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
| | - Ying Li
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 16 Lincui Road, 100101, Beijing, China
| | - Yiyan Tan
- Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University Bloomington, 1001 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington, 1101 E 10th St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA
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5
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Yang S, Sun X, Jin L, Zhang M. Inferring language dispersal patterns with velocity field estimation. Nat Commun 2024; 15:190. [PMID: 38167834 PMCID: PMC10761963 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-44430-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2023] [Accepted: 12/11/2023] [Indexed: 01/05/2024] Open
Abstract
Reconstructing the spatial evolution of languages can deepen our understanding of the demic diffusion and cultural spread. However, the phylogeographic approach that is frequently used to infer language dispersal patterns has limitations, primarily because the phylogenetic tree cannot fully explain the language evolution induced by the horizontal contact among languages, such as borrowing and areal diffusion. Here, we introduce the language velocity field estimation, which does not rely on the phylogenetic tree, to infer language dispersal trajectories and centre. Its effectiveness and robustness are verified through both simulated and empirical validations. Using language velocity field estimation, we infer the dispersal patterns of four agricultural language families and groups, encompassing approximately 700 language samples. Our results show that the dispersal trajectories of these languages are primarily compatible with population movement routes inferred from ancient DNA and archaeological materials, and their dispersal centres are geographically proximate to ancient homelands of agricultural or Neolithic cultures. Our findings highlight that the agricultural languages dispersed alongside the demic diffusions and cultural spreads during the past 10,000 years. We expect that language velocity field estimation could aid the spatial analysis of language evolution and further branch out into the studies of demographic and cultural dynamics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sizhe Yang
- State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Center for Evolutionary Biology, and Collaborative Innovation Center for Genetics and Development, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China
| | - Xiaoru Sun
- Human Phenome Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China
- Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China
| | - Li Jin
- State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Center for Evolutionary Biology, and Collaborative Innovation Center for Genetics and Development, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China.
- Human Phenome Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China.
| | - Menghan Zhang
- Institute of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China.
- Research Institute of Intelligent Complex Systems, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China.
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6
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Gannon C, Hill RA, Lameira AR. Open plains are not a level playing field for hominid consonant-like versus vowel-like calls. Sci Rep 2023; 13:21138. [PMID: 38129443 PMCID: PMC10739746 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-48165-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2023] [Accepted: 11/22/2023] [Indexed: 12/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Africa's paleo-climate change represents an "ecological black-box" along the evolutionary timeline of spoken language; a vocal hominid went in and, millions of years later, out came a verbal human. It is unknown whether or how a shift from forested, dense habitats towards drier, open ones affected hominid vocal communication, potentially setting stage for speech evolution. To recreate how arboreal proto-vowels and proto-consonants would have interacted with a new ecology at ground level, we assessed how a series of orangutan voiceless consonant-like and voiced vowel-like calls travelled across the savannah. Vowel-like calls performed poorly in comparison to their counterparts. Only consonant-like calls afforded effective perceptibility beyond 100 m distance without requiring repetition, as is characteristic of loud calling behaviour in nonhuman primates, typically composed by vowel-like calls. Results show that proto-consonants in human ancestors may have enhanced reliability of distance vocal communication across a canopy-to-ground ecotone. The ecological settings and soundscapes experienced by human ancestors may have had a more profound impact on the emergence and shape of spoken language than previously recognized.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Russell A Hill
- Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, UK
- Primate and Predator Project, Soutpansberg Mountains, Thohoyandou, South Africa
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa
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7
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Grawunder S, Uomini N, Samuni L, Bortolato T, Girard-Buttoz C, Wittig RM, Crockford C. Correction: 'Chimpanzee vowel-like sounds and voice quality suggest formant space expansion through the hominoid lineage' (2021), by Grawunder et al.. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2023; 378:20230319. [PMID: 37778391 PMCID: PMC10542441 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0319] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2023] [Accepted: 08/16/2023] [Indexed: 10/03/2023] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Sven Grawunder
- Department of Human Behavioural Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Empirical Linguistics, Goethe University, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Natalie Uomini
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Liran Samuni
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, MCZ 540B, USA
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Swiss des Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
| | - Tatiana Bortolato
- Department of Human Behavioural Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, Lyon, France
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Swiss des Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
| | - Cédric Girard-Buttoz
- Department of Human Behavioural Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, Lyon, France
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Swiss des Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
| | - Roman M. Wittig
- Department of Human Behavioural Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Swiss des Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
| | - Catherine Crockford
- Department of Human Behavioural Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, Lyon, France
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Swiss des Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
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8
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Tao Y, Wei Y, Ge J, Pan Y, Wang W, Bi Q, Sheng P, Fu C, Pan W, Jin L, Zheng HX, Zhang M. Phylogenetic evidence reveals early Kra-Dai divergence and dispersal in the late Holocene. Nat Commun 2023; 14:6924. [PMID: 37903755 PMCID: PMC10616200 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42761-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2022] [Accepted: 10/18/2023] [Indexed: 11/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Studying language evolution brings a crucial perspective to bear on questions of human prehistory. As the most linguistically diverse region on earth, East and Southeast Asia have witnessed extensive sociocultural and ethnic contacts among different language communities. Especially, the Kra-Dai language family exhibits tremendous socio-cultural importance in these regions. Due to limited historical accounts, however, there are several controversies on their linguistic relatedness, ambiguities regarding the divergence time, and uncertainties on the dispersal patterns. To address these issues, here we apply Bayesian phylogenetic methods to analyze the largest lexical dataset containing 646 cognate sets compiled for 100 Kra-Dai languages. Our dated phylogenetic tree showed their initial divergence occurring approximately 4000 years BP. Phylogeographic results supported the early Kra-Dai language dispersal from the Guangxi-Guangdong area of South China towards Mainland Southeast Asia. Coupled with genetic, archaeological, paleoecologic, and paleoclimatic data, we demonstrated that the Kra-Dai language diversification could have coincided with their demic diffusion and agricultural spread shaped by the global climate change in the late Holocene. The interdisciplinary alignments shed light on reconstructing the prehistory of Kra-Dai languages and provide an indispensable piece of the puzzle for further studying prehistoric human activities in East and Southeast Asia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuxin Tao
- State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Center for Evolutionary Biology, Human Phenome Institute, Zhangjiang Fudan International Innovation Center, School of Life Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China
| | - Yuancheng Wei
- School of Chinese Language and Literature, Guangxi Minzu University, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nanning, China
| | - Jiaqi Ge
- Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Yan Pan
- Department of Cultural Heritage and Museology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Wenmin Wang
- College of Nationalities, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Qianqi Bi
- College of Communication, East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China
| | - Pengfei Sheng
- Institute of Archaeological Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Changzhong Fu
- College of Nationalities, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Wuyun Pan
- Institute of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- Institute for Humanities and Social Science Data, School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Li Jin
- State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Center for Evolutionary Biology, Human Phenome Institute, Zhangjiang Fudan International Innovation Center, School of Life Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China
| | - Hong-Xiang Zheng
- Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
| | - Menghan Zhang
- Institute of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
- Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
- Research Institute of Intelligent Complex Systems, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
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9
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Levinson SC. Gesture, spatial cognition and the evolution of language. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2023; 378:20210481. [PMID: 36871589 PMCID: PMC9985965 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0481] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2022] [Accepted: 08/03/2022] [Indexed: 03/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Human communication displays a striking contrast between the diversity of languages and the universality of the principles underlying their use in conversation. Despite the importance of this interactional base, it is not obvious that it heavily imprints the structure of languages. However, a deep-time perspective suggests that early hominin communication was gestural, in line with all the other Hominidae. This gestural phase of early language development seems to have left its traces in the way in which spatial concepts, implemented in the hippocampus, provide organizing principles at the heart of grammar. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephen C. Levinson
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, 6525XD, The Netherlands
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10
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Josserand M, Meeussen E, Dediu D, Majid A. Reply to: Sunlight exposure cannot explain "grue" languages. Sci Rep 2023; 13:1837. [PMID: 36725892 PMCID: PMC9892588 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-28281-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2022] [Accepted: 01/16/2023] [Indexed: 02/03/2023] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Mathilde Josserand
- Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Université Lyon 2-CNRS UMR 5596, Lyon, France
| | | | - Dan Dediu
- Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
- University of Barcelona Institute for Complex Systems (UBICS), Barcelona, Spain.
- Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain.
| | - Asifa Majid
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
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11
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Dautriche I, Buccola B, Berthet M, Fagot J, Chemla E. Evidence for compositionality in baboons (Papio papio) through the test case of negation. Sci Rep 2022; 12:19181. [PMID: 36357450 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-21143-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2022] [Accepted: 09/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Can non-human animals combine abstract representations much like humans do with language? In particular, can they entertain a compositional representation such as 'not blue'? Across two experiments, we demonstrate that baboons (Papio papio) show a capacity for compositionality. Experiment 1 showed that baboons can entertain negative, compositional, representations: they can learn to associate a cue with iconically related referents (e.g., a blue patch referring to all blue objects), but also to the complement set associated with it (e.g., a blue patch referring to all non-blue objects). Strikingly, Experiment 2 showed that baboons not only learn to associate a cue with iconically related referents, but can learn to associate complex cues (composed of the same cue and an additional visual element) with the complement object set. Thus, they can learn an operation, instantiated by this additional visual element, that can be compositionally combined with previously learned cues. These results significantly reduce any claim that would make the manipulation and combination of abstract representations a solely human privilege.
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12
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Hobaiter C, Graham KE, Byrne RW. Are ape gestures like words? Outstanding issues in detecting similarities and differences between human language and ape gesture. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2022; 377:20210301. [PMID: 35934962 PMCID: PMC9358316 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0301] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2022] [Accepted: 05/24/2022] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Opinion piece: ape gestures are made intentionally, inviting parallels with human language; but how similar are their gestures to words? Here we ask this in three ways, considering: flexibility and ambiguity, first- and second-order intentionality, and usage in interactive exchanges. Many gestures are used to achieve several, often very distinct, goals. Such apparent ambiguity in meaning is potentially disruptive for communication, but-as with human language-situational and interpersonal context may largely resolve the intended meaning. Our evidence for first-order intentional use of gesture is abundant, but how might we establish a case for the second-order intentional use critical to language? Finally, words are rarely used in tidy signal-response sequences but are exchanged in back-and-forth interaction. Do gestures share this property? In this paper, we examine these questions and set out ways in which they can be resolved, incorporating data from wild chimpanzees. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine Hobaiter
- Origins of Mind Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
| | - Kirsty E. Graham
- Origins of Mind Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
| | - Richard W. Byrne
- Origins of Mind Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
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13
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Lauer G. Language, Childhood, and Fire: How We Learned to Love Sharing Stories. Front Psychol 2022; 12:787203. [PMID: 35153908 PMCID: PMC8828489 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.787203] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2021] [Accepted: 12/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Stories do not fossilize. Thus, exploring tales shared during prehistory, the longest part of human history inevitably becomes speculative. Nevertheless, various attempts have been made to find a more scientifically valid way into our deep human past of storytelling. Following the social brain hypothesis, we suggest including into the theory of human storytelling more fine-grained and evidence-based findings (from archaeology, the cognitive sciences, and evolutionary psychology) about the manifold exaptation and adaptation, genetic changes, and phenotypic plasticity in the deep human past, which all shaped the emergence of storytelling in hominins. We identify three preconditions for humans sharing stories: first, the long evolution of language in the different taxa as one of the preconditions of ostensive signaling; second, the pivotal role of childhood in the evolution of collaborative intentionality; and third, the role of fireside chats in the rise of elaborative (i.e., narrative) sharing of stories. We propose that humans, albeit perhaps no other hominins learned to understand others through sharing stories, not only as intentional agents, but also as mental ones.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gerhard Lauer
- Gutenberg Institute of World Literature and Written Media, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany
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14
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Grawunder S, Uomini N, Samuni L, Bortolato T, Girard-Buttoz C, Wittig RM, Crockford C. Chimpanzee vowel-like sounds and voice quality suggest formant space expansion through the hominoid lineage. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2022; 377:20200455. [PMID: 34775819 PMCID: PMC8591386 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0455] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2021] [Accepted: 09/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
The origins of human speech are obscure; it is still unclear what aspects are unique to our species or shared with our evolutionary cousins, in part due to a lack of a common framework for comparison. We asked what chimpanzee and human vocal production acoustics have in common. We examined visible supra-laryngeal articulators of four major chimpanzee vocalizations (hoos, grunts, barks, screams) and their associated acoustic structures, using techniques from human phonetic and animal communication analysis. Data were collected from wild adult chimpanzees, Taï National Park, Ivory Coast. Both discriminant and principal component classification procedures revealed classification of call types. Discriminating acoustic features include voice quality and formant structure, mirroring phonetic features in human speech. Chimpanzee lip and jaw articulation variables also offered similar discrimination of call types. Formant maps distinguished call types with different vowel-like sounds. Comparing our results with published primate data, humans show less F1-F2 correlation and further expansion of the vowel space, particularly for [i] sounds. Unlike recent studies suggesting monkeys achieve human vowel space, we conclude from our results that supra-laryngeal articulatory capacities show moderate evolutionary change, with vowel space expansion continuing through hominoid evolution. Studies on more primate species will be required to substantiate this. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sven Grawunder
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Empirical Linguistics, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Natalie Uomini
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Liran Samuni
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Ivory Coast
| | - Tatiana Bortolato
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, Lyon, France
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Ivory Coast
| | - Cédric Girard-Buttoz
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, Lyon, France
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Ivory Coast
| | - Roman M. Wittig
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, Lyon, France
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Ivory Coast
| | - Catherine Crockford
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, Lyon, France
- Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP 1303, Ivory Coast
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15
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Robbeets M, Bouckaert R, Conte M, Savelyev A, Li T, An DI, Shinoda KI, Cui Y, Kawashima T, Kim G, Uchiyama J, Dolińska J, Oskolskaya S, Yamano KY, Seguchi N, Tomita H, Takamiya H, Kanzawa-Kiriyama H, Oota H, Ishida H, Kimura R, Sato T, Kim JH, Deng B, Bjørn R, Rhee S, Ahn KD, Gruntov I, Mazo O, Bentley JR, Fernandes R, Roberts P, Bausch IR, Gilaizeau L, Yoneda M, Kugai M, Bianco RA, Zhang F, Himmel M, Hudson MJ, Ning C. Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages. Nature 2021; 599:616-621. [PMID: 34759322 PMCID: PMC8612925 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04108-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2021] [Accepted: 10/07/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The origin and early dispersal of speakers of Transeurasian languages-that is, Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic-is among the most disputed issues of Eurasian population history1-3. A key problem is the relationship between linguistic dispersals, agricultural expansions and population movements4,5. Here we address this question by 'triangulating' genetics, archaeology and linguistics in a unified perspective. We report wide-ranging datasets from these disciplines, including a comprehensive Transeurasian agropastoral and basic vocabulary; an archaeological database of 255 Neolithic-Bronze Age sites from Northeast Asia; and a collection of ancient genomes from Korea, the Ryukyu islands and early cereal farmers in Japan, complementing previously published genomes from East Asia. Challenging the traditional 'pastoralist hypothesis'6-8, we show that the common ancestry and primary dispersals of Transeurasian languages can be traced back to the first farmers moving across Northeast Asia from the Early Neolithic onwards, but that this shared heritage has been masked by extensive cultural interaction since the Bronze Age. As well as marking considerable progress in the three individual disciplines, by combining their converging evidence we show that the early spread of Transeurasian speakers was driven by agriculture.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martine Robbeets
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
| | - Remco Bouckaert
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Centre of Computational Evolution, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Matthew Conte
- Department of Archaeology and Art History, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Alexander Savelyev
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
| | - Tao Li
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Department of Archaeology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
- Archaeological Institute for Yangtze Civilization (AIYC), Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Deog-Im An
- Department of Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Hanseo University, Seosan, Korea
| | - Ken-Ichi Shinoda
- Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Nature and Science, Tsukuba, Japan
| | - Yinqiu Cui
- School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China
- Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology of Jilin University, Jilin University, Changchun, China
| | | | - Geonyoung Kim
- Department of Archaeology and Art History, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Junzo Uchiyama
- Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, Norwich, UK
- Center for Cultural Resource Studies, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan
| | - Joanna Dolińska
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Sofia Oskolskaya
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia
| | - Ken-Yōjiro Yamano
- Research Center for Buried Cultural Properties, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
| | - Noriko Seguchi
- Department of Environmental Changes, Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
- Department of Anthropology, The University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
| | - Hirotaka Tomita
- Hokkaido Government Board of Education, Sapporo, Japan
- Graduate School of Integrated Sciences of Global Society, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
| | - Hiroto Takamiya
- Research Center for the Pacific Islands, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan
| | | | - Hiroki Oota
- Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Hajime Ishida
- Graduate School of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Japan
| | - Ryosuke Kimura
- Graduate School of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Japan
| | - Takehiro Sato
- Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan
| | - Jae-Hyun Kim
- Department of Archaeology and Art History, Donga University, Busan, South Korea
| | - Bingcong Deng
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Rasmus Bjørn
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Seongha Rhee
- Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Kyou-Dong Ahn
- Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Ilya Gruntov
- Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
- National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
| | - Olga Mazo
- Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
- National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
| | - John R Bentley
- Department of World Languages and Cultures, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA
| | - Ricardo Fernandes
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
- School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Patrick Roberts
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Ilona R Bausch
- Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, Norwich, UK
- Leiden University Institute of Area Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands
- Kokugakuin University Museum, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Linda Gilaizeau
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Minoru Yoneda
- University Museum, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Mitsugu Kugai
- Miyakojima City Board of Education, Miyakojima, Japan
| | - Raffaela A Bianco
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Fan Zhang
- School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China
| | - Marie Himmel
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Mark J Hudson
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
- Institut d'Asie Orientale, ENS de Lyon, Lyon, France.
| | - Chao Ning
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
- School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, Beijing, China.
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16
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Gärdenfors P. Causal Reasoning and Event Cognition as Evolutionary Determinants of Language Structure. Entropy (Basel) 2021; 23:e23070843. [PMID: 34209081 PMCID: PMC8305407 DOI: 10.3390/e23070843] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2021] [Revised: 06/10/2021] [Accepted: 06/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
The aim of this article is to provide an evolutionarily grounded explanation of central aspects of the structure of language. It begins with an account of the evolution of human causal reasoning. A comparison between humans and non-human primates suggests that human causal cognition is based on reasoning about the underlying forces that are involved in events, while other primates hardly understand external forces. This is illustrated by an analysis of the causal cognition required for early hominin tool use. Second, the thinking concerning forces in causation is used to motivate a model of human event cognition. A mental representation of an event contains two vectors representing a cause as well as a result but also entities such as agents, patients, instruments and locations. The fundamental connection between event representations and language is that declarative sentences express events (or states). The event structure also explains why sentences are constituted of noun phrases and verb phrases. Finally, the components of the event representation show up in language, where causes and effects are expressed by verbs, agents and patients by nouns (modified by adjectives), locations by prepositions, etc. Thus, the evolution of the complexity of mental event representations also provides insight into the evolution of the structure of language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter Gärdenfors
- Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, LUX, Lund University, Box 192, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden;
- Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg, P.O. Box 524, Auckland Park ZA-2006, South Africa
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17
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Abstract
At the earliest break of ancient hominins from their primate relatives in vocal communication, we propose a selection pressure on vocal fitness signaling by hominin infants. Exploratory vocalizations, not tied to expression of distress or immediate need, could have helped persuade parents of the wellness and viability of the infants who produced them. We hypothesize that hominin parents invested more in infants who produced such signals of fitness plentifully, neglecting or abandoning them less often than infants who produced the sounds less frequently. Selection for such exploratory vocalization provided a critically important inclination and capability relevant to language, we reason, because the system that encouraged spontaneous vocalization also made vocalization functionally flexible to an extent that has not been observed in any other animal. Although this vocal flexibility did not by itself create language, it provided an essential foundation upon which language would evolve through a variety of additional steps. In evaluating this speculation, we consider presumable barriers to evolving language that are thought to be implications of Darwinian Theory. It has been claimed that communication always involves sender self-interest and that self-interest leads to deceit, which is countered through clever detection by receivers. The constant battle of senders and receivers has been thought to pose an insuperable challenge to honest communication, which has been viewed as a requirement of language. To make communication honest, it has been proposed that stable signaling requires costly handicaps for the sender, and since language cannot entail high cost, the reasoning has suggested an insurmountable obstacle to the evolution of language. We think this presumed honesty barrier is an illusion that can be revealed by recognition of the fact that language is not inherently honest and in light of the distinction between illocutionary force and semantics. Our paper also considers barriers to the evolution of language (not having to do with honesty) that we think may have actually played important roles in preventing species other than humans from evolving language.
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Affiliation(s)
- D. Kimbrough Oller
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Institute for Intelligent Systems, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Ulrike Griebel
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Institute for Intelligent Systems, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria
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18
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Abstract
I explore the neural and evolutionary origins of phonological hierarchy, building on Peter MacNeilage's frame/content model, which suggests that human speech evolved from primate nonvocal jaw oscillations, for example, lip smack displays, combined with phonation. Considerable recent data, reviewed here, support this proposition. I argue that the evolution of speech motor control required two independent components. The first, identified by MacNeilage, is the diversification of phonetic "content" within a simple sequential "frame," and would be within reach of nonhuman primates, by simply intermittently activating phonation during lip smack displays. Such voicing control requires laryngeal control, hypothesized to necessitate direct corticomotor connections to the nucleus ambiguus. The second component, proposed here, involves imposing additional hierarchical rhythmic structure upon the "flat" control sequences typifying mammalian vocal tract oscillations and is required for the flexible combinatorial capacity observed in modern phonology. I hypothesize that phonological hierarchy resulted from a marriage of a preexisting capacity for sequential structure seen in other primates, with novel hierarchical motor control circuitry (potentially evolved in tool use and/or musical contexts). In turn, this phonological hierarchy paved the way for phrasal syntactic hierarchy. I support these arguments using comparative and neural data from nonhuman primates and birdsong.
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19
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Fröhlich M, Sievers C, Townsend SW, Gruber T, van Schaik CP. Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2019; 94:1809-1829. [PMID: 31250542 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12535] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/08/2018] [Revised: 05/22/2019] [Accepted: 05/29/2019] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
The presence of divergent and independent research traditions in the gestural and vocal domains of primate communication has resulted in major discrepancies in the definition and operationalization of cognitive concepts. However, in recent years, accumulating evidence from behavioural and neurobiological research has shown that both human and non-human primate communication is inherently multimodal. It is therefore timely to integrate the study of gestural and vocal communication. Herein, we review evidence demonstrating that there is no clear difference between primate gestures and vocalizations in the extent to which they show evidence for the presence of key language properties: intentionality, reference, iconicity and turn-taking. We also find high overlap in the neurobiological mechanisms producing primate gestures and vocalizations, as well as in ontogenetic flexibility. These findings confirm that human language had multimodal origins. Nonetheless, we note that in great apes, gestures seem to fulfil a carrying (i.e. predominantly informative) role in close-range communication, whereas the opposite holds for face-to-face interactions of humans. This suggests an evolutionary shift in the carrying role from the gestural to the vocal stream, and we explore this transition in the carrying modality. Finally, we suggest that future studies should focus on the links between complex communication, sociality and cooperative tendency to strengthen the study of language origins.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marlen Fröhlich
- Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Christine Sievers
- Department of Philosophy and Media Studies, Philosophy Seminar, University of Basel, Holbeinstrasse 12, 4051, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Simon W Townsend
- Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zurich, Plattenstrasse 54, 8032, Zurich, Switzerland.,Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, University Road, CV4 7AL, Coventry, UK
| | - Thibaud Gruber
- Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, CISA, University of Geneva, Chemin des Mines 9, 1202, Geneva, Switzerland.,Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, OX1 3SZ, Oxford, UK
| | - Carel P van Schaik
- Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057, Zurich, Switzerland
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20
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Bryden J, Wright SP, Jansen VAA. How humans transmit language: horizontal transmission matches word frequencies among peers on Twitter. J R Soc Interface 2019; 15:rsif.2017.0738. [PMID: 29436508 DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2017.0738] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2017] [Accepted: 01/15/2018] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Language transmission, the passing on of language features such as words between people, is the process of inheritance that underlies linguistic evolution. To understand how language transmission works, we need a mechanistic understanding based on empirical evidence of lasting change of language usage. Here, we analysed 200 million online conversations to investigate transmission between individuals. We find that the frequency of word usage is inherited over conversations, rather than only the binary presence or absence of a word in a person's lexicon. We propose a mechanism for transmission whereby for each word someone encounters there is a chance they will use it more often. Using this mechanism, we measure that, for one word in around every hundred a person encounters, they will use that word more frequently. As more commonly used words are encountered more often, this means that it is the frequencies of words which are copied. Beyond this, our measurements indicate that this per-encounter mechanism is neutral and applies without any further distinction as to whether a word encountered in a conversation is commonly used or not. An important consequence of this is that frequencies of many words can be used in concert to observe and measure language transmission, and our results confirm this. These results indicate that our mechanism for transmission can be used to study language patterns and evolution within populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- John Bryden
- School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK
| | - Shaun P Wright
- School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK
| | - Vincent A A Jansen
- School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK
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21
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Abstract
There are many theories surrounding infant imitation; however, there is no research to our knowledge evaluating the reliability of listener perception of vocal imitation in prelinguistic infants. This paper evaluates intra- and inter-rater judgments on the degree of “imitativeness” in utterances of infants below 12 months of age. 18 listeners were presented audio segments selected from naturalistic recordings to represent in each case a parent vocal model followed by an infant utterance ranging from low to high degrees of imitativeness. The naturalistic data suggested vocal imitation occurred rarely across the first year, but strong intra- and inter-rater correlations were found for judgments of imitativeness. Our results suggest salience of the infant's vocal imitation despite its rare occurrence as well as active perception by listeners of the imitative signal. We discuss infant vocal imitation as a potential signal of well-being as perceived by caregivers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Helen L Long
- Infant Vocalizations Laboratory, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
| | - D Kimbrough Oller
- Infant Vocalizations Laboratory, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States.,Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria.,Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
| | - Dale A Bowman
- Department of Mathematical Sciences HL, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
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22
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Oller DK, Griebel U, Iyer SN, Jhang Y, Warlaumont AS, Dale R, Call J. Language Origins Viewed in Spontaneous and Interactive Vocal Rates of Human and Bonobo Infants. Front Psychol 2019; 10:729. [PMID: 31001176 PMCID: PMC6455048 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00729] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/16/2019] [Accepted: 03/15/2019] [Indexed: 01/18/2023] Open
Abstract
From the first months of life, human infants produce "protophones," speech-like, non-cry sounds, presumed absent, or only minimally present in other apes. But there have been no direct quantitative comparisons to support this presumption. In addition, by 2 months, human infants show sustained face-to-face interaction using protophones, a pattern thought also absent or very limited in other apes, but again, without quantitative comparison. Such comparison should provide evidence relevant to determining foundations of language, since substantially flexible vocalization, the inclination to explore vocalization, and the ability to interact socially by means of vocalization are foundations for language. Here we quantitatively compare data on vocalization rates in three captive bonobo (Pan paniscus) mother-infant pairs with various sources of data from our laboratories on human infant vocalization. Both humans and bonobos produced distress sounds (cries/screams) and laughter. The bonobo infants also produced sounds that were neither screams nor laughs and that showed acoustic similarities to the human protophones. These protophone-like sounds confirm that bonobo infants share with humans the capacity to produce vocalizations that appear foundational for language. Still, there were dramatic differences between the species in both quantity and function of the protophone and protophone-like sounds. The bonobo protophone-like sounds were far less frequent than the human protophones, and the human protophones were far less likely to be interpreted as complaints and more likely as vocal play. Moreover, we found extensive vocal interaction between human infants and mothers, but no vocal interaction in the bonobo mother-infant pairs-while bonobo mothers were physically responsive to their infants, we observed no case of a bonobo mother vocalization directed to her infant. Our cross-species comparison focuses on low- and moderate-arousal circumstances because we reason the roots of language entail vocalization not triggered by excitement, for example, during fighting or intense play. Language appears to be founded in flexible vocalization, used to regulate comfortable social interaction, to share variable affective states at various levels of arousal, and to explore vocalization itself.
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Affiliation(s)
- D. Kimbrough Oller
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Ulrike Griebel
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States
- Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Suneeti Nathani Iyer
- Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States
| | - Yuna Jhang
- Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
| | - Anne S. Warlaumont
- Department of Communication, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Rick Dale
- Department of Communication, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Josep Call
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, United Kingdom
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
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23
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Abstract
Music is a peculiar human behavior, yet we still know little as to why and how music emerged. For centuries, the study of music has been the sole prerogative of the humanities. Lately, however, music is being increasingly investigated by psychologists, neuroscientists, biologists, and computer scientists. One approach to studying the origins of music is to empirically test hypotheses about the mechanisms behind this structured behavior. Recent lab experiments show how musical rhythm and melody can emerge via the process of cultural transmission. In particular, Lumaca and Baggio (2017) tested the emergence of a sound system at the boundary between music and language. In this study, participants were given random pairs of signal-meanings; when participants negotiated their meaning and played a "game of telephone" with them, these pairs became more structured and systematic. Over time, the small biases introduced in each artificial transmission step accumulated, displaying quantitative trends, including the emergence, over the course of artificial human generations, of features resembling properties of language and music. In this Note, we highlight the importance of Lumaca and Baggio's experiment, place it in the broader literature on the evolution of language and music, and suggest refinements for future experiments. We conclude that, while psychological evidence for the emergence of proto-musical features is accumulating, complementary work is needed: Mathematical modeling and computer simulations should be used to test the internal consistency of experimentally generated hypotheses and to make new predictions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Ravignani
- Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Language and Cognition Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; and Research Department, Sealcentre Pieterburen.
| | - Tessa Verhoef
- Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University; and Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego.
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24
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Abstract
In their commentary on our work, Ravignani and Verhoef (2018) raise concerns about two methodological aspects of our experimental paradigm (the signaling game): (1) the use of melodic signals of fixed length and duration, and (2) the fact that signals are endowed with meaning. They argue that music is hardly a semantic system and that our methodological choices may limit the capacity of our paradigm to shed light on the emergence and evolution of a number of putative musical universals. We reply that musical systems are semantic systems and that the aim of our research is not to study musical universals as such, but to compare more closely the kinds of principles that organize meaning and structure in linguistic and musical systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Massimo Lumaca
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University; and The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg.
| | - Giosuè Baggio
- Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab, Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
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25
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Ravignani A, Thompson B, Filippi P. The Evolution of Musicality: What Can Be Learned from Language Evolution Research? Front Neurosci 2018; 12:20. [PMID: 29467601 PMCID: PMC5808206 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/15/2017] [Accepted: 01/10/2018] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Language and music share many commonalities, both as natural phenomena and as subjects of intellectual inquiry. Rather than exhaustively reviewing these connections, we focus on potential cross-pollination of methodological inquiries and attitudes. We highlight areas in which scholarship on the evolution of language may inform the evolution of music. We focus on the value of coupled empirical and formal methodologies, and on the futility of mysterianism, the declining view that the nature, origins and evolution of language cannot be addressed empirically. We identify key areas in which the evolution of language as a discipline has flourished historically, and suggest ways in which these advances can be integrated into the study of the evolution of music.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Ravignani
- Department of Language and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
- Research Department, Sealcentre Pieterburen, Pieterburen, Netherlands
| | - Bill Thompson
- Department of Language and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
| | - Piera Filippi
- Department of Language and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Institute of Language, Communication and the Brain, Aix-en-Provence, France
- Laboratoire Parole et Langage LPL UMR 7309, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université, Aix-en-Provence, France
- Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive LPC UMR7290, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
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Prat Y, Taub M, Pratt E, Yovel Y. An annotated dataset of Egyptian fruit bat vocalizations across varying contexts and during vocal ontogeny. Sci Data 2017; 4:170143. [PMID: 28972574 PMCID: PMC5625625 DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2017.143] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2017] [Accepted: 08/03/2017] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Animal acoustic communication research depends on our ability to record the vocal behaviour of different species. Only rarely do we have the opportunity to continuously follow the vocal behaviour of a group of individuals of the same species for a long period of time. Here, we provide a database of Egyptian fruit bat vocalizations, which were continuously recorded in the lab in several groups simultaneously for more than a year. The dataset includes almost 300,000 files, a few seconds each, containing social vocalizations and representing the complete vocal repertoire used by the bats in the experiment period. Around 90,000 files are annotated with details about the individuals involved in the vocal interactions, their behaviours and the context. Moreover, the data include the complete vocal ontogeny of pups, from birth to adulthood, in different conditions (e.g., isolated or in a group). We hope that this comprehensive database will stimulate studies that will enhance our understanding of bat, and mammal, social vocal communication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yosef Prat
- Department of Zoology, Faculty of Life sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Mor Taub
- Department of Zoology, Faculty of Life sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Ester Pratt
- Department of Zoology, Faculty of Life sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Yossi Yovel
- Department of Zoology, Faculty of Life sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
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Turoman N, Styles SJ. Glyph guessing for 'oo' and 'ee': spatial frequency information in sound symbolic matching for ancient and unfamiliar scripts. R Soc Open Sci 2017; 4:170882. [PMID: 28989784 PMCID: PMC5627124 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.170882] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2017] [Accepted: 08/14/2017] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
In three experiments, we asked whether diverse scripts contain interpretable information about the speech sounds they represent. When presented with a pair of unfamiliar letters, adult readers correctly guess which is /i/ (the 'ee' sound in 'feet'), and which is /u/ (the 'oo' sound in 'shoe') at rates higher than expected by chance, as shown in a large sample of Singaporean university students (Experiment 1) and replicated in a larger sample of international Internet users (Experiment 2). To uncover what properties of the letters contribute to different scripts' 'guessability,' we analysed the visual spatial frequencies in each letter (Experiment 3). We predicted that the lower spectral frequencies in the formants of the vowel /u/ would pattern with lower spatial frequencies in the corresponding letters. Instead, we found that across all spatial frequencies, the letter with more black/white cycles (i.e. more ink) was more likely to be guessed as /u/, and the larger the difference between the glyphs in a pair, the higher the script's guessability. We propose that diverse groups of humans across historical time and geographical space tend to employ similar iconic strategies for representing speech in visual form, and provide norms for letter pairs from 56 diverse scripts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nora Turoman
- Department of Radiology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) and University of Lausanne (UniL), Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland
- Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) and University of Lausanne (UniL), Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Suzy J. Styles
- Division of Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore
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Abstract
We review Berwick and Chomsky's Why Only Us, Language and Evolution, a book premised on language as an instrument primarily of thought, only secondarily of communication. The authors conclude that a Universal Grammar can be reduced to three biologically isolated components, whose computational system for syntax was the result of a single mutation that occurred about 80,000 years ago. We question that argument because it ignores the origin of words, even though Berwick and Chomsky acknowledge that words evolved before grammar. It also fails to explain what evolutionary problem language uniquely solved (Wallace's question). To answer that question, we review recent discoveries about the ontogeny and phylogeny of words. Ontogenetically, two modes of nonverbal relation between infant and mother begin at or within 6 months of birth that are crucial antecedents of the infant's first words: intersubjectivity and joint attention. Intersubjectivity refers to rhythmic shared affect between infant and caretaker(s) that develop during the first 6 months. When the infant begins to crawl, they begin to attend jointly to environmental objects. Phylogenetically, Hrdy and Bickerton describe aspects of Homo erectus' ecology and cognition that facilitated the evolution of words. Hrdy shows how cooperative breeding established trust between infant and caretakers, laying the groundwork for a community of mutual trust among adults. Bickerton shows how 'confrontational scavenging' led to displaced reference, whereby an individual communicated the nature of a dead animal and its location to members of the group that could not see it. Thus, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, the original function of language was primarily an instrument of communication. Rejecting Berwick and Chomsky's answer to Wallace's question that syntax afforded better planning and inference, we endorse Bickerton's view that language enabled speakers to refer to objects not immediately present. Thus arose context-free mental representations, unique to human language and thought.
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Abstract
Donald proposes that early Homo evolved mimesis as a new form of cognition. This article investigates the mimesis hypothesis in relation to the evolution of teaching. The fundamental capacities that distinguish hominin teaching from that of other animals are demonstration and pantomime. A conceptual analysis of the instructional and communicative functions of demonstration and pantomime is presented. Archaeological evidence that demonstration was used for transmitting the Oldowan technology is summarized. It is argued that pantomime develops out of demonstration so that the primary objective of pantomime is that the onlooker learns the motoric patterns shown in the pantomime. The communicative use of pantomime is judged to be secondary. This use of pantomime is also contrasted with other forms of gestures. A key feature of the analysis is that the meaning of a pantomime is characterized by the force patterns of the movements. These force patterns form the core of a model of the cognitive mechanism behind pantomime. Finally, the role of pantomime in the evolution of language is also discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter Gärdenfors
- Cognitive Science, Lund UniversityLund, Sweden; Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, Wallenberg Research CentreStellenbosch, South Africa
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Jaeggi AV, Kramer KL, Hames R, Kiely EJ, Gomes C, Kaplan H, Gurven M. Human grooming in comparative perspective: People in six small-scale societies groom less but socialize just as much as expected for a typical primate. Am J Phys Anthropol 2017; 162:810-816. [PMID: 28164267 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23164] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/03/2016] [Revised: 12/15/2016] [Accepted: 12/18/2016] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Grooming has important utilitarian and social functions in primates but little is known about grooming and its functional analogues in traditional human societies. We compare human grooming to typical primate patterns to test its hygienic and social functions. MATERIALS AND METHODS Bayesian phylogenetic analyses were used to derive expected human grooming time given the potential associations between grooming, group size, body size, terrestriality, and several climatic variables across 69 primate species. This was compared against observed times dedicated to grooming, other hygienic behavior, and conversation among the Maya, Pumé, Sanöma, Tsimane', Yanomamö, and Ye'kwana (mean number of behavioral scans = 23,514). RESULTS Expected grooming time for humans was 4% (95% Credible Interval = 0.07%-14%), similar to values observed in primates, based largely on terrestriality and phylogenetic signal (mean λ = 0.56). No other covariates strongly associated with grooming across primates. Observed grooming time across societies was 0.8%, lower than 89% of the expected values. However, the observed times dedicated to any hygienic behavior (3.0%) or "vocal grooming," that is conversation (7.3%), fell within the expected range. CONCLUSIONS We found (i) that human grooming may be a (recent) phylogenetic outlier when defined narrowly as parasite removal but not defined broadly as personal hygiene, (ii) there was no support for thermoregulatory functions of grooming, and (iii) no support for the "vocal grooming" hypothesis of language having evolved as a less time-consuming means of bonding. Thus, human grooming reflects decreased hygienic needs, but similar social needs compared to primate grooming.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adrian V Jaeggi
- Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 30322
| | - Karen L Kramer
- Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84112
| | - Raymond Hames
- Department of Anthropology, University of Nebraska Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68588
| | - Evan J Kiely
- Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 30322
| | - Cristina Gomes
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, 33124
| | - Hillard Kaplan
- Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87131
| | - Michael Gurven
- Department of Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, 93106
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Abstract
This article proposes that what have been historically and contemporarily defined as different domains of human cognition are served by one of four functionally- and structurally-distinct areas of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Their contributions to human intelligence are as follows: (a) BA9, enables our emotional intelligence, engaging the psychosocial domain; (b) BA47, enables our practical intelligence, engaging the material domain; (c) BA46 (or BA46-9/46), enables our abstract intelligence, engaging the hypothetical domain; and (d) BA10, enables our temporal intelligence, engaging in planning within any of the other three domains. Given their unique contribution to human cognition, it is proposed that these areas be called the, social (BA9), material (BA47), abstract (BA46-9/46) and temporal (BA10) mind. The evidence that BA47 participates strongly in verbal and gestural communication suggests that language evolved primarily as a consequence of the extreme selective pressure for practicality; an observation supported by the functional connectivity between BA47 and orbital areas that negatively reinforce lying. It is further proposed that the abstract mind (BA46-9/46) is the primary seat of metacognition charged with creating adaptive behavioral strategies by generating higher-order concepts (hypotheses) from lower-order concepts originating from the other three domains of cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter J Snow
- School of Medical Science, Griffith University Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
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Ravignani A, Fitch WT, Hanke FD, Heinrich T, Hurgitsch B, Kotz SA, Scharff C, Stoeger AS, de Boer B. What Pinnipeds Have to Say about Human Speech, Music, and the Evolution of Rhythm. Front Neurosci 2016; 10:274. [PMID: 27378843 PMCID: PMC4913109 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2016.00274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/04/2016] [Accepted: 05/31/2016] [Indexed: 12/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Research on the evolution of human speech and music benefits from hypotheses and data generated in a number of disciplines. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the high relevance of pinniped research for the study of speech, musical rhythm, and their origins, bridging and complementing current research on primates and birds. We briefly discuss speech, vocal learning, and rhythm from an evolutionary and comparative perspective. We review the current state of the art on pinniped communication and behavior relevant to the evolution of human speech and music, showing interesting parallels to hypotheses on rhythmic behavior in early hominids. We suggest future research directions in terms of species to test and empirical data needed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Ravignani
- Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit BrusselBrussels, Belgium; Sensory and Cognitive Ecology, Institute for Biosciences, University of RostockRostock, Germany
| | - W Tecumseh Fitch
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna Vienna, Austria
| | - Frederike D Hanke
- Sensory and Cognitive Ecology, Institute for Biosciences, University of Rostock Rostock, Germany
| | - Tamara Heinrich
- Sensory and Cognitive Ecology, Institute for Biosciences, University of Rostock Rostock, Germany
| | | | - Sonja A Kotz
- Basic and Applied NeuroDynamics Lab, Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Maastricht UniversityMaastricht, Netherlands; Department of Neuropsychology, Max-Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain SciencesLeipzig, Germany
| | - Constance Scharff
- Department of Animal Behavior, Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
| | - Angela S Stoeger
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna Vienna, Austria
| | - Bart de Boer
- Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Brussels, Belgium
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Abstract
A number of recent studies have revealed correspondences between song- and language-related neural structures, pathways, and gene expression in humans and songbirds. Analyses of vocal learning, song structure, and the distribution of song elements have similarly revealed a remarkable number of shared characteristics with human speech. This article reviews recent developments in the understanding of these issues with reference to the phonological phenomena observed in human language. This investigation suggests that birds possess a host of abilities necessary for human phonological computation, as evidenced by behavioral, neuroanatomical, and molecular genetic studies. Vocal-learning birds therefore present an excellent model for studying some areas of human phonology, though differences in the primitives of song and language as well as the absence of a human-like morphosyntax make human phonology differ from birdsong phonology in crucial ways.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bridget D Samuels
- Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Pomona College Claremont, CA, USA ; Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA
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Abstract
Our core hypothesis is that the emergence of our species-specific language-ready brain ought to be understood in light of the developmental changes expressed at the levels of brain morphology and neural connectivity that occurred in our species after the split from Neanderthals–Denisovans and that gave us a more globular braincase configuration. In addition to changes at the cortical level, we hypothesize that the anatomical shift that led to globularity also entailed significant changes at the subcortical level. We claim that the functional consequences of such changes must also be taken into account to gain a fuller understanding of our linguistic capacity. Here we focus on the thalamus, which we argue is central to language and human cognition, as it modulates fronto-parietal activity. With this new neurobiological perspective in place, we examine its possible molecular basis. We construct a candidate gene set whose members are involved in the development and connectivity of the thalamus, in the evolution of the human head, and are known to give rise to language-associated cognitive disorders. We submit that the new gene candidate set opens up new windows into our understanding of the genetic basis of our linguistic capacity. Thus, our hypothesis aims at generating new testing grounds concerning core aspects of language ontogeny and phylogeny.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cedric Boeckx
- Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies and Research (ICREA) Barcelona, Spain ; Department of Linguistics, Universitat de Barcelona Barcelona, Spain
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Abstract
This paper defends a gestural origins hypothesis about the evolution of enhanced communication and language in the hominin lineage. The paper shows that we can develop an incremental model of language evolution on that hypothesis, but not if we suppose that language originated in an expansion of great ape vocalization. On the basis of the gestural origins hypothesis, the paper then advances solutions to four classic problems about the evolution of language: (i) why did language evolve only in the hominin lineage? (ii) why is language use an evolutionarily stable form of informational cooperation, despite the fact that hominins have diverging evolutionary interests? (iii) how did stimulus independent symbols emerge? (iv) what were the origins of complex, syntactically organized symbols? The paper concludes by confronting two challenges: those of testability and of explaining the gesture-to-speech transition; crucial issues for any gestural origins hypothesis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kim Sterelny
- Department of Philosophy and Tempo and Mode, Australian National University, Australia.
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36
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Abstract
The evolution of language required elaboration of a number of independent mechanisms in the hominin lineage, including systems involved in signaling, semantics, and syntax. Two perspectives on the evolution of syntax can be contrasted. The “continuist” perspective seeks the evolutionary roots of complex human syntax in simpler combinatory systems used in animal communication systems, such as iteration and sequencing. The “exaptationist” perspective posits evolutionary change of function, so that systems today used for linguistic communication might previously have served quite different functions in earlier hominids. I argue that abundant biological evidence supports an exaptationist perspective, in general, and that it must be taken seriously when considering language evolution. When applied to syntax, this suggests that core computational components used today in language could have originally served non-linguistic functions such as motor control, non-verbal thought, or spatial reasoning. I outline three specific exaptationist hypotheses for spoken language. These three hypotheses each posit a change of functionality in a precursor circuit, and its transformation into a neural circuit or region specifically involved in language today. Hypothesis 1 suggests that the precursor mechanism for intentional vocal control, specifically direct cortical control over the larynx, was manual motor control subserved by the cortico-spinal tract. The second is that the arcuate fasciculus, which today connects syntactic and lexical regions, had its origin in intracortical connections subserving vocal imitation. The third is that the specialized components of Broca’s area, specifically BA 45, had their origins in non-linguistic motor control, and specifically hierarchical planning of action. I conclude by illustrating the importance of both homology (studied via primates) and convergence (typically analyzed in birds) for testing such evolutionary hypotheses.
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Affiliation(s)
- W Tecumseh Fitch
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna Vienna, Austria
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