Gestural Origin Of Language Research Articles

Chimpanzee facial gestures and the implications for the evolution of language

Great ape manual gestures are described as communicative, flexible, intentional, and goal-oriented. These gestures are thought to be an evolutionary pre-cursor to human language. Conversely, facial expressions are thought to be inflexible, automatic, and derived from emotion. However, great apes can make a wide range of movements with their faces, and they may possess the control needed to gesture with their faces as well as their hands. We examined whether chimpanzee facial expressions possess the four important gesture properties and how they compare to manual gestures. To do this, we quantified variables that have been previously described through largely qualitative means. Chimpanzee facial expressions met all four gesture criteria and performed remarkably similar to manual gestures. Facial gestures have implications for the evolution of language. If other mammals also show facial gestures, then the gestural origins of language may be much older than the human/great ape lineage.

The gestural origin of language

1. Grasping Language: Sign and the Evolution of Language 2. Language in the Wild: Paleontological and Primatological Evidence for Gestural Origins 3. Gesture, Sign, and Speech 4. Gesture, Sign, and Grammar: The Ritualization of Language 5. Conceptual Spaces and Embodied Actions 6. The Gesture-Language Interface 7. Invention of Visual Languages

Hemispheric specialization for language: Brain volume matters

Increasing brain volume may impose constraints, through longer information transfer delays, on the distributed networks supporting language. Here, we assessed the relative effects of brain volume and other putative predictors of the functional variability of perisylvian language areas, as probed with PET, during both a language comprehension and a language production task. In the case of language comprehension (story listening), a linear combination of planum temporale surface, brain volume and handedness could explain almost 60% of the functional asymmetry observed in the perisylvian area. Without brain volume, the goodness of fit was significantly decreased (39%, P < 0.05), and furthermore, the effect of handedness was not detected anymore. This was due to the fact that in our sample, left-handers ( n = 12) had a significantly larger brain volume as compared to right-handers ( n = 8, P = 0.03). As for language production (verb generation), brain volume and the planum temporale also played a role. However, in this case, the main predictor of functional variability was handedness, where a greater degree of right-handedness was associated with larger activation of left inferior frontal regions. Depending on the language component of interest, these results support different (yet compatible) theories on hemispheric specialization. Left specialization for comprehension could be attributed to the constraints of processing speech stimuli, while a gestural origin of language is mostly supported by the relation we observed between left specialization for production and right-handedness.

Continuities in vocal communication argue against a gestural origin of language

To conclude that language evolved from vocalizations, through gestures, then back to vocalizations again, one must first reject the simpler hypothesis that language evolved from prelinguistic vocalizations. There is no reason to do so. Many studies – not cited by Arbib – document continuities in behavior, perception, cognition, and neurophysiology between human speech and primate vocal communication.

Read My Lips

It is well known that the right side of the mouth moves more than the left during speech, but little is known about how this asymmetry affects lipreading. We investigated asymmetries in the visual expression and perception of speech using the McGurk effect-an illusion in which incongruent lip movements cause listeners to misreport sounds. Thirty right-handed participants watched film clips in which the left, the right, or neither side of the mouth was covered. The McGurk effect was attenuated when the right side of the mouth was covered, demonstrating that this side is more important to lipreading than is the left side of the mouth. Mirror-reversed images tested whether the asymmetry was the result of an observer bias toward the left hemispace. The McGurk effect was stronger in the normal than in the mirror orientation when the mouth was fully visible. Thus, observers attend more to what they think is the right side of the speaker's mouth. Asymmetries in mouth movements may reflect the gestural origins of language, which are also right lateralized.

Human evolution and human history: A complete theory

Since Darwin we have been in possession of two superficially dissonant facts. On one hand, humans are merely one of millions of animal species, all products of common ancestry. On the other, humans enjoy a level of ecological dominance that is spectacularly, qualitatively greater than that of any other animal that ever lived, including our closest relatives. Moreover, this unique ascendancy results from a complex suite of attributes that are each individually also unprecedented, including cognitive virtuosity, complex language, and an expanded ethical sense. Collectively, these facts constitute the human uniqueness problem. In spite of its importance, the superficial complexity of this problem has frustrated attempts to resolve it. Though a vast body of earlier work produced important isolated insights, no earlier theory has proven complete or convincing. I briefly review here a new resolution of the human uniqueness problem.1 This new hypothesis appears to be the necessary theory-of-everything. It ostensibly accounts parsimoniously for every major nonstochastic feature of the human story from the origin of Homo approximately 2.0 to 2.5 million years ago through the present instant. I use secondary, review literature where possible here to improve interdisciplinary accessibility. As well, I apologize to the many investigators whose important work could not be directly referenced because of length constraints.

The Gestural Origins of Language

The Gestural Origins of Language

The Gestural Origins of Language

The idea that language evolved from manual gestures rather than primate calls dates back at least to the 18th century, and was revived in modern form by the anthropologist, Gordon W. Hewes, in 1973. The main sources of current evidence are: (1) Signed languages invented by deaf communities share with speech the essential characteristics of language, including such properties as reference, generativity, grammar, and prosody; (2) Great apes in captivity are much better able to learn intentional communication systems based on manual gestures than to acquire speech; (3) The manual gestures of chimpanzees in the wild are more flexible and context-independent than their vocalizations; (4) The mirror system in the primate brain provides a natural platform for the evolution of language; it represents manual gestures and some nonvocal oral movements, but not vocalizations. Vocal gestures were probably incorporated into the mirror system late in hominin evolution, perhaps only with the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

The Gestural Origins of Language

The Gestural Origins of Language

Primate Communication and the Gestural Origin of Language

Wallace, Tylor, Wundt, Johannesson, and others have proposed that human language had its basis in hand and arm gestures. The Gardners' work with the chimpanzee Washoe, Premack's study of the chimpanzee Sarah, and continuing experiments along these lines indicate that neural restructuring would not have been necessary for the protohominid acquisition of a simple propositional gesture or sign language which did not involve cross-modal transfer at a high level from the visual to the auditory channel or vice versa. Evidence from primate studies, early tool-using, the continuing functions of gesture in human communication, lateral dominance in its relation to speech and tool manipulation, and other sources is presented to support a model of glottogenesis. It is argued that a preexisting gestural language system would have provided an easier pathway to vocal language than a direct outgrowth of the "emotional" use of vocalization characteristic of nonhuman primates.

Studies in Language Origins

1. Notes on contributors 2. Introduction by the editors 3. 1. A functional reconstruction of the supralaryngeal vocal tract of the fossil hominid from Petralona (by Budil, Ivo) 4. 2. A much-too-brief evolutionary history of the mammalian middle ear (by Daniel, Hal J.) 5. 3. Spatial mapping and the origin of language: A paleoneurological model (by Wallace, Ron) 6. 4. Some acoustic properties of baby-talk and the prototype effect in infant speech perception (by Davis, Barbara L.) 7. 5. Cerebral lateralization for cognitive and linguistic abilities: Neuropsychological and cultural aspects (by Chernigovskaya, Tatiana V.) 8. 6. Echolocation: An acoustic causal function. Semiotic and linguistic aspects (by Frundt, Hans) 9. 7. Further evidence of verbal and non-verbal communication between the mother and her unborn child in the womb - in support of the author's theory of the bi-modal origin of language (by Raffler-Engel, Walburga von) 10. 8. The Neanderthals: The origins of language and human consciousness? (by Jonker, Abraham) 11. 9. Motor theory of language origin: The diversity of languages (by Allott, Robin) 12. 10. Sign arbitrariness as an index of semiogenesis (by Liska, Jo) 13. 11. Language as analogic strategy: Suggestions for evolutionary research (by Foster, Mary LeCron) 14. 12. Vocal/auditory cognitive mapping, shared meaning and consciousness (by Ragir, Sonia) 15. 13. Historical motivation in the linguistic sign and its cognitive origin (by Gyori, Gabor) 16. 14. The red marbles of phonological and semantic stability through the ages (by Key, Mary Ritchie) 17. 15. The elaboration of language structure (by McArthur, Douglas) 18. 16. The use of the scenario method in the historical sciences (by Greenhood, William) 19. 17. Developments in the pongid and human motor systems as preadaptations for the evolution of human language ability (by Kien, Jenny) 20. 18. The gestural origin of language and new neurological data (by Hewes, Gordon W.) 21. 19. Memory for personal information: Have names become special? (by Burton, A. Mike) 22. Name index 23. Subject index

Primate Communication and the Gestural Origin of Language [and Comments and Reply

Wallace, Tylor, Wundt, Johannesson, and others have proposed that human language had its basis in hand and arm gestures. The Gardners' work with the chimpanzee Washoe, Premack's study of the chimpanzee Sarah, and continuing experiments along these lines indicate that neural restructuring would not have been necessary for the protohominid acquisition of a simple propositional gesture or sign language which did not involve cross-modal transfer at a high level from the visual to the auditory channel or vice versa. Evidence from primate studies, early tool-using, the continuing functions of gesture in human communication, lateral dominance in its relation to speech and tool manipulation, and other sources is presented to support a model of glottogenesis. It is argued that a preexisting gestural language system would have provided an easier pathway to vocal language than a direct outgrowth of the "emotional" use of vocalization characteristic of non-human primates.

The gestural origin of language; evidence from six 'unrelated' languages.

The gestural origin of language; evidence from six 'unrelated' languages.