The Prehistory of Language

365 Pages·2009·1.55 MB·English

by  Rudolf Botha

The Prehistory of Language
tudies in the volution of anguage
S E L
GeneralEditors
KathleenR.Gibson,UniversityofTexasatHouston,
andJamesR.Hurford,UniversityofEdinburgh
Published
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Pierre-YvesOudeyer
translatedbyJamesR.Hurford
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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
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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