Genesis Of Language Research Articles

Влияние русского языка на развитие мозга человека

The article analyses the role of language in the development of human consciousness. The author shows the problem of language genesis as one of the aspects of anthropogenesis and the significance of different language models in this. The article analyses studies in linguistics, ethnography and philosophy of language. The author puts forward a hypothesis concerning the Russian language as the most complex in structural terms and its role in the development of the brain.

The Concept of Sense in Gilles Deleuze'sLogic of Sense

What is the concept of sense developed by Deleuze in his 1969 Logic of Sense? This paper attempts to answer this question analysing the three dimensions of language that Deleuze isolates: the primary order of noises and intensities (depth); the secondary order of sense (surface); and the tertiary organisation of propositions (height). What renders language possible is that which separates sounds from bodies (the primary order) and organises them into propositions (the tertiary organisation), freeing them for the expressive function. Deleuze argues that it is the dimension of sense that brings about this genesis of language, and he analyses in detail the three syntheses (connection, conjunction and disjunction) that bring about the production of this surface of sense. Yet Deleuze also distinguishes between two types of non-sense: the nonsense of Lewis Carroll's portmanteau words, which remain ensconced in the dimension of sense, and the more profound nonsense of Antonin Artaud's psychotic scream-breaths (‘Ratara ratara ratara Atara tatara rana Otara otara katara’), which penetrate the almost unbearable world of the primary order of noise and intensities. In the end, the focus of Logic of Sense is less the surface domain of sense than the primary depth of corporeal intensities. What Deleuze calls a ‘minor’ use of language is nothing other than an intensive use of language that constitutes a principle of metamorphosis.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE “LIVING LIGHT”: SEMIO-BIO-PHOTONICS, ANOTHER EMERGENT APPROACH

The intention of the present paper is to propose an original connection between semiotics and biophotonics, the unconventional discipline considered as the study of the “ultraweak delayed bioluminescence” emitted by all the living systems (Popp, 1989). The synergy of semiotics and biophotonics − able to assume scientifically the language of the “living light” − is representing the strategy already named by authors Semio-Bio-Photonics (SBPh: Stănciulescu, Nilaya, 2017). In order to define it, the paper is briefly describing and justifying the SBPh scenario of the consciousness and implicitly of (verbal) language genesis. So, the purpose of the present synthesis is to finally recognize that a SBPh integrative approach is indeed possible and necessary for understanding who the real homo significans and homo loquens is.

HISTORICAL ANTHROPONYMS OF THE KIN OF SAGANUD: STRATIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION (BASED ON THE CENSUS LISTS, 1830-1831. AGINSKAYA STEPPE DUMA)

The article describes the personal names of the kin Saganud of Khori-Buryat, extracted from the funds of the State archive of the Zabaikal'skykrai. The materials of the 1830-1831 census of the aboriginal population of the Aginsk Steppe Duma of the Saganudkin are represented by the number of about 1150 historical anthroponyms. These personal names have different linguistic origins. The purpose of the article is a preliminary description in terms of the morphology of names, including their stratification by Tibetan-Mongolian and other language genesis, verifying the thesis about the diversity of the ethnic composition of the Khori-Buryat.

Cross-disciplinary ties: ritual as the interdisciplinary notion

The paper addresses the importance of crosscultural notions' studies in terms of anthropological paradigm development. In the focus of a research lies the notion of a ritual as an interdisciplinary issue hence the fact of it being utilized by the range of various scientific branches. Ritual is analyzed from its anthropological, ethological, historical, sociological, philosophical, lingual, cultural, religious, cognitive and psychological aspects. The work explicates the original value of ritual performance. Moreover, the research crystallizes the issues of myth-ritual relation. The genesis of language and culture and the process of worldview formation are viewed with respect to their ritualized character.

Fundamentals of Natural Representation

Our understanding of the natural universe is far from being comprehensive. The following questions bring to the fore some of the fundamental issues. Is there a reality of information associated with the states of matter based entirely on natural causation? If so, then what constitutes the mechanism of information exchange (processing) at each interaction of physical entities? Let the association of information with a state of matter be referred to as the representation of semantic value expressed by the information. We ask, can the semantic value be quantified, described, and operated upon with symbols, as mathematical symbols describe the material world? In this work, these questions are dealt with substantively to establish the fundamental principles of the mechanisms of representation and propagation of information with every physical interaction. A quantitative method of information processing is derived from the first principles to show how high level structured and abstract semantics may arise via physical interactions alone, without a need for an intelligent interpreter. It is further shown that the natural representation constitutes a basis for the description, and therefore, for comprehension, of all natural phenomena, creating a more holistic view of nature. A brief discussion underscores the natural information processing as the foundation for the genesis of language and mathematics. In addition to the derivation of theoretical basis from established observations, the method of information processing is further demonstrated by a computer simulation.

Relabeling in Language Genesis, written by Claire Lefebvre

Relabeling in Language Genesis, written by Claire Lefebvre

“Vernatürlichung”: Ursprünge von Friedrich Nietzsches Entidealisierung des Menschen, seiner Sprache und seiner Geschichte bei Johann Gottfried Herder

“Vernatürlichung”: Ursprünge von Friedrich Nietzsches Entidealisierung des Menschen, seiner Sprache und seiner Geschichte bei Johann Gottfried Herder

The case for protoconcepts: Why concepts, language, and protolanguage all need protoconcepts

Fodor is infamous for his radical conceptual nativism, McDowell likewise well-known for suggesting that concepts extend “all the way out” into the world and arguing against what he calls ( per Sellars) The Myth of the Given: the idea that non-conceptual percepts justify conceptual frameworks. One need not go so far as either researcher, however, in allowing merit to their arguments. It seems we are predisposed, from the beginning of our lives, to look at the world in certain ways and not others. The world need not be “fully conceptual” to be never entirely free, for the conceptually minded agent, of conceptual taint. It seems structured remarkably like our concepts are structured because our concepts present it that way, and our concepts present it that way because of predispositions that are substantively innate. The Protoconcept Hypothesis holds that such protoconcepts are onto- and phylogenetically prior to concepts, themselves onto- and phylogenetically prior to (proto-)language. If that is right, then an account of language genesis and evolution requires a corresponding account for concepts and an explication of protolanguage assumes an explication of protoconcepts.

Slm is Dead, Long Live Sri Lanka Malay

This paper discusses the results of scholarship on Sri Lanka Malay based on the studies presented in Nordhoff 2013 in terms of theory, method, and social impact. It touches on a variety of topics including the significance of recent genetic evidence for old theories of language genesis, as well as the efforts for revitalization sparked by the scientific interest in the speech community. In evaluating this collection of variable significance, the author reflects on the transition of ownership of Sri Lanka Malay: from object of scientific curiosity to ancestral language of communal value.

Vygotsky, Cognitive Development and Language

SummaryLev Vygotsky’s (1896–1934) views of the genesis of language and its relation to thought, illustrated here by his account of the origin of the pointing gesture, can be seen as anticipating current research in socially constituted cognition, pragmatics, developmental psychology and grammaticalization, in all of which the importance of contextual and pragmatic factors looms large. His conceptualization of the evolution of communication from action to semiosis has bearing on, and is illuminated by, recent developments in neurobiology, developmental psychology, primatology, and grammaticalization theory. Specifically, recently discovered mirror neuron systems may offer a neurophysiological platform for the evolution of language from gesture and imitation, for the transition from action to sign, from referential to relational meaning, an evolution in which the establishment of joint attention is pivotal. With his emphasis on the dynamic, socially constructed nature of signs, Vygotsky shares Humboldt’s view of language asenergeia, as a system in a perpetual state of emergence, a view consistent with Condillac’s ‘language of action’, in which spontaneous vocalizations and gestures give rise to sign functions. Research of the grammaticalization pathways associated with demonstratives and modal particles also offers new perspectives on the process and hypothesized unidirectionality of grammaticalization, including the plausible claim that demonstratives represent a second and separate source of candidates for grammaticalization. Integrating grammaticalization research with findings from relevant social and natural sciences holds out the prospect of underwriting significant advances in understanding the origin of language and the emergence of grammar.

How much of language, if any, came about in the same sort of way as the brooding chamber in snails?

The rough comparisons below point to the core ideas of four among the more interesting modem conceptions of the genesis of human language. (I)(a) Human language arose like the brooding chamber in certain snails. (b) Human language originated like birds' feathers. (c) Human language evolved like the vertebrate eye. (d) Human language came into existence like a snowflake. These four conceptions differ from one another primarily over the nature of the process that is seen as central to the genesis of language. In (I)(a), it is a process of cooptation; in (I)(b), one of preadaptation or function shift; in (I)(c), one of adaptation; and in (I)(d), one involving one or more physical forces. The present paper is the first in a series whose aim it is to assess critically the merits and limitations of these four conceptions of language genesis. This paper focuses on the conception that language, like the brooding chamber in certain snail species, came about through cooptation as a by-product of something else.

Code Switching and Mixed Language Genesis in Tiwi

<p>Data from the transcript of a public meeting are used to examine patterns of code switching in Tiwi, a head-marking polysynthetic language of northern Australia where an N-V mixed language has emerged among younger speakers (Lee 1987, McConvell 2008). McConvell’s theory predicts that code switching behavior should reflect the same center of gravity principles as found in the resulting mixed language. In particular, a head-marking language like Tiwi should most commonly provide the verbal part of code-switched utterances. Although the corpus used here is too small to draw definitive conclusions, the data do not support the supposed connections between morphological typology, code switching, and mixed language genesis. Reasonable interpretations of the data show no preference for code switching that retains Tiwi’s verbal subsystem, as predicted by McConvell’s center of gravity model.</p>

The contribution of relexification, grammaticalisation, and reanalysis to creole genesis and development

The theory of creole genesis developed in Lefebvre (1998 and related work) is formulated within the framework of the processes otherwise known to play a role in language genesis and language change in general, that is, relexification, grammaticalisation and reanalysis. This paper evaluates the respective contribution of these processes to creole genesis and development. The following issues are taken up. Can functional categories undergo relexification? Is the process at work in creole genesis best characterised as relexification or as transfer? Can there be cases of partial relexification? Are grammaticalisation and reanalysis distinct processes? Is keeping them separate useful in studying creole genesis and development? How are these three processes articulated with respect to each other in creole genesis and development?

Traces of the Mouth: Andrei Andreyevich Markov's Mathematization of Writing

This article discusses in detail two works by the Russian mathematician Andrei Andreyevich Markov Sr (1856–1922). They represent an early and momentous attempt to understand the phenomenon of language in mathematical terms. Outside of the strictly mathematical field, Markov’s achievements are only very rarely discussed. In the works, he counted the frequency of vowels and consonants in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and another text, and analysed the results with the mathematical tools of the probability theory of his time. In what follows, I give a brief account of the role that letters played in probability theory up to this point. The understanding of language in these concepts was so weak that it did not even allow very simple problems to be solved. I then describe Markov’s analysis in detail. Since 1906, Markov’s work had extended certain concepts of probability theory, which were considered to apply only to independent trials, to the field of dependent variables on a purely theoretical basis. In Pushkin’s text Markov found for the first time material to verify his assumptions empirically. Since this was his primary interest, he made no further comment on the meaning of his findings. The first astonishing result was that the distribution of vowels and consonants followed a ‘normal’ distribution. Although Markov did not say as much, this means that at the source of language lies a random process. I attempt to find an explanation for this in the lectures of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, which he gave at approximately the same time and which offer a helpful theory on the collective genesis of language. Even though it is probable that Markov and Saussure were unacquainted with each other’s work, they shared a strong interest in formalization and an approach that is differential rather than substantial. By applying Markov’s analysis to randomly selected words, I demonstrate first that it is not the individual style of an author that produced the observed randomness. It is the fact, as stated by Saussure, that language is formed in an unconscious, collective process. Certain individuals begin to speak differently and their changes to the language may or may not be accepted by others. Markov’s second result was that the dispersion of this random distribution is much smaller than would be expected. Again, Markov applied the theoretical formulae of his earlier work only to verify their validity, and did not enquire as to the reason for this phenomenon. Saussure’s theory provides an explanation: the few individuals who start to speak differently are subject to the physical constraints imposed by the mouth and thus cannot recombine letters completely at random. Therefore,

Relexification in a Northern Norwegian dialect?

This paper explores how the process of relexification can contribute to the understanding of the genesis of the new Norwegian dialect of Sappen in Nordreisa. The dialect has emerged in the context of language shift from Finnish to Norwegian, and the dialect syntax has features that might be regarded as products of relexification. One example is declarative main clauses with the finite verb in the third position (V3). The discussion adheres to a more general discussion of approaches to language genesis, where substratist and universalist (and also superstratist) theories often are regarded as contrary to each other. I argue that different theories can contribute to the understanding of different aspects of the same question.

Langues créoles et origine du langage : état de la question.

Creole languages are sometimes considered a "laboratory" where language genesis could be observed in vivo. One reason for this belief is that Creoles are the only natural languages now extant, the emergence of which can be dated and localized with some precision because (i) it is recent (a century for some); (ii) it presents (or seems to present) the characters of a "catastrophe" as opposed to the continuous process of change whereby "old" languages like French and English acquired their identities. Another reason is the present currency of a theory which views the origin of language and the formation of Creoles as due to the same cause, viz. the sudden replacement of protolanguage by full human language. This article evaluates the claims of this theory with respect to Creole formation. It shows its main drawback to lie in the fact that full languages were crucially present on the scenes where creole languages emerged, if only as lexicon purveyors, so that no convincing inferences may be drawn from the historical situation in which Creoles appeared to the prehistorical setting where language originated.

Are there features of language that arose like birds’ feathers?

On some modern theories of language genesis, certain fundamental features of language arose, like birds’ feathers, through exaptation. The article offers a critical appraisal of three of these theories, namely those of Lieberman, Wilkins and Wakefield, and Calvin and Bickerton. It argues that these theories fail to assign to the features of language in question the status of ‘exaptation’ in a non-ad hoc and non-arbitrary way: these theories are not embedded in a sufficiently restrictive general theory of exaptation. It is moreover shown that, in the absence of such a theory, it is unclear what kinds of evidence are properly relevant to the appraisal of the exaptationist claims expressed by the three theories of language genesis.

Issues of Minority Peoples (review)

Reviewed by: Issues of minority peoples ed. by Frances Karttunen, Jan-Ola Östman Edward J. Vajda Issues of minority peoples. Ed. by Frances Karttunen and Jan-Ola Östman. (Department of General Linguistics publication 31.) Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2000. Pp. iv, 140. During the late 1990’s several scholars at the University of Helsinki’s Department of General Linguistics embarked on the creation of a center devoted to the study of lesser-known and endangered languages, particularly those of the Americas. An outgrowth of that new direction, this short volume combines papers by the university’s professors and graduate students with writings by recent visiting scholars. Though its title conceals it, the book deals primarily with the sociohistorical phenomenon of language endangerment. The editors identify the book’s general theme as composed of several related topics, including global loss of linguistic and biological diversity, modern pressures toward linguistic and cultural assimilation, and the efforts currently under way to revitalize or at least document the world’s disappearing languages. The three sections composing the book are entitled ‘Issues’, ‘Case studies’, and ‘Epilogue’. The ‘issues’ section contains three articles. In ‘Expansion and collision’ (13–15), historian Alfred Crosby combines ecological and linguistic history in a brief essay devoted to the origin of language diversity and the factors threatening it today. ‘Raising the alarm for endangered languages’ (16–36), by Frances Karttunen, continues this discussion in an equally engaging way, comparing efforts to revitalize endangered languages in Ireland, New Zealand, and Hawaii, among other places. Both essays reiterate points articulated by the authors in their earlier writings (notably ‘Language death, language genesis, and world history’, Frances Karttunen & Alfred Crosby, Journal of world history 6(2).157–74, 1995). Jan-Ola Östman’s ‘Ethics and appropriation—with special reference to Hwalbáy’ (37–60) discusses ethical questions faced by linguists writing about or performing fieldwork in conjunction with indigenous peoples or minorities; the author uses specific examples from Hualapai (spelled Hwalbáy in the tribe’s own writing system). Only one of the ‘case studies’ in the book really qualifies as such from a linguistic standpoint. In ‘Towards additive multilingualism: A sociolinguistics perspective on the maintenance of Alabama and Coushatta in Texas’ (63–97), Helena Halmari discusses the results of her fieldwork among a group that has preserved fluency in two Muskogean languages. The article surveys the relevant sociolinguistic history and provides an excellent evaluation of current linguistic attitudes, with specific suggestions for language maintenance and revitalization. Dianaben-Aaron’s ‘Language and minorities on U.S. Independence Day: “A note of color” ’ (99–130) is an essay on recent American ethnohistory and the evolution of public perceptions of American nationalism. The book’s ‘epilogue’, written by Alfred Crosby and Frances Karttunen and entitled ‘Biodiversity and linguistic diversity: Collision and reduction’ (133–40), returns to the theme of the massive loss of indigenous American languages due to sociopolitical and ecological factors during the past half-millennium. Language shift among immigrant communities in the United States is also discussed, based on the specific example of the Wendish (Sorbian) population of Central Texas. This rather short book is a heartfelt and welcome addition to the growing literature on language endangerment. However, with the exception of H’s article on Alabama and Coushatta, the individual contributions qualify mainly as good popular science writing intended for a general audience and offer little of novelty for the serious linguist. Edward J. Vajda Western Washington University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

How much of language, if any, came about in the same sort of way as the brooding chamber in snails?

The rough comparisons below point to the core ideas of four among the more interesting modem conceptions of the genesis of human language. (I)(a) Human language arose like the brooding chamber in certain snails. (b) Human language originated like birds' feathers. (c) Human language evolved like the vertebrate eye. (d) Human language came into existence like a snowflake. These four conceptions differ from one another primarily over the nature of the process that is seen as central to the genesis of language. In (I)(a), it is a process of cooptation; in (I)(b), one of preadaptation or function shift; in (I)(c), one of adaptation; and in (I)(d), one involving one or more physical forces. The present paper is the first in a series whose aim it is to assess critically the merits and limitations of these four conceptions of language genesis. This paper focuses on the conception that language, like the brooding chamber in certain snail species, came about through cooptation as a by-product of something else.