The evolution of language - an unsolvable mystery?

Table of contents

1 Introduction

2 What is language?
2.1 Words
2.2 Grammar

3 Functional features of language

4 Universal Grammar

5 The common ancestor of humans
5.1 What are primates?
5.2 Relationships between primates
5.3 Nutrition as an influencing factor
5.4 Brain growth
5.4.1 The growth of the human brain (and the giraffe’s neck)
5.4.2 The delusion of brain-growth

6 Language
6.1 An intermediary phase between nonlanguage and language
6.2 The first utterance
6.3 The presence of syntax
6.4 Evolution and the pattern of Noam Chomsky

7 Conclusion

8 Bibliography

1 Introduction

It is well known how delicate and sometimes even dangerous it was to speak of the term “evolution” not too long ago. In 1859, Charles Darwin had already achieved a lot of interest in the origin and evolution of language but because of a ban that excluded all theorizing about language evolution from the scientific discourse for more than a century, only little research on this field of science developed thereafter (cf. Christiansen & Kirby 2003, p. 2).

Even nowadays, if people are interviewed to name some of the greatest inventions of humankind, they would probably enumerate all different kinds of technological attractions but the theme that is not to be expected on their list is language – although no technological inventions would have been possible without the use of language.

The medium of language is so mighty that its origins have often been considered to be magical (cf. Finch n.y., p.1). But nowadays the research of these origins has reatained a very high status in various fields. Not only linguists are the leading research-workers – besides them psycholinguists, psychologists, primatologists, philosophists, anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, neuroscientists and computational scientists are just a few of the other scholars that try to explain the many facets of language evolution.

In my term paper I will present some of the recent attempts to explain the evolution of language. This should especially clarify the difficulties that come about when tackling this problem.

2 What is language?

It is a general agreement that to be able to understand the evolution of language one needs to know what language actually is.

Language is the creation of sound pictures, produced in speaking and constituted through human community (cf. Jaspers 1964, p. 13). The respiratory components which are necessary for speech are the lungs that are expected to exhale air. The phonatory component is the term for the larynx which transforms the air into noise. The larynx contains the vocal folds. Besides that, a muscular tongue, powerful lips and even-sized teeths are the essentials for a variety of sounds produced by humans (cf. Aitchinson 2000, p. 80f).

The most noteworthy aspect of language is its expressive power which enables humans to transfer an uncountable number of ideas between people through a textured sound stream. In order to facilitate this transfer of information there are two principles that need to be considered.

2.1 Words

Ferdinand de Saussure^[1] pointed out that a word is an arbitrary sign which means that all insiders of a community develop a connection between a signal and a concept (i.e.: the written word “house” does not look like a house but all people have learnt the same connection between the sound and the meaning). According to this, it is possible to bring the idea of a house to the mind of a conversational partner just by producing the noise of the word. This principle is liable to the mental lexicon (the limited memorized word list).

The figures that make up words work in both directions – if one can use a word, he or she is able to understand it if someone else uses it (cf. Christiansen & Kirby 2003, p. 17).

2.2 Grammar

The second principle behind language is grammar. Since one’s knowledge of grammar is divided in conceptional categories (i.e.: ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’) instead of concrete concepts (i.e.: ‘walk’ and ‘tall’), grammar requires to phrase an impressive number of thoughts. This enables people to talk about all new kinds of ideas. The most prominent rule concerning grammar is the component that combines words to sentences. This is known as syntax. One syntax tool is linear order which enables one to distinguish who does what in a sentence. The other is constituency – the hierarchical structure within a sentence that is very important concerning the ambiguity by interpreting meaning from sentences. The predicate-argument structure is also included in syntax. It ciphers the relationship between participants. Besides that, syntax also contains the possibility of transformations. This means that, by altering the order of words in a sentence, it offers a level of meaning not only concerning who did what to whom, but can also seek for information about one of the participants in a specified relationship.

The second and third combinatorial systems of language are morphology (simple words, prefixes and suffixes are used to produce complex words) and phonology (this controls the sound pattern of a language).

Besides grammar there are other systems of the mind such as perception, articulation, conceptual knowledge and social knowledge which are also components of language (cf. Christiansen & Kirby 2003, p. 16ff).

3 Functional features of language

The transfer of information between people is not the only function of language. Nowadays language is used for so many different occasions that it is hard to announce a main function of it. Some of the important ones are the directive function (giving commands or persuading people), the emotive function (expressing feelings), the phatic or contact function (to maintain communication/ social talk), the poetic function (rhymes, metaphors etc.) and the metalinguistic function (enables to talk about language) (cf. Finch n.y., p. 33, cf. Aitchison 2000, p. 17ff.).

Obverse to these positive features, one needs to mention some areas in which language is not very effective. This concerns on the one hand the editing of spatial information or information of feelings and on the other hand pertinent information which may be untrue because people often use language to lie.

4 Universal Grammar

All human languages share a core set of joint grammatical principles, the so called Universal Grammar. There is no general agreement about what is to be included among these universal rules and how the concerned elements originated. The most common regularities of language are almost always seen as given by the theories of language origin, language processing, and language structure. But the significant class distinctions or the universality of the words are only two examples which demonstrate that basic universals must not be considered self-evident. To probe some of the mysteries of human cognition (such as why there are language universals at all), some intralinguistic factors have to be considered: the functional, neurological, semiotic, and evolutionary tendencies and barriers which may have played an important role. Noam Chomsky^[2] and other linguists have assented that the quintessential language universals derive from a language-specific mental faculty which is innate. According to this view, the human language competence is a number of language principles which are biologically inherited and that function to enumerate possible grammars and their mutable constituents. Notwithstanding most linguists’ assent that universals exist, there is a lot of disagreement about their origin. There are fervid discussions about the doubtful innateness or on the opposite the cultural conventions that have to be acquired through learning. Proponents on both of these sides suspect that the final answer concerning this question will be found in one of these or in a combination of both components. But there are also linguists who claim that none of these approaches will lead to the ultimate answer. Instead, a third class of explanation which resemblances both parts of the discussion needs to be considered. It postulates universality in a way that it is preliminary to language experience but also maintains that this is only practically expressed once these abashments form evolution and self-organization of communication in a social context (cf. Christiansen & Kirby 2003, p. 111f).

5 The common ancestor of humans

5.1 What are primates?

The different variations of organisms are not continuous but rather grouped in separate populations that are maintained through the natural tendency of creatures to only mix with members of their own population. The denomination for these reproductively isolated populations is “species”. But one has to use this classification very carefully, since one can never be completely certain about the interbreeding status only based on fossil-research. In zoology, a hierarchy of groups of species is used to demonstrate degrees of relatedness and classes of evolutionary history. In this hierarchy, humans are in a group shared by different species which are all closely related to animals like chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas. This group, called “the primates”, probably shares a common ancestor that lived around 80 million years ago. Modern techniques using DNA analysis can determine the closeness of relation even more precisely. A suborder of the primates called anthropoidea includes the monkeys of the Old World (superfamily: cercopithecoidea) and the New World (superfamily: ceboidea) together with apes (superfamily: hominoidea). Within the hominoids three families can be differentiated: first, several species of gibbon in the family of hylobatids, second, the great apes in the family of pongids and third humans and their ancestors in the family of hominids. Therefore all hominids and pongids are also hominoids. They are also anthropoids and primates if a less detailed classification is needed (cf. Noble & Davidson 1996, p.22f).

Among the species of higher apes, namely chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans, two of the species are related more closely to each other at a time than they are to the other two. Therefore zoologists group chimpanzees and bonobos together into a single genus, and redefine each species by names with two parts: the first term for the genus and the second one for the species within the genus. The genus that humans belong to is called ‘homo’ and the species is called ‘sapiens’.

5.2 Relationships between primates

According to evolutional theory, one expects a common ancestor of African pongids, hominids and humans. Therefore a very interesting question is, how modern humans evolved to what they are nowadays and how come chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos developed the way they did. Unfortunately, no fossils or archaeological evidence of behaviour of a common ancestor has been found to date. Nevertheless, fossils of the ancestors of humans out of different periods after 4.5 million years ago have been found. Besides that archaeological evidences of products of their behaviour from about 2 million years ago to younger periods of time are known. But there are neither fossilised parts that can be allocated to ancestors of gorillas, bonobos or chimpanzees nor has any archaeological evidence of their behaviour been found. Resulting out of this fact, estimations about the nature of the common ancestor were first derived from comparison of the anatomy of modern animals. Nowadays, the interpretation has been improved as a side effect of genetic studies (nuclear and mitochondrial DNA) of modern humans and animals. As a result, a lot of speculations about the common ancestor have evolved. One suspects it was bounded in its distribution to Africa, it had a small brain, it could not walk on two feet and it might have been vegetarian or at least did not eat large amounts of meat. Therefore in the following chapters, whether the size of the brain or the nutrition played a decisive role concerning the evolution of language will be discussed (cf. Noble & Davidson 1996, p. 24ff).

5.3 Nutrition as an influencing factor

The human brain dissipates the greatest part of the energy of the entire body. There is an estimation that, at 2% of the body weight, 20% of energy expenditure is accounted for by the brain. A chimpanzee’s brain, in comparison, only accounts for 9%. It is therefore disputed whether the change in cranial capacity required dietary strategies which would uphold the extra cost of a large brain during the course of evolution.

Leaves are the main protein suppliers for most primates and fruits provide carbohydrates. Often insects and other arthropods that offer lipids and amino-acids are included in the diet of monkeys and apes. Unfortunately, the exact study of the nutrition of free-living primates is very difficult. It is unclear, for example, which different dietary items are of a high importance. There are also problems in dealing with individual variation and in transferring the results of feeding into nutrition-data.

Concerning humans one might assume that studying would be easy – but far from it: with humans it is even more difficult since there is too much information. But a comparison of data can be done. During research performed in 1991, Tutin et al. found out that all apes seem to combine fruits and leaves in their diets, sometimes accompanied by a substantial intake of insects or mammal protein. Martin (1990) on the other hand discovered a close relationship between nutrition and gut morphology independent of the bodysize. While the guts of apes are adapted to fruit- or leaf-eating, human guts seem well adapted to meat-eating. So one could assume that the eating of meat might be a relatively young adaptation for chimpanzees.

[...]

^[1] Ferdinand de Saussure (born: November 26th, 1857,

died: February 22nd, 1913)was a Swiss linguist.

^[2] Noam Chomsky (born: December 7th, 1928) is a linguistic professor at the Institute of Technology in

Massachusetts.