Evolutionary Linguistic Theory

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.

The question of the origin and genesis of human language was a central issue in the debate on the philosophy of language in the eighteenth century - a debate in which Johann Gottfried Herder (17 44-1803) was an important participant. Herder proposed that the phenomenon of language was a product of a complex process which encompassed the whole of human nature - sensory, intellectual, corporeal, and social. The aim of this dissertation is to bring together the anthropological aspects in Herder's philosophy of language; to compare them with earlier theories on the origin of language, such as those of Etienne Bonnet de Condillac, JeanJacques Rousseau and Johann Peter SOBmilch; and to show that Herder's views were strongly influenced by contemporary thought on the nature of man. The discussion focuses on two of Herder's works, his Abhandlung ilber den Ursprung der Sprache (written in 1770, and published in 1772), and the first and second parts of his ldeen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1785). Together they make up the core of Herder's ideas on the genesis of language. We begin with a description of Herder's concept of an interconnection and interaction between soul and sense organs (the auditory, in particular) without which language cannot be formulated. Herder's assessment of sensory perception and the accentuation of the sense of hearing is presented against a background of contemporary interest in sound, hearing, and the processes involved in the production of speech. Herder came to regard man's upright posture, with its accompanying enlargement of the brain, as the main force which increased the potential in man's mental powers and paved the way for human language. In the present analysis, his views are presented within the framework of the natural histories written by Georges-Louis-Marie Comte de Button, Charles Bonnet and others, as well as against the background of another interest of his time, the then new study of comparative anatomy. Herder believed that, despite the advantages nature has bestowed on man in his mental and physical make-up, man's natural predisposition to language is realised not through instinct, but only through many years of learning and interaction in a social framework. These views are presented in the context of the writings of Hermann Samuel Reimarus, which were, at the time, at the forefront of the discussion on instinct. We also investigate Herder's ideas on the role played by the mother tongue, through which a child learns to speak and to think. Language, reason, and social life enables man to evolve intellectually and culturally to his end: humanity.

Reviewed by: Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age Phillip Mitsis (bio) Dorothea Frede and Brad Inwood, editors. Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age Cambridge University Press. xi, 354. $105.95 Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy never underwent the so-called linguistic turn that so profoundly affects contemporary philosophical methods and arguments. This does not mean, of course, that philosophers in antiquity failed to reflect on the origin and structure of language or its role in thought and relation to objects. But they never came to view something called 'the philosophy of language' as a significant discipline in its own right. Nor did they believe that an inquiry into language could serve as the crucial point of entry into philosophical problems. As a consequence, their views about language are rarely elaborated with anything like the sophistication and power of, say, their views in ethics or epistemology. Dorothea Frede and Brad Inwood offer a crisp and stimulating introduction to the volume, outlining the origins and subsequent development [End Page 369] of ancient philosophical reflections on language, and they offer some plausible suggestions about why so little came so late. They also claim that philosophers of the Hellenistic age should be credited with forging important new philosophical links between technical linguistico-grammatical studies and wider philosophical analyses of human communication. One problem, of course, is that any traces of what has come to be the reigning philosophical synthesis are extremely faint in the Hellenistic period because of the sorry state of the evidence. If one looks hard enough, one can perhaps see adumbrations of such crucial items as Fregean propositions, conceptions of ordinary and meta-languages, and sciences of grammar and linguistics. But the general picture is so consistently blurry that it is probably better just to take individual arguments and doctrines on their own without expecting much clarity about what these important new links actually amount to. The ten essays on offer are what one might expect from those faced with the task of being learned guides in the museum of philosophy. The first four essays focus on Epicurean and Stoic puzzles about the origins of language. Major protagonists are introduced and scanty fragments examined in a counterpoint of paired papers. There is precious little here for the non-specialist, however. Indeed, the evidence is brought out in tones so hushed and reticent, and every claim is so variously qualified, that Tony Long, that most judicious of scholars, is made to seem like a stevedore at a ladies' tea by making the entirely reasonable assumption that the Stoics were influenced by Plato's Cratylus and the proto-formalist account of semantic items found there. Ineke Sluiter, with the help of modern theories of non-verbal communication and 'impression management,' examines the Cynics in 'Communicating Cynicism: Diogenes' gangsta rap.' She plausibly claims that the Cynics made conscious use of their body for philosophical purposes, but then argues that these purposes can best be understood within the transgressive literary traditions of invective and comedy. This is unlikely. When the Cynics masturbate in public, they do so not as creatures of low comedy unable to control their desires; they masturbate in the name of nature, reason, and God. Nor is Diogenes interested in pimping his barrel. Rather than being the theatrical prop of a comedian, the barrel Diogenes lived in aids, as does his rolling around in snow and hot sand, his ascetic askesis. Accordingly, a better anthropological parallel would be provided, perhaps, by Indian holy men living in barrels as part of a heat purification ritual. Viewing the Cynics as gangstas, moreover, fails to explain how they could have been such an important influence on the high-minded and theologically driven Stoics. Charles Brittain offers a spotty but important possible reconstruction of the theoretical underpinnings of what arguably passes for a conception of ordinary thought and language in Cicero. After a superbly informative [End Page 370] paper on ancient analogist and anomalist linguistic theories by David Blank, there follow two specialist papers on Stoic logic and a final paper by Sten Ebbensen detailing Hellenistic influence in the medieval period. As he himself notices, it is impossible...

Reviewed by: Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age Laura Grams Dorothea Frede and Brad Inwood , editors. Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 353. Cloth, $90.00. This collection of papers on Hellenistic philosophy of language resulted from the ninth Symposium Hellenisticum, held in Hamburg in July 2001. It makes an important contribution to the secondary literature on this topic and will be valuable to anyone who studies Hellenistic philosophy. Because some chapters discuss broader issues in the philosophy of language or connect Hellenistic ideas about language to other periods, readers interested in the philosophy of language or ancient philosophy in general should also find this volume worthwhile. Although Frede and Inwood observe that the philosophy of language had not developed into a fully independent area of study during the Hellenistic period, a set of common concerns eventually emerged around such issues as the origins of language or the relations between language and thought. Discussions of these problems became the basis of later philosophical investigation in the Middle Ages and beyond. The ancients studied language in connection with a range of philosophical problems in epistemology, physics, and logic, and did not sever their inquiry from questions of linguistics and grammar. The papers in this collection likewise illuminate the relationship between theories of language and other philosophical issues. The first four chapters examine Stoic and Epicurean ideas about the origins of language, making clear that the question first raised in Plato's Cratylus of whether language is natural or conventional is far more nuanced than a simple dichotomy. James Allen argues that the Stoics' naturalism depends on understanding the origins of language in relation to the development of human rationality. Names satisfy a natural standard of correctness insofar as they result from the successful exercise of reason; thus, the imposition or thesis of names in early human history does not imply a conventional origin. A. A. Long makes the case for an even stronger connection between Stoic naturalism and the Cratylus, as he argues that the Stoics developed each of three distinct naturalist theses (formal, etymological, and phonetic) presented in that dialogue. He concludes with a detailed analysis of the Stoic theory of semantics he finds in chapter 5 of Augustine's De dialectica. These accounts of the Stoics are balanced by two chapters on Epicurean theory. Alexander Verlinsky outlines Epicurus' evolutionist view of the origin of language. In the first stage, words arise as spontaneous utterances which are already articulated and naturally related to their objects, while ambiguities are resolved in the second stage. Catherine Atherton focuses on Lucretius' account, raising challenges for the naturalist view that may also stir the interest of more recent proponents. She argues that the superior capacity for articulation possessed by humans does not adequately account for the emergence of intentional communication, which arises not from uncontrolled vocalizations but from a deliberate attempt to convey meaning. The remainder of the volume addresses various aspects of the use of language. Ineke Sluiter examines the Cynics' rhetoric and concludes that the expression of Cynicism within a certain social context ultimately undermines its anti-conventional message. Charles Brittain explores the use of language as it connects thought to reality. He explains how the development of definitions of concept terms allowed a theory of common sense concerning the relation between concepts and reality to emerge, though he argues that the common sense theory did not arise until Cicero had modified the Stoic view of common conceptions. David Blank examines arguments between the analogist and anomalist views of inflection-derivation (flexion) found in Book 8 of Varro's De lingua latina. He argues persuasively that Crates of Mallos was neither the source of this book nor an anomalist, but had been presented as one of a competing pair of analogy theorists by Varro's empiricist source. Chapters 8 and 9 focus on logical implications of the use of language. Susanne Bobzien argues that the Stoics resolved fallacies of ambiguity, not by examining the intentions of the speaker, but by appealing to the context for clarification. Because the ambiguous term will [End Page 153] have...

The article discusses the problem of the connection between two conceptions of glottogenesis, one of which was created at the end of the 19th century by the German philosopher Ludwig Noiré within the framework of his philosophy of language, and the other by the Soviet scientist Academician Nikolai Marr in the framework of his “new theory of language” based on the synthesis of Japhetidology and Marxism. Noiré for the first time in the history of linguistics, even before the appearance of the works of Friedrich Engels, developed a holistic synthetic concept of the labor origin of the language, showing the role of labor tools not only in glottogenesis, but also in anthropogenesis. The author poses the problem of the conformity of Marr’s doctrine to Marxism and shows that it was more important for Marr to present his own teaching as Marxist than to really rely on the provisions of Marxism in posing and resolving the problems of the origin of language. In his works on the theory of the origin of the language, Marr puts forward an extraordinary hypothesis of the “zero stage” of language. He postulates the thesis of a linear (manual, or kinetic) language as a precursor to a sound (spoken) language. The author shows the conceptual similarities and differences between the paleontological conception of Marr and the paleoanthropological theory of Noiré. Based on this analysis, the author establishes the relationship between the two conceptios. The starting point that unites these two theories is the principle of the labor origin of language, which is interpreted differently by the two scientists. In connection with the problem of the influence of Noiré’s ideas on Marr’s conception, the author also discusses some aspects of the creation of the “new theory of language”, in particular, the role of the historian of Ancient Rome Sergey Kovalev as a systematizer of Marrism, who developed an algorithm for transforming Marr’s Japhetic theory into “Marxist linguistics”. The author also reveals the role of Alexander Bogdanov as a proponent of Noiré’s conception and the role of Abram Deborin as the author of the philosophical version of the “new theory of language”.

During the middle ages, and up to the middle of the eighteenth century, the theologians’ mutilated version of the Genesis account of language origin, the divine-origin theory as it came to be called, was the theory held by Christian Europe. In the eighteenth century, however, the question of the probability of a natural rather than a supernatural origin of language began to stir in men’s minds. Rousseau’s essay on the Origin of Languages, about 1750, might be taken as the historical landmark which stands between the old and new points of view. This essay is in itself disappointing to one who is acquainted with Rousseau’s other works. His mental interests were practical rather than speculative, and he had no real convictions about the question of language as he had about education, society, and government. He was interested in language, and the changes in language, in relation to the practical needs of the people in social and national groups, and in diverse climatic conditions, rather than in the origin of language itself as an instrument of human reason. As a consequence his essay on the Origin of Languages—not ‘Language’—is hardly more than a series of disconnected reflections upon various aspects of languages, including a discussion of the relation of language to melody and harmony in music which occupies about one-third of the essay.

Bu makalede Arap dili bilgini olan İbn Cinnî’nin (ö. 392/1002) dillerin kökeni ve oluşumuna dair teorik görüşleri ele alınmıştır. İbn Cinnî, Arap dil ilimleri tarihinde dilin ortaya çıkışını kapsamlı bir şekilde betimleyen ilk dilcilerdendir. O, dilin kökenine dair söylenen, ilahi ilham (tevkīfī), uzlaşı ve sesler (doğalcı) şeklindeki üç temel tezi ifade eder; fakat bu görüşlerden birini kendisinin nihai görüşü olarak söylemez. Bazı klasik ve çağdaş dilcilerin onun tamamen uzlaşı görüşünü savunduğu iddiası doğru değildir. İbn Cinnî bu konuda tercihte bulunmayıp her bir görüşü kendi bağlamında doğru ve güçlü bulur. O, dilin Allah tarafından insanlara öğretilmesi yani ilham edilmesi görüşünü kendi içinde güçlü bulur. Bu konuda bazı âyet ve nakillerle beraber dönemindeki alimlerin görüşlerinden etkilenir. Bununla birlikte Allah’ın Âdem’e bütün isimleri öğretmesiyle ilgili âyetin dilin tevkīfī oluşuna delil yapılamayacağını, bu âyetin uzlaşı görüşü yönünde tevil edilebileceğini söyler. İkinci olarak, İbn Cinnî dilin bir uzlaşı sonucu olduğuna dair de örnekler verir. Ona göre uzlaşı görüşü duyusal, tayin, delalet ve soyutlama olmak üzere dört aşamayı içerir. İbn Cinnî’nin yapmış olduğu dil tanımı da uzlaşı görüşünü teyit etmektedir. Onun, dilin uzlaşısallığını gerekçelendirirken Fârâbî’nin dilin ortaya çıkışına dair görüşlerinden faydalandığını düşünmekteyiz. Üçüncü olarak, İbn Cinnî dilin kökeninin işitilen sesler ve taklitle bu seslerden seçilen lafızlar olduğuna dair görüşü de nakleder. Çağdaş dilbilimde dilin ‘uylaşım’ veya ‘ses-yansıma’ yoluyla oluştuğuna dair yeni teoriler, İbn Cinnî’nin ‘uzlaşı’ ve ‘ses’ görüşleriyle temellendirilebilir.

Predmet ovoga rada je rasvjetljivanje biti Fihteove filozofije jezika. U prvom planu je analiza Fihteovog spisa „O jezičkoj sposobnosti i izvoru jezika“. U literaturi je poznatiji kao Journal-Aufsatz iz 1795. godine. Obim teksta uslovio je da se samo u nagovještajima, kao predmet kritičko-interpretacijske pažnje, imaju u vidu spis „O izvoru jezika“ (na temelju Platner-Vorlesung iz 1797) te četvrti i peti govor iz Fihteovih „Govora njemačkoj naciji“ iz 1808. godine. Fihteovo filozofsko-jezičko stanovište analizira se po modelu eksplikacije njegove noseće misaone strukture i kapitalnih odredbi jezika i njegovog ontološkog porijekla. Takođe, autor kritički stavlja Fihteovo shvatanje jezika u kontekst vodećih filozofsko-jezičkih i lingvističkih poimanja jezika.

Trying to understand the nature and origin of language, this inherent ability of man, has been a common concern among scientists throughout history, as the blessings of the language in the way we use it are exclusively for humans that make it human. Moreover, it is genetically distinct from other living things. The diversity of scientists' views in this area is evidence of the over-complexity of language. This point is clear both in nature and in origin, so far as linguists, philosophers, and mystics have all come to understand the answer to this perpetual question of mankind. On the other hand, the holy Qur'an has the word of God and the book of human guidance among Muslims, so we decided to search for answers to our questions in the holy Qur'an. In this study, on the one hand, we study the views of linguists and philosophers about the origin and nature of language throughout history. On the other hand, we explain what the verses of the Holy Quran have said about this. In essence, the purpose of this study was to study some of the linguistic issues from the perspective of the Holy Quran. What we eventually achieved was a confirmation of the independence of the inherent aptitude of the language from its manifestation in speech and, thus, of the lameness of the language as well. In addition, we find that the holy Qur'an introduces language as a tool of thought and reasoning and recognizes the expression of thought in language, thereby confirming the intimate connection of these two vital elements for the growing human life.

This condensed review of recent trends and developments in historical linguistics proceeds from the empirical to the conceptual, from ‘what’ to ‘how’ to ‘why’. I begin with new findings about the origins, relationships, and diversity of the world’s languages, then turn to the processes and mechanisms of change as they concern practicing historical linguists, continue with efforts to ground change in the acquisition, use, and structure of language, and conclude with a look at ongoing debates concerning the explanatory division of labor between historical and theoretical linguistics and ways to unify historical and theoretical linguistics. The emphasis throughout is on current research rather than on established textbook knowledge.

The article is devoted to the linguophilosophical concept of the outstanding Russian theorist, his-torian and philosopher of language, the largest Iranian scholar Vasily Ivanovich Abaev. The as-pects of the author’s linguophilosophical concept are presented based on two works by V.I. Abaev: “Reflection of the work of consciousness in the lexico-semantic system of language” (1970) and “Language as ideology and language as technique” (1934). In these works, he pays special atten-tion to the problem of the origin of human language. The theory of the origin of language itself, in his opinion, should be based on an optimal scientific theory that proceeds from the correct theo-retical premises and is consistent with the available empirical data. To explain the origin of a lan-guage, it is not the grammar of the language that is important, but the subject–significant vocabu-lary, as he believes that the origin of vocabulary is a single and integral problem, and the origin of grammar is inevitably divided into several particular issues. Language, according to V.I.Abaev, arose not from biological, but from the social needs of a person, from the need to relate things to their collective, to impose their own “brand” on them. Special attention is paid to the concept of ideosemantics, firstly introduced by V.I. Abaev in-to scientific circulation. He distinguishes two types of semantics: small semantics (or signal, technical), which includes a mandatory minimum of semantic functions that determine the mod-ern communicative use of the word, and large semantics, which is the sum of those concomitant cognitive and emotional representations that reflect the complex inner life of the word in its past and present. He defined this broader understanding of semantics by the term “ideosemantics”. Id-eosemantics, according to V. Abaev, is the most important criterion for the historical characteriza-tion of linguistic phenomena. V. Abaev sees the value of language at an early stage of its for-mation in its “ethnodemarkation function”. In conclusion, the article presents ideosemantic parallels in three genetically and structurally diverse languages: Ossetian, Kabardino-Circassian and Karachay-Balkar.

The origin of language remains one of the most enigmatic issues for studies on human evolution and is a challenge that attracts many scholars. Any discussion of this issue has been taboo in traditional linguistics, but in the past ten years it has been examined productively through informatics, biology and cognitive science, as well as by using theoretical linguistics. The interested reader can consult the books edited by Wray (2002) and Christiansen and Kirby (2003) for details. Morphologists and paleoanthropologists have continued to debate this issue long before the successes of other disciplines. However, they have faced a great obstacle in their efforts: language per se cannot fossilize and leaves no archaeological traces. This is a great distinction in any starting point for paleontological studies on the origin of language and the other issues. For example, the evolution of habitual bipedal walking is accessible through examination of the cranial base, pelvis, leg or foot bones of fossil forms. Nevertheless, such diffi culties have never let the scholars abandon their ambitions to challenge the enigmas surrounding the origin and evolution of language, which has doubtless contributed to the unfolding of humanity and its civilizations.

For a long time, human language has been assumed to be genetically determined and therefore the product of biological evolution. It is only within the last decade that researchers have begun to investigate more closely the domaingeneral cognitive mechanisms of cultural evolution as an alternative explanation for the origins of language. Most of this more recent work focuses on the role of imperfect cultural transmission and abstracts away from the mechanisms of communication. Specifically, models developed to study the cultural evolution of language—both theoretical and computational—often tacitly assume that linguistic signals fully specify the meaning they communicate. They imply that ignoring the fact that this is not the case in actual language use is a justified idealisation which can be made without significant consequences. In this thesis, I show that by making this idealisation, we miss out on the extensive explanatory potential of an empirically attested property of language: its pragmatic plasticity. Themeaning that a signal comes to communicate in a specific context usually differs to a certain degree from its conventional meaning. This thesis (i) introduces a model of the cultural evolution of language that acknowledges and incorporates the fact that communication exhibits pragmatic plasticity and (ii) explores the explanatory potential of this fact with regard to language evolution. The thesis falls into two parts. In the first part, I develop the model conceptually. I begin by analysing the components of extant models of general cultural evolution and discuss how models of language change and linguistic evolution map onto them. Innovative use is identified as the motor of cultural evolution. I then conceptualise the cognitive mechanisms underlying innovative language use and argue that they originate in pre-linguistic forms of ostensive-inferential communication. In a next step, the identified mechanisms are employed to provide a unified account of the two main explananda of evolutionary linguistics, the emergence of symbolism and the emergence of grammar. Finally, I discuss

Reviewed by: All about language James R. Hurford All about language. By Barry J. Blake. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xvii, 322. ISBN 9780199238498. $29.95. Barry Blake’s book is an introduction ‘aimed at the general reader and at students of language and linguistics’ (vi). It covers a lot of very familiar ground. In tone and coverage it resembles Fromkin and Rodman’s best seller An introduction to language (1974; now in its eighth edition, Fromkin et al. 2006). It is obviously aimed at being adopted as a textbook, as can be seen from the systematic coverage of the traditional introductory linguistics curriculum—form classes, morphology, lexical change, lexical semantics, syntax, discourse, phonetics, phonology, writing systems, language variation, historical linguistics, language acquisition, language processing, and language origins. Each of these topics gets a chapter of about twenty-five pages. The written style is lightly academic, not too heavy, but not the popularizing style of Gary Marcus or Steven Pinker. Chapters end with suggestions for further reading and with sets of problem exercises to stimulate active thought. There is a very thorough (thirty-four-page) glossary of terms at the end of the book. The publishers have invested more money than usual in presentation. There are many useful diagrams and illustrations in almost all chapters. The font color switches to green for headings and most examples. Like Fromkin & Rodman, B’s book also tries to lighten up the text’s mood with cute cartoon drawings, but these are poorly drawn and unfunny. In the publicity blurb on the back, Fritz Newmeyer is quoted as saying he would adopt B’s book as an introductory text in linguistics. I think I would give it a try, too. The title All about language cleverly hides the writer’s dilemma. Certainly the entire book is about language, but it is not about all of language—how could it be? Everything in this book, apart from minor factual details, will be familiar to any academic linguist who has been in the business for a decade or more. It thus presents a very standard view of what the core and scope of the subject are, on the whole a very similar overall view to Fromkin and Rodman’s, but with some more up-to-date facts included. To me, this shows how little the enduring core of basic knowledge about language has changed in the last fifty years. Much of the same ground was covered in Hockett’s Course in modern linguistics (1958). The chapter on ‘Meaning of words’ rehearses the same distinctions as Lyons’s Semantics (1977). As expected, Grice’s maxims get three pages, and speech acts another page, and so on, across the whole broad spectrum of linguistics as we have come to know it. B’s book belongs in a fine pedagogical tradition in linguistics, and in terms of his command of the field, is a worthy addition to it. As a twenty-year-old, reading such introductory texts opened up a whole new world of interest to me. That was over forty years ago. I would guess (and certainly hope) that by now, more scientific knowledge about language has filtered down into high school education, so that a book such as B’s would not be such an eye-opener to the current generation of twenty-year-olds. [End Page 912] Interested students will have read Pinker 1994 and other popular books, and browsed Crystal’s Encyclopedia of language (1987), not to mention using the amazing resources of the internet. The book steers clear of controversy, which is in some sense a pity. We don’t want to kill students’ interest with pessimistic accounts of apparently irreconcilable differences between theorists. One solution, which B generally adopts, is pas devant les enfants. For example, there is a standard account of ‘The phoneme’ covered in ten pages. No one would guess by reading this that Chomsky and Halle (1968) had dismissed the classical phonemic level as not being a significant level of linguistic structure. Think what you like about the phoneme, but there is an issue here, and B’s book does not open it up. In the section on phonetics...

The problem of the meaning in the Epicurean philosophy of language is still today a highly controversial topic. The aim of this paper is to examine the contribution of Ep. ad Her . 37-8 to properly semantic issues. In this perspective, some key-essays on Epicurus’ philosophy of language and epistemology will be reviewed focusing on the problematic relationship between reality, prolepsis and language. It will be argued that – pace scholars such as Glidden and Giannantoni – the Greek philosopher may be credited with a genuine interest in the semantic dimension of human language. It will be further argued that it is the concept of prolepsis to intermediate between semantics and epistemology. In the final sections attention is paid to both Ep. ad Her . 75-6 and Lucretius De rer. Nat. V, 1028-90. Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ ideas on the origin of language are briefly commented upon and their influence on much later thinkers such as Leibniz and Vico is documented.