The Prehistory of Language PDF
Preview The Prehistory of Language
The Prehistory of Language tudies in the volution of anguage S E L GeneralEditors KathleenR.Gibson,UniversityofTexasatHouston, andJamesR.Hurford,UniversityofEdinburgh Published TheOriginsofVowelSystems BartdeBoer TheTransitiontoLanguage EditedbyAlisonWray LanguageEvolution EditedbyMortenH.ChristiansenandSimonKirby LanguageOrigins EvolutionaryPerspectives EditedbyMaggieTallerman TheTalkingApe HowLanguageEvolved RobbinsBurling Self-OrganizationintheEvolutionofSpeech Pierre-YvesOudeyer translatedbyJamesR.Hurford WhyweTalk TheEvolutionaryOriginsofHumanCommunication Jean-LouisDessalles translatedbyJamesGrieve TheOriginsofMeaning LanguageintheLightofEvolution1 JamesR.Hurford TheGenesisofGrammar BerndHeineandTaniaKuteva TheOriginofSpeech PeterF.MacNeilage ThePrehistoryofLanguage EditedbyRudolfBothaandChrisKnight TheCradleofLanguage EditedbyRudolfBothaandChrisKnight LanguageComplexityasanEvolvingVariable EditedbyGeoffreySampson,DavidGil,andPeterTrudgill [Foralistofbooksinpreparationfortheseries,seep.349] The Prehistory of Language Edited by Rudolf Botha Chris Knight 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork ©EditorialmatterandorganizationRudolfBothaandChrisKnight2009 ©Thechapterstheirauthors2009 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2009 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby ClaysLtd,StIvesplc ISBN 978–0–19–954587–2(Hbk.) 978–0–19–954588–9(Pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Preface and acknowledgements Togetherwithitscompanionvolume—TheCradleofLanguage—thisbook grew out of a conference held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in November 2006. The organizers deliberately held the event in the part of the world where modern language is now believed to have evolved. In addition to prominent linguists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and specialists in artificial intelligence, the conference featured some of the world’s leading archeologists, historical linguists, primatologists, and social anthropolo- gists, in many cases bringing specialist knowledge of distinctively African data and perspectives. Shortly after the conference, we decided to publish not only the con- tributions from invited speakers but papers selected from the refreshingly wide range of disciplines represented at the event. Chapters dealing more specifically with the African origins of language and culture appear in The ff Cradle of Language. The present volume o ers state-of-the-art discussions of more general aspects of language evolution. Both reflect the authors’ extensive additional work on their original papers. The Cradle of Language Conference was organized by Rudolf Botha. It was sponsored by the University of Stellenbosch and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We gratefully acknowledge generous financial support from the University of Stellenbosch,theErnestOppenheimerMemorialTrust,andSouthAfrica’s National Research Foundation; we also warmly thank Connie Park for her dedicated work in compiling, reformatting, and editing the manuscripts. Chris Knight, London Rudolf Botha, Stellenbosch March 2008 List of figures 2.1 Mean group size plotted against neocortex ratio for individual primate genera (one species per genus) 16 2.2 Mean time devoted to social grooming by individual primate species, plotted against mean group size 17 2.3 Mean brain size for individual fossil hominin populations 25 2.4 Median (with 50% and 95% ranges) percent time spent grooming for fossil hominin taxa 27 2.5 Maximum achievable level of intentionality for humans, great apes, and monkeys, plotted against frontal lobe volume 32 2.6 Predicted maximum achievable level of intentionality for individual hominin populations 33 ff 3.1 Results from 5 di erent experimental runs of 5000 language games in a population of 10 embodied agents 49 3.2 Graph showing the success rate at which the object was named correctly 52 3.3 Communicative success and lexical coherence 53 3.4 Reciprocal naming game in a population of 10 agents self-organizing a lexicon of names for 10 objects 56 4.1 Possible evolutionary relationships between language and music, after Brown (2000) 61 4.2 The bifurcation of Hmmmmm in the African lineage of Homo 72 6.1a Standard evolutionary theory 100 6.1b Niche construction theory 100 6.2 Alternative responses to feedback from cultural niche construction 113 ff 8.1 The di erential association of gaze alternation with manual gestures in captive populations of chimpanzees 148 8.2 Captive and wild apes sampled from the same gene pool 150 9.1 The directed scratch 171 List of figures ix 9.2 Occurrence of the directed scratch in relation to male dominance rank 174 ff 9.3 Responses to directed scratches by males of di erent dominance rank 175 12.1 Three separate systems 228 12.2 The two kinds of Merge 229 12.3 Relations connected with Merge 231 12.4 The Linguistic Cycle 242 14.1 Comparison of three vocal tract models 259 14.2 Calculation of a convex hull 261 14.3 Examples of 10,000 point datasets 262 15.1 CSN/CSB in relation to FLN/FLB 277 List of tables 2.1 The advantages of language over social grooming as a mechanism for bonding social groups 19 2.2 Critical tests analysis of hypotheses for language evolution 21 2.3 Equations used in calculations of group size, grooming time, and intentionality 26 7.1 General social rules guide ape play interactions 127 7.2 A simplified time-marked description of conjoined moves 131 8.1 Reports of spontaneous deictic behaviors by apes 145 9.1 Name and rank class of the adult males of the Ngogo community 173 12.1 Examples of reanalysis due to the Head Preference Principle 234 12.2 Percentages of demonstrative (Dem) objects with after and fronting of the PP 236 12.3 Examples of reanalysis due to the Late Merge Principle 239 14.1 Areas of convex hulls of 10 times 10,000 randomly generated articulations with the female, male, and male position with female shape vocal tract models 263 List of abbreviations ACC Accusative AF Agent Focus AP Adverb Phrase BNC British National Corpus C Complementizer CP Complementizer Phrase D Determiner DP Determiner Phrase FLB Language faculty broadly construed FLN Language faculty narrowly construed HPP Head Preference Principle LMP Late Merge Principle Nom Nominative NP Noun Phrase OED Oxford English Dictionary P Preposition PP Preposition Phrase Pat Patient PF Perfect PHON Mapping to Sensory Motor interface Pres Present S Sentence SEM Mapping to system of thought SIP Specifier Incorporation Principle Spec Specifier T Tense 3P Third person TP Tense Phrase TOP Topic marker
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