The origin of language when, where, why, how?

[vwgub]

Given my poor understanding of this subject. But skimming this threat I would like to make some points as I understand it.

A: Language is equivalent to but not the same as communication.
B: ASL is language but comes from spoken language so is not an argument for the basis of language. (It is derivative of spoken English?)
C: is a grunt the same as Yeah?

 

[Olowkow]

Given my poor understanding of this subject. But skimming this threat I would like to make some points as I understand it.

A: Language is equivalent to but not the same as communication.
B: ASL is language but comes from spoken language so is not an argument for the basis of language.
C: Is language the same as communication? I.E. is a grunt the same as Yeah?

Well, I hope it's not a "threat".

Join the club, very little is known for sure on the subject. Well, maybe I should say instead that there is much to learn, though certainly much is known about certain facets of syntax, semantics, and in particular phonology. The study of phonology always struck me as a window on the human mind. Syntax and semantics certainly would be much more so, if we just knew more.

Generally, the term "natural language" is used to mean what humans do, speech. It is a form certainly, of communication. ASL (sign language of the deaf) is based loosely on the language of the culture, but not really limited syntactically by the rules of English, in the case of ASL. I'm not sure one can use sign language as an argument for much of anything, except that as in the Nicaraguan case, kids can do this on their own. Something is probably hard wired in the brain to come up with a sign language, in the event they don't have a spoken language. I spent 4 years on a deaf language project which attempted to describe the syntax of the written language of the students who used ASL. It was interesting, but I'm not sure how much one can really push any of it to make claims about spoken language.

All human languages have certain universal features that seem to be just part of human psychology. Limits on the types of rules that can be used, that is. Some of it gets pretty arcane, but one example of a syntactic universal, apparently, in the transformational grammar framework, is the following:

One can say "John ate bananas and pears".
The question could be: What did John eat?
But not: *What did John eat bananas and?

To the generative grammarian, the reason that the starred sentence is ill formed, is because one element of a conjoined structure has been moved in order to form a question. While both can be moved, as in "What did John eat?", the single element cannot. This seems to be true in all languages which use movement of questioned items. Note though, that "John ate bananas and what"? is fine, since "what" is not moved.

As I say, pretty arcane, but this is how linguists look at language, or at least they used to.

 

[Prometheus]

What did John eat, bananas and...?

(implying the tag question, "...what else?") is fine, though.

 

[marplots]

Given my poor understanding of this subject. But skimming this threat I would like to make some points as I understand it.

A: Language is equivalent to but not the same as communication.
B: ASL is language but comes from spoken language so is not an argument for the basis of language. (It is derivative of spoken English?)
C: is a grunt the same as Yeah?

Does ASL (or any other sign-based languages) have a form that indicates a question? Something that differentiates between:

She is my mother. and She is my mother?

Just curious. Don't know but betting yes.

 

[vwgub]

Well, I hope it's not a "threat".

Join the club, very little is known for sure on the subject. Well, maybe I should say instead that there is much to learn, though certainly much is known about certain facets of syntax, semantics, and in particular phonology. The study of phonology always struck me as a window on the human mind. Syntax and semantics certainly would be much more so, if we just knew more.

Generally, the term "natural language" is used to mean what humans do, speech. It is a form certainly, of communication. ASL (sign language of the deaf) is based loosely on the language of the culture, but not really limited syntactically by the rules of English, in the case of ASL. I'm not sure one can use sign language as an argument for much of anything, except that as in the Nicaraguan case, kids can do this on their own. Something is probably hard wired in the brain to come up with a sign language, in the event they don't have a spoken language. I spent 4 years on a deaf language project which attempted to describe the syntax of the written language of the students who used ASL. It was interesting, but I'm not sure how much one can really push any of it to make claims about spoken language.

All human languages have certain universal features that seem to be just part of human psychology. Limits on the types of rules that can be used, that is. Some of it gets pretty arcane, but one example of a syntactic universal, apparently, in the transformational grammar framework, is the following:

One can say "John ate bananas and pears".
The question could be: What did John eat?
But not: *What did John eat bananas and?

To the generative grammarian, the reason that the starred sentence is ill formed, is because one element of a conjoined structure has been moved in order to form a question. While both can be moved, as in "What did John eat?", the single element cannot. This seems to be true in all languages which use movement of questioned items. Note though, that "John ate bananas and what"? is fine, since "what" is not moved.

As I say, pretty arcane, but this is how linguists look at language, or at least they used to.

So I guess my question on this subject is : Is language equal to communication? In other words can you have communication without language? I would think yes you can. You can grunt and point before you can say Go over there.

 

[Olowkow]

(implying the tag question, "...what else?") is fine, though.

Yes, but different "deep structure".

 

[Olowkow]

Does ASL (or any other sign-based languages) have a form that indicates a question? Something that differentiates between:

She is my mother. and She is my mother?

Just curious. Don't know but betting yes.

I never learned much ASL since all the deaf people I worked with read lips amazingly well, but a lot is done with the facial expressions and body language. Check this site and look up "which, when, why, etc". Especially "what".

http://www.lifeprint.com/dictionary.htm

 

[Olowkow]

So I guess my question on this subject is : Is language equal to communication? In other words can you have communication without language? I would think yes you can. You can grunt and point before you can say Go over there.

All kinds of non verbal communication, yes. Body language, social conventions, etc.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Okay, I misspoke. The answer to "when did human language evolve?" is trivial--when humans did. The larger question, "When did language evolve?", is still up in the air. And knowning when human language evolved does nothing to help with that.

I think you guys are arguing based on a misuse of . . . language. The common name for all species of the genus homo is "human". I think you guys are using "modern human" or "homo sapiens" as if it were the only species of human.

Human language may well have developed before homo sapiens; we don't know.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Does ASL (or any other sign-based languages) have a form that indicates a question? Something that differentiates between:

She is my mother. and She is my mother?

Just curious. Don't know but betting yes.

Yes. There is even a special distinction between yes/no questions and other sorts of questions.

All the elements of spoken language exist in ASL (case, syntax, etc.) Why this fact eluded linguists for a long time was the phenomenon of code shifting where ASL users would shift to a signed English or PSE (Pigdin Signed English which blends elements of English and ASL with such greatly simplified syntax that it lacks many features of a language).

While you can find signs in ASL that are still natural (that somehow look like what it means--including a system of signs that only mimic things called "classifiers") but the language is conventional and not natural. You have similar mimicking in spoken language, but with spoken language that mimicry is limited to sounds (onomatopoiea).

Linguistics have generally agreed that ASL is a language for some time now.

[I worked as an interpreter for the Deaf for 8 years, though I have since let my certification and license lapse. It's been 10 years since I worked as an interpreter.]

I agree with the theory that gestures or sign language may have arisen before spoken language. Chimpanzees, for example, learn by watching. The young watch the adults doing something, and then attempt to do the same thing. We don't know how intentional the teaching part of that is with chimps, though. With early humans, it could have been more intentional, and then symbolic (making the hand movements without the stones or whatever in the hands). And such a motion could gradually become more symbolic and less natural.

Of course, against this, we have the proto language elements of vervet alarm calls and other vocalizations among non-human primates. That's why I say "may have". Both systems have their unique adaptive advantages. (Sound can travel around corners, and you can speak with both hands full. Gestures can be done at greater distances especially in noisy circumstances, and can be done silently so as not to alert prey or enemies of your presence.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

(implying the tag question, "...what else?") is fine, though.

Well done!

I had a linguistics professor who described their conventions. Someone would deliver his shiny new theory. Then everyone stayed up all night trying to think of acceptable utterances that would disprove it. Sometimes, the proof was immediate. There's a story (I suspect apocryphal) where the speaker says something like, "While several languages used double negatives to represent a 'positive', English doesn't allow a 'double positive' to signify a negative." Then someone in the crowd says, "Yeah right!" (Or "Yeah sure" or even "Yeah yeah" with the proper intonation or even a gesture that looks like an arm waving something away.)

And one of my favorite ways of dealing with bad grammar is to try to construe the sentence to make sense with valid grammar. For instance, I used to know a retired school teacher who always wrongly correct people who said, "I feel bad." She would always say, "I feel badly!" That could mean the speaker is a Braille user with a reading disorder.

 

[drkitten]

So I guess my question on this subject is : Is language equal to communication? In other words can you have communication without language? I would think yes you can. You can grunt and point before you can say Go over there.

You would be right. The deaf Nicaraguan kids are a good example of the transition from "communication" to "language."

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

So I guess my question on this subject is : Is language equal to communication? In other words can you have communication without language? I would think yes you can. You can grunt and point before you can say Go over there.

Grunting and pointing may well be part of language use. I think a better example is the one I've mentioned several times: alarm calls in vervet monkeys. They definitely communicate something, but they are not part of language use. (That is, both the point and grunt and the alarm calls lack all the features of a true language, but a person who grunts and points may be an ASL user, in which case the "utterance" would be part of language use. But we know vervet monkeys do not have true language.)

I think drkitten was on the right track in saying that we should recognize language as a cognitive capacity rather than focusing narrowly on speech. For example, we know Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers. It's extremely indirect, but at least we can speculate that such symbolic behavior might correlate with language. Looking at cranial endocasts for specific cerebral structures might be another line of evidence in answering the question.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

And again, looking for apparently symbolic communication in itself isn't the same as looking for language. The so-called "dance language" of bees comes to mind.

And looking for communication alone isn't it. Many animals communicate quite a lot through pheremones and other scents, but we don't consider that anything like language. (There is no sign and and signified distinction, for one.)

 

[Olowkow]

Well done!

I had a linguistics professor who described their conventions. Someone would deliver his shiny new theory. Then everyone stayed up all night trying to think of acceptable utterances that would disprove it. ..

Linguists, like any other scientist, look for counterexamples to proposed constraints or hypotheses all the time. Often, it is just lack of understanding rather than a real counterexample. It reminds me of the claim made to the evolutionary biologist, "Yeah, well why do we still have monkeys then?"

I used to give talks on bilingual code switching. I always made it very clear, repeatedly, that everything I was saying was relevant only for "communities of bilingual speakers". Sure enough, there was usually someone who, in a very self satisfied manner, would stand up and claim, "Well, my wife is from Germany, and she can say,........" Of course, she is not a member of a linguistic community of bilinguals, so his "counterexample" was just a distraction.

Without an understanding of "deep structure", it is pretty difficult to argue for a counterexample in transformational syntax.

 

[Piggy]

I can easily see how the language meme (yes language is a meme) could co-evolve and even effect the evolution of the genes needed for speaking and thought.

If language is a meme, then shivering, blinking, and growing hair are memes.

 

[Olowkow]

And again, looking for apparently symbolic communication in itself isn't the same as looking for language. The so-called "dance language" of bees comes to mind.

And looking for communication alone isn't it. Many animals communicate quite a lot through pheremones and other scents, but we don't consider that anything like language. (There is no sign and and signified distinction, for one.)

Yes, we have completely missed these until now. There could well be some complicated structure to the pheromones' composition which is determined by certain situations. [?]

 

[drkitten]

If language is a meme, then shivering, blinking, and growing hair are memes.

No.

You don't learn to shiver, blink, and grow hair. In fact, you can't even learn to stop shivering, blinking, and growing hair. People shiver, blink, and grow hair in the same way all over the world.

Language, however, is quite different. If you're not taught language, you won't spontaneously develop it. (See the rather famous example of Genie or the other feral or feral-like children for examples.)

 

[drkitten]

Yes, we have completely missed these until now. There could well be some complicated structure to the pheromones' composition which is determined by certain situations. [?]

Er, what?

Are you seriously suggesting that there are an infinite number of possible pheromones, each carrying a separate meaning derived from some sort of compositional chemical semantics?

 

[Olowkow]

Er, what?

Are you seriously suggesting that there are an infinite number of possible pheromones, each carrying a separate meaning derived from some sort of compositional chemical semantics?

No.