Language

Language as an Evolutionary Process #

• language evolves like organisms
  • needs to be learned quickly/effectively, or else it will die out
  • adapts to environment
    • example: in open plains, birds speak in short notes; in forest, birds speak in long notes due to degradation of signal due to winds in plains

Human Communication #

• gestures (sign language, etc.) → efficient distance signaling in open plains
  • used by indigenous North American Plains people w/ spatial grammar (location, movement, shape, orientation of palm)
  • evolved cultural taboos for speaking: close female relatives after man’s death in Waripiri Aboriginals
• vocals (grunts, whistles, etc.)
  • whistle languages in mountain societies: short, high, freq. sounds carry further
    • Sylbo (Spanish Canary Island), Turkey, Mexico

Sonority #

The relative loudness of speech that is determined by how open the mouth is

• ex. vowels more sonorous than consonants
• warmer climates: languages more sonorous than cold climates (more often outside, further away from others) → Hawaiian more sonorous than Russian

Language Reproductive Success #

• languages are documents of history that reveal cultural similarities, families
  • origins of words ⇒ word more important in that language/culture

Origin of Indo-European Languages: #

• southern Russian steppe Yamnaya culture
• mobile army tactics (horses, wheeled vehicles, archers of all genders)
• wiped out indigenous populations of Europe, British Isles, N. India

Adaptive Radiation: #

• Small-scale societies: small lexicons (3–5000 words) but more non-written/multilingual
• Americans: 40,000–70,000, 11 basic colors vs. 5 or 2 in smaller societies
• Numbers: universal 1, 2, many; only some cultures have more

Reproductive Success of Words: #

• radiation of new forms (lexical replacement) — becomes unrelated in different languages (e.g. tail) ⇒ not very successful word

• slow evolution — similar standards in many languages (e.g. two) → disadvantageous to mess with common words (mutations “lethal”)

→ also seen in grammatical rules: old English had more past tense representations, which have mostly gone extinct other than some commonly used, irregular verbs. More common = more irregular (177 → 145 → 98 irregular verbs, old → middle → modern)

Language must be learnable #

• acquisition bottleneck
  • must be learned by children
  • selection for regularity, ease of use
  • less common words go extinct

Colors: 14 in Korean

Origins of Language #

Unanswered question: did tools or language come first?

Language appeared in genus Homo #

• possible need for accelerated learning for tool making
• selection for left hemisphere function, precise imitation
• analogous to tool making
  • becomes another tool
  • same strengths as hierarchical planning
  • unique cultural, genetic predisposition

Language in other species #

• Honeybees: dances to convey location of flower patches (waggle dance)
• Monkeys: males give alarm responses corresponding to predators
• Artificially taught: border collies identifying toys, bonobo taught use of keyboard, dolphin recognized novel sentences
  • most successful: social species w/ collective brain — social tolerance (observing another chimp)

Characteristics of Language #

Language consists of an infinite number of combinations of signals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett%27s_design_features

Humans have all 13 features; other species have a few

• Dolphins — recognize novel sentences
• Bonobos — symbol use
• Bees — waggle dance

Human: Continue