Artifacts, Analogy, and Metaphor: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Studying the Evolution of Analogy.

GENERAL COMMENTARY article Front. Psychol., 12 November 2015Sec. Comparative Psychology Volume 6 - 2015 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01700

Evolving pragmatics

Etude des deux formes de communication utilisee par les humains : le langage et la communication non verbale ; cette derniere forme etant utilisee par les primates pour communiquer. Commentaires, reponse de l'auteur.

Reviewed by: The evolution of human language: Biolinguistic perspectives Jean-Louis Dessalles The evolution of human language: Biolinguistic perspectives. Ed. by Richard K. Larson, Viviane Déprez, and Hiroko Yamakido. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. 269. ISBN 9780521736251. $40.99. Where does human language come from? The 'greatest problem in science', according to Bickerton (2009), remains a mystery. This new volume offers a partial but important map of current [End Page 411] ideas on the problem. The book is stimulating because of the issues it raises and surprising in the issues it ignores. The book is organized as a debate around the oft-cited paper by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002), reprinted in the first chapter. In this paper as well as in his original contribution to the current volume, 'Some simple evo-devo theses: How true might they be for language?' (Ch. 2), Noam Chomsky accepts a position restricting the part of the language faculty that is unique to humans down to the sole recursive processing ability. In other words, Chomsky would not be very surprised if everything about language were mere cultural invention, except the Merge operation, which keeps its innate nature and would have appeared by pure chance. Chomsky claims that Merge would have served as support for predicate argument structure, thus enabling a language of thought; only then would syntactic movement have been implemented, again through the Merge operation, for externalization purposes. Some contributors, such as W. Tecumseh Fitch (Ch. 4, 'Three meanings of "recursion": Key distinctions for biolinguistics') and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Ch. 10, 'What is language, that it might have evolved, and what is evolution that it may apply to language?'), follow Chomsky in this syntactocentric view of language origin. Others, including Ray Jackendoff (Ch. 3, 'Your theory of the evolution of language depends on your theory of language') and Derek Bick-erton (Ch. 14, 'On two incompatible theories of language evolution'), oppose it. For them, the ability to form predicates came first or in parallel. Predicates are the support of a new form of meaning, unknown to animals, that syntax merely helps connect to phonology. Syntax is not even necessary to link meaning to sound, as is demonstrated by the possibility of protolanguage, a notion invented by Bickerton (1990) that can convey reference through multi-metonymy (Dessalles 2008). Piattelli-Palmarini, however, denies this possibility, claiming that words without syntax are an empty notion, as would be color devoid of hue, saturation, and brightness. The volume also offers a different perspective that may seem refreshing to linguists. We learn from Philip Lieberman (Ch. 11, 'The creative capacity of language, in what manner is it unique, and who had it?') that the most important brain structures devoted to language might be subcortical. Will this perhaps lead to the end of Broca's and Wernicke's primacy? Karin Stromswold (Ch. 12, 'Genetics and the evolution of language: What genetic studies reveal about the evolution of language') reminds us of the obvious: that performance, not competence, is what natural selection acts upon. And linguistic performance is far from being equally shared. Studies on twins reveal, for instance, that syntactic fluency might be in part genetically controlled, and in a gradual way. Many readers will appreciate that some of the authors engage in functional thinking. Studying linguistic structures and linguistic devices is commendable, and asking what these structures are useful for is equally essential from a reverse-engineering perspective. Dan Sperber and Gloria Origgi (Ch. 8, 'A pragmatic perspective on the evolution of language') suggest that the ability to form predicates—to form thoughts with variables such as 'x-drink-y'—opens the way to inferential communication. Animals are stuck with using precoded meanings, whereas human beings go through an interpreting phase in which they have to assign logical roles to concepts. Predicates, thanks to the necessity of interpretation, open up communication to an infinity of meanings. Syntax also is given a functional role by Bickerton and Jackendoff: it is a tool for expressing predicative thought. I would like more functional analyses like this. For most of the...

BOOK REVIEW article Front. Psychol., 18 July 2012Sec. Comparative Psychology Volume 3 - 2012 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00250

Reviewed by: Language evolution ed. by Morten H. Christiansen and Simon Kirby Stephen R. Anderson Language evolution. Ed. by Morten H. Christiansen and Simon Kirby. (Studies in the evolution of language.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xviii, 395. ISBN 0199244839. $165 (Hb). A great many discussions of the evolution of human language enjoy pointing out the celebrated clause in the 1866 constitution of the Société de linguistique de Paris (SLP) to the effect that ‘[l]a Société n’admet aucune communication concernant … l’origine du langage’.1 This is usually presented simply as a quaint eccentricity on the part of those silly French, but there is more to it than that. In fact, the sentence in question goes on to prohibit with equal force any discussion of ‘la création d’une langue universelle’2 such as Esperanto or Volapük, and we may well ask what these two topics have in common. Unfortunately, the original discussion by the charter members of the SLP is not preserved.3 It is not hard, though, to see a commonality in the fact that both topics conduce to discussion that tends to proceed on the basis of aesthetics and personal opinion alone, unconstrained by the inconvenience of external facts; and the SLP proposed to devote its attention to the science of language. Whether we judge that the French were all that silly after all depends on the extent to which we feel we can conduct discussions about the evolution of language on a genuinely scientific basis. We certainly know a great deal more in a great many relevant areas than in 1866: biological [End Page 894] anthropology, neurophysiology, animal communication and cognition, and linguistics itself, including sign language studies, to name only a few. The topic has been enthusiastically taken up by a great many card-carrying scientists, and books about it (such as this one) are reviewed in Science (and by a linguist, no less: Carstairs-McCarthy 2004). One might presume, then, that the onus has shifted to those who would mock the discussion of language origins as the mere spinning of ‘just-so’ stories. The editors of this collection certainly believe this is the case, and their goal here is to provide ‘the foundation for courses on the evolution of language’ (vii) by establishing the basis of the subject in the science of a number of neighboring disciplines. To some extent, they surely succeed. It is fair to ask, however (with Frederick Newmeyer and Derek Bickerton in this collection), whether the resulting discussion is equally well grounded in the science of language itself. Surely a prerequisite for any treatment of the evolution of human language is an understanding of just what has evolved and from what origins (if any). We know, that is, that in the absence of severe pathology, every normal human acquires and uses language naturally, along a path that at least resembles other aspects of maturation (Anderson & Lightfoot 2002). By contrast, no nonhuman animal can be brought to control more than the most elementary aspects of such a system, even with extensive training (Anderson 2004). It seems apparent that some combination of factors that are part of our species-specific biology underlies this difference. The task, then, is to determine what those factors are, what antecedents (if any) they may have had in species ancestral to our own, and how evolutionary pressures have shaped these antecedents so as to yield the ‘language organ’ with which we are endowed. Anyone who thinks that the research agenda in the study of language evolution should be clear from these considerations need only consult Hauser et al. 2002, Pinker and Jackendoff’s (2005) reply to that article, and Fitch and colleagues’ (2005) rejoinder, to be disabused of that notion. Here, as elsewhere in the literature, some confusion results from the fact that in understanding the explicanda of language evolution research, some scholars see the delineation of aspects of the language faculty that have risen completely de novo in human evolution as the central problem, while others focus equally on factors that have evolved in a distinctive way related to language, whether or not they have homologues in other species...

Human language is a salient example of a neurocognitive system that is specialized to process complex dependencies between sensory events distributed in time, yet how this system evolved and specialized remains unclear. Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) studies have generated a wealth of insights into how human adults and infants process different types of sequencing dependencies of varying complexity. The AGL paradigm has also been adopted to examine the sequence processing abilities of nonhuman animals. We critically evaluate this growing literature in species ranging from mammals (primates and rats) to birds (pigeons, songbirds, and parrots) considering also cross‐species comparisons. The findings are contrasted with seminal studies in human infants that motivated the work in nonhuman animals. This synopsis identifies advances in knowledge and where uncertainty remains regarding the various strategies that nonhuman animals can adopt for processing sequencing dependencies. The paucity of evidence in the few species studied to date and the need for follow‐up experiments indicate that we do not yet understand the limits of animal sequence processing capacities and thereby the evolutionary pattern. This vibrant, yet still budding, field of research carries substantial promise for advancing knowledge on animal abilities, cognitive substrates, and language evolution.

Language origin from simulation of language evolution: Comment on “Modeling the cultural evolution of language” by Luc Steels

Investigation into the evolution of human language has involved evidence of many different kinds and approaches from many different disciplines. For full modern language, humans must have evolved a range of physical abilities for the production of our complex speech sounds, as well as sophisticated cognitive abilities. Human speech involves free‐flowing, intricately varied, rapid sound sequences suitable for the fast transfer of complex, highly flexible communication. Some aspects of human speech, such as our ability to manipulate the vocal tract to produce a wide range of different types of sounds that form vowels and consonants, have attracted considerable attention from those interested in the evolution of language.1, 2 However, one very important contributory skill, the human ability to attain very fine control of breathing during speech, has been neglected. Here we present evidence of the importance of breathing control to human speech, as well as evidence that our capabilities greatly exceed those of nonhuman primates. Human speech breathing demands fine neurological control of the respiratory muscles, integrated with cognitive processes and other factors. Evidence from comparison of the vertebral canals of fossil hominids and those of extant primates suggests that a major increase in thoracic innervation evolved in later hominid evolution, providing enhanced breathing control. If that is so, then earlier hominids would have had quite restricted speech patterns, whereas more recent hominids, with human‐like breath control abilities, would have been capable of faster, more varied speech sequences.

GENERAL COMMENTARY article Front. Psychol., 10 November 2015Sec. Comparative Psychology Volume 6 - 2015 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01729

Category learning gives rise to category formation, which is a crucial ability in human cognition. Category learning is also one of the required learning abilities in language development. Understanding the evolution of category learning thus can shed light on the evolution of human cognition and language. The current paper emphasizes its foundational role in language evolution by reviewing behavioral and neurological studies on category learning across species. In doing so, we first review studies on the critical role of category learning in learning sounds, words, and grammatical patterns of language. Next, from a comparative perspective, we review studies on category learning conducted on different species of nonhuman animals, including invertebrates and vertebrates, suggesting that category learning displays evolutionary continuity. Then, from a neurological perspective, we focus on the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia. Reviewing the involvement of these structures in vertebrates and the proposed homologous brain structure to the basal ganglia in invertebrates in category learning, as well as in language processing in humans, suggests that the neural basis of category learning likely has an ancient origin dating back to invertebrates. With evidence from both behavioral and neurological levels in both nonhuman animals and humans, we conclude that category learning lays a crucial cognitive foundation for language evolution.

For many years the evolution of language has been seen as a disreputable topic, mired in fanciful “just so stories” about language origins. However, in the last decade a new synthesis of modern linguistics, cognitive neuroscience and neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has begun to make important contributions to our understanding of the biology and evolution of language. I review some of this recent progress, focusing on the value of the comparative method, which uses data from animal species to draw inferences about language evolution. Discussing speech first, I show how data concerning a wide variety of species, from monkeys to birds, can increase our understanding of the anatomical and neural mechanisms underlying human spoken language, and how bird and whale song provide insights into the ultimate evolutionary function of language. I discuss the “descended larynx” of humans, a peculiar adaptation for speech that has received much attention in the past, which despite earlier claims is not uniquely human. Then I will turn to the neural mechanisms underlying spoken language, pointing out the difficulties animals apparently experience in perceiving hierarchical structure in sounds, and stressing the importance of vocal imitation in the evolution of a spoken language. Turning to ultimate function, I suggest that communication among kin (especially between parents and offspring) played a crucial but neglected role in driving language evolution. Finally, I briefly discuss phylogeny, discussing hypotheses that offer plausible routes to human language from a non-linguistic chimp-like ancestor. I conclude that comparative data from living animals will be key to developing a richer, more interdisciplinary understanding of our most distinctively human trait: language.

The evolution of language has developed into a large research field. Two questions are particularly relevant for this strand of research: firstly, how did the human capacity for language emerge? And secondly, which processes of cultural evolution are involved both in the evolution of human language from non-linguistic communication and in the continued evolution of human languages? Much research on language evolution that addresses these two questions is highly compatible with the usage-based approach to language pursued in cognitive linguistics. Focusing on key topics such as comparing human language and animal communication, experimental approaches to language evolution, and evolutionary dynamics in language, this Element gives an overview of the current state-of-the-art of language evolution research and discusses how cognitive linguistics and research on the evolution of language can cross-fertilise each other. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Comparative psychology is the study of behavior and cognition across species. In recent decades, much of this research has focused on cognitive capacities that are well studied in humans. This approach provides comparative perspectives on the evolution of these cognitive capacities. Although in many areas humans shows distinct aspects of various cognitive processes, it is clear that for most major topics in human cognition, important and illustrative data are available from studies with other animals. Moreover, these areas of investigation increasingly show continuities between the behavior of other species and human behavior. Several of these cognitive processes, including concept and category learning, numerical cognition, memory, mental time travel and prospective cognition, metacognition, and language learning, highlight these continuities and demonstrate the richness of mental lives in other animals. Nonhuman animals can discriminate between categories of perceptual and conceptual classes, they can form concepts, and they can use those concepts to guide decision making and choice behavior. Other species can engage in rudimentary numerical cognition, and more importantly share with humans certain core quantitative abilities for the approximate representation of magnitude and number. Nonhuman animals share many phenomena of memory that are well-recognized in humans, and in some cases may even share the capacity to mentally re-experience the past and to anticipate and plan for the future. In some cases, some species may even reflect on their own knowledge states, memory accessibility, and perceptual acuity as they make metacognitive judgments. And, studies of animal communication provided the basis for intensive assessments of language-like behavior in certain species. Taken together, these results argue much more for continuity than discontinuity. This should not be seen as a challenge to the uniqueness of human minds, but rather as a way to better understand how we became the species we are through the process of evolution.

Many of language's components, including communicating symbolic meaning, have neurobiological roots that go back millions of years in evolutionary time. The intersection with the human social survival strategy spawned additional adaptive meaning systems. Under conditions threatening survival in socially oriented human groups, extra-language meaning systems co-opted and adapted to facilitate unity, including the early formats of the arts. They would have percolated into cultural practice for this social purpose and ultimately survival. With evolutionary pressures tapping into biologically inherited, physiologically functioning sensory-motor pathways, anchored specifically in rhythm cognition and motor synchrony output, initial art practice conveyed symbolic group cohesion through communal, all-inclusive synchronously moving dance formations and rhythmically produced vocal or percussion sounds. As with the sounds of language in the deep past, and numerous other cultural behaviors, such nonmaterial early art formats would not have left marks in the archeological record but their evolutionary driven practice would have contributed to adaptive genetic factors woven into brain-behavior evolution. Their practice is likely to have well predated unearthed art-related objects. Consolidation of evidence and notions from language evolution, genetics, human physiology, comparative animal communication, archeology, and climate history in the distant past of early humans in Africa supports the evolutionary driven practice of initial nonmaterial art formats conveying symbolic expressions optimizing group survival. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition Linguistics > Evolution of Language Psychology > Comparative Psychology.