Olowkow
Philosopher
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2007
- Messages
- 8,230
The BBC has an excellent podcast called Discovery which has been a favorite for years. I happened to listen to an intriguing episode called What the Songbird Said. The topic is human language evolution, and suggests, simply stated, that children may learn language in much the same way as young birds learn the songs of their parents.
There are some points made toward the end of this half hour podcast that I thought worth passing along in this thread while the context is fresh in my mind.
A Japanese linguist and colleague of Chomsky at MIT, Shigeru Miyagawa, has proposed a seemingly simple but useful idea concerning the development of language in animals and humans which he has dubbed the integration hypothesis. He has proposed that there are two basic layers in human languages: the lexical and the expressive systems. Just as bats and birds have independently evolved the ability to fly, certain groups of animals have independently come up with different basic systems of communication. Birds use an expressive highly inflected system to find mates and warn of danger, whereas chimps and others use a lexicon based system to convey threats and warnings etc.
He suggests that humans are possibly the only animals to have managed to integrate the two systems, though he is entertaining the notion that gibbons may also have mastered a syntax in their usage of an extensive lexicon. He didn't mention whale songs, which I feel could well be a good example.
I appreciate your comment. Sometimes it feels like no one but my friend Angrysoba ever reads this stuff.
Don't worry about the details. Theoretical linguistics has been a seat-of-the-pants discipline for a long time, populated by a lot of hippies trying their darndest to think outside the box. Many ideas are therefore necessarily pulled out of various nether regions, since previous centuries of thinking appear to have exhausted all other orifices. It's proven to be a very tough nut to crack.
Related link: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150512-birds-hold-the-key-to-language
There are some points made toward the end of this half hour podcast that I thought worth passing along in this thread while the context is fresh in my mind.
A Japanese linguist and colleague of Chomsky at MIT, Shigeru Miyagawa, has proposed a seemingly simple but useful idea concerning the development of language in animals and humans which he has dubbed the integration hypothesis. He has proposed that there are two basic layers in human languages: the lexical and the expressive systems. Just as bats and birds have independently evolved the ability to fly, certain groups of animals have independently come up with different basic systems of communication. Birds use an expressive highly inflected system to find mates and warn of danger, whereas chimps and others use a lexicon based system to convey threats and warnings etc.
He suggests that humans are possibly the only animals to have managed to integrate the two systems, though he is entertaining the notion that gibbons may also have mastered a syntax in their usage of an extensive lexicon. He didn't mention whale songs, which I feel could well be a good example.
I appreciate your comment. Sometimes it feels like no one but my friend Angrysoba ever reads this stuff.
Don't worry about the details. Theoretical linguistics has been a seat-of-the-pants discipline for a long time, populated by a lot of hippies trying their darndest to think outside the box. Many ideas are therefore necessarily pulled out of various nether regions, since previous centuries of thinking appear to have exhausted all other orifices. It's proven to be a very tough nut to crack.
Related link: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150512-birds-hold-the-key-to-language
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