How did human language originate?

[untermensche]

Evolution works by mutations.

How exactly do you prove a single mutation could not have caused a brain without the language capacity to have the language capacity?

Do you know what Chomsky thinks the language capacity first existed as?

Still has to have happened incrementally.

You're the one making the extraordinary claim. I'd say the burden of proof is on your side

You're claiming it is impossible.

Prove it.

 

[Bomb#20]

Yeah, I know. Instead we have this happy process called evolution. As for infinite, its relative. Your infinite is my large. Large is being done all the time.

Yes Evolution.

Evolution IS saltation.

Not neat and smooth and perfect like some god is designing things.

It is random and chaotic with huge jumps and bursts now and then.

Confusion with punctuated equilibrium

It is a popular misconception that punctuated equilibrium is a saltationist theory, often mistaken for Richard Goldschmidt's hypothesis of "Hopeful Monsters."[20] However, punctuated equilibrium refers instead to a pattern of evolution where most speciation occurs relatively rapidly from a geological perspective (tens of thousands of years instead of millions of years), but through neo-Darwinian evolution, not by saltations. Punctuated equilibrium differs from hopeful monsters in that the former acts on populations rather than individuals, is theoretically more gradual (which proposes to take 50,000 to 100,000 years), functions by the evolution of reproductive isolation (through mechanisms such as allopatric speciation), and the latter says nothing of stasis.​

Saltation (biology)

 

[Bomb#20]

Hard to know when the language capacity arose. About 200,000 is the outside range, and about 50,000 is the inside range.

About 200,000 years ago is when humans first arrived. So if the language capacity arose when humans arose that would be the outside range.

If humans arose first and the language capacity is something that arose in one individual who could pass the capacity to offspring and the capacity presented such a survival advantage that those without it were eventually either killed by those with it or lost in some struggle for survival that those with it were able to surmount, then the date the language capacity arrived is estimated, by some, to be about 50,000 to 100,000.

That could have happened a dozen times over with each successive advance in capacity for language complexity. Moreover, you don't have to be killed or lose some struggle for survival for the other guy's allele to become fixed. You just have to breed less. Then eventually your descendants find nobody to have sex with except people with the other guy's allele. "Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women" -- Dead Poet's Society

One reason language is believed to have arisen in one event is because of the infinite nature of language. It is a computational system capable of dealing with infinite expressions.

No person can understand every expression, but every person with the language capacity has the ability to understand infinite expressions.

A computational system capable of dealing with infinite expressions does not arise step by step.

You don't go from understanding 10 expressions, to 100, to 10,000 ......and so on to infinite.

That's armchair science. How do you know you don't go from understanding 10 expressions, to 100, to 10,000, to infinite?

Chimps seem to be able to handle nouns and adjectives. It probably took their ancestors a mutation to get from nouns only to nouns plus adjectives. It would take another mutation to handle verbs. Another mutation to handle adverbs. Another mutation to generalize the use of nouns from objects to subjects. Another mutation to handle prepositions. At each of these steps, the number of expressions you can understand grows by a large factor. Another mutation to handle subordinate clauses. That makes the number of expressions what you call infinite. Another mutation to handle Chomskyan transformations. That doesn't increase the number of expressions, since it was already nominally infinite; but it does increase the complexity of what can be understood.

...And Lieberman points out that Neanderthals appear to share some of our anatomical changes...

What's missing are the cultural changes, the advancements in tools and other signs of increasing innovativeness that are speculated to arise because of the language capacity.

You simply define "language" to mean nominally infinite communication possibilities. That just means you choose to care more about the subordinate clause mutation than about the rest of those mutations. And then you simply take for granted that the cultural changes of the Great Leap Forward arose because of whichever mutation made the progressively advancing communication system cross the line in your head between what you are not willing to label "language" and what you are willing to label "language".

So you are de facto asserting that the subordinate clause caused the Great Leap Forward. But how could you possibly know that? How do you know it wasn't the conceptual advance of using names for classes of agents, and thus talking about what the animals were going to do and what the weather was going to do, instead of talking only about what the hominids were going to do, that led to the increase in innovativeness? Because that advance merely raised the number of possible sentences from a million to a trillion? What mechanism makes your obsession with infinities matter to prehistory? How do you know subordinate clauses and nominal infinity didn't arise only 30,000 years ago -- an archeologically less significant event that spread like wildfire only because being able to do it made you sexier?

 

[Bomb#20]

One reason language is believed to have arisen in one event is because of the infinite nature of language. It is a computational system capable of dealing with infinite expressions. ...

A computational system capable of dealing with infinite expressions does not arise step by step.

You don't go from understanding 10 expressions, to 100, to 10,000 ......and so on to infinite.

That's the old creationist "half an eye" argument. More reason to call that argument quasi-creationist. Not the "quasi" part. I use "quasi" because this is not poofing organisms into existence, but instead poofing modifications of existing organisms into existence.

What you do instead is to invent recursion -- define a linguistic construct that can include constructs like itself. untermensche, earlier in this thread, I tried to explain how recursion can generate infinities, but you don't seem to have bothered to comment on that.

It seems to me the evidence for any support for recursion in our brains' language centers is pretty meager. Practically everything in language that linguists typically represent with recursion in their grammars can also be represented iteratively. The choice to write recursive grammars seems driven more by the availability of grammar formalisms that encourage them. It's not clear that we actually have mental stacks. Processing nominally grammatical sentences that require stacks to analyze is a struggle for us, and people normally prefer to express the same concepts with constructions that don't need them.

Fortran used to not allow recursion, although it was in other respects a pretty normal computer language. That's because Fortran compilers conventionally implemented subroutines by having each subroutine remember where in some other routine it was supposed to jump back to when it finished. You couldn't call a subroutine from within itself because then it would have to remember two places to jump back to, and it only had space to remember one. That looks to me like it might be a closer model for human natural language processing than the Algol stack system.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Still has to have happened incrementally.

You're the one making the extraordinary claim. I'd say the burden of proof is on your side

You're claiming it is impossible.

Prove it.

It would require magic. Isn't that proof enough?

 

[untermensche]

Yes Evolution.

Evolution IS saltation.

Not neat and smooth and perfect like some god is designing things.

It is random and chaotic with huge jumps and bursts now and then.

Confusion with punctuated equilibrium

It is a popular misconception that punctuated equilibrium is a saltationist theory, often mistaken for Richard Goldschmidt's hypothesis of "Hopeful Monsters."[20] However, punctuated equilibrium refers instead to a pattern of evolution where most speciation occurs relatively rapidly from a geological perspective (tens of thousands of years instead of millions of years), but through neo-Darwinian evolution, not by saltations. Punctuated equilibrium differs from hopeful monsters in that the former acts on populations rather than individuals, is theoretically more gradual (which proposes to take 50,000 to 100,000 years), functions by the evolution of reproductive isolation (through mechanisms such as allopatric speciation), and the latter says nothing of stasis.​

Saltation (biology)

Actually you are claiming I am not using the term "saltation" properly, I certainly do not mean it to mean that any kind of change is possible, only that long periods of stasis are interrupted by rapid periods of change, that is evolution.

n 1977 Stephen Jay Gould argued that the recent discovery of regulatory genes offered new evidence which supported some of Goldschmidt's postulates. Gould argued that instances of rapid evolution neither undermine Darwinian theory (as Goldschmidt believed) nor await immediate discreditation (as many neo-Darwinians thought).[21] Gould insisted that Darwin's belief in gradualism—which was largely inherited from the anti-catastrophic views of Charles Lyell—was never an essential component to Darwin's theory of evolution. Thomas Henry Huxley also warned Darwin that he had loaded his work "with an unnecessary difficulty in adopting Natura non facit saltum so unreservedly."[22] Huxley feared this assumption could discourage naturalists who believed that major leaps and cataclysms played a significant role in the history of life. Gould continued:

 

[untermensche]

You're claiming it is impossible.

Prove it.

It would require magic. Isn't that proof enough?

A mutation would require magic?

You sure you want to stick with that absurd answer?

 

[untermensche]

That could have happened a dozen times over with each successive advance in capacity for language complexity. Moreover, you don't have to be killed or lose some struggle for survival for the other guy's allele to become fixed. You just have to breed less. Then eventually your descendants find nobody to have sex with except people with the other guy's allele. "Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women" -- Dead Poet's Society

Nope.

In animals there is no such thing as a fraction of the human language capacity.

One either has it or one does not. One can either make sense of human language or one cannot.

That's armchair science. How do you know you don't go from understanding 10 expressions, to 100, to 10,000, to infinite?

If you mean it is a logical argument, yes.

An infinite system cannot be arrived at through steps.

Just build some system that can do it and you have shown my error.

It either arrives whole or it does not arise.

Chimps seem to be able to handle nouns and adjectives.

Chimps have shown to have a finite ability to deal with labels.

What they have will never grow step by step into something capable of creating and understanding infinite expressions.

You simply define "language" to mean nominally infinite communication possibilities.

The capacity is infinite. There is no limit to the number of possible expressions that can be made or understood. The system does not have a limit.

This of course does not mean the number of words understood can be infinite, but it can easily be large enough to produce infinite phrases. Since of course in theory any single phrase could be infinite in length.

You have to propose some limit to the ability to create and understand new phrases to claim the ability is not infinite.

Because that advance merely raised the number of possible sentences from a million to a trillion?

In the wild chimps have very few verbal labels. They do not use verbal labels much at all. If at all.

It is considerably less than a million.

 

[fromderinside]

yes, so?

OK, so?

Really Sherlock, so?

Species never resist genetic change. Sometimes changes are just inconsequential given conditions. Point here is mutations occur at regular rates in individuals IAC with physical law. How we interpret consequences is in question.

You can't make anything out of regular rates of mutations.

The only mutations that matter are those which can be passed on and cause some change that effects survival abilities.

Most mutation either do not effect survival or effect it negatively. These are all lost.

I was talking about those that can be passed. There is no reason to presume that those that can be passed on at different rates than the proportion which is passed of from all mutations which are determined by physical principles. Those aren't all lost. Negative effects are just as noteworthy as are positive effects and those that don't effect phenotype stay in the genome. Your hand waving isn't helping you here. Interaction of genome with environment determines phenome whither it be positive, negative, or full stop.

 

[Bomb#20]

Actually you are claiming I am not using the term "saltation" properly, I certainly do not mean it to mean that any kind of change is possible, only that long periods of stasis are interrupted by rapid periods of change, that is evolution.

What I'm claiming is that saltation and punctuated equilibrium aren't the same thing. You appear to be using "saltation" properly when you argue that human language arose from one mutation rather than step-by-step. You appear to be using "saltation" improperly when you offer Gould and evidence for punctuated equilibrium as if they were support for the possibility of saltation. I'm not making a stink about your terminological preferences; I'm making a stink about your misapplication of Gould's ideas.

 

[untermensche]

Actually you are claiming I am not using the term "saltation" properly, I certainly do not mean it to mean that any kind of change is possible, only that long periods of stasis are interrupted by rapid periods of change, that is evolution.

What I'm claiming is that saltation and punctuated equilibrium aren't the same thing. You appear to be using "saltation" properly when you argue that human language arose from one mutation rather than step-by-step. You appear to be using "saltation" improperly when you offer Gould and evidence for punctuated equilibrium as if they were support for the possibility of saltation. I'm not making a stink about your terminological preferences; I'm making a stink about your misapplication of Gould's ideas.

Saltation has a general meaning. It generally means "abrupt evolutionary change; sudden large-scale mutation".

Of course all mutations are sudden.

And since we now know about regulatory genes large-scale change is possible.

And while Punctuated Equilibrium is not the same thing as Saltation, it is a theory based on the reality of Saltation.

 

[Bomb#20]

Nope.

In animals there is no such thing as a fraction of the human language capacity.

One either has it or one does not. One can either make sense of human language or one cannot.

In animals there is no such thing as a fraction of a blowhole. Either you're a whale and you have it or you aren't and you don't. This doesn't mean blowholes didn't arise step-by-step; it only means every animal that ever breathed through some opening intermediate between a nostril and a blowhole is dead.

That's armchair science. How do you know you don't go from understanding 10 expressions, to 100, to 10,000, to infinite?

If you mean it is a logical argument, yes.

An infinite system cannot be arrived at through steps.

Just build some system that can do it and you have shown my error.

It either arrives whole or it does not arise.

Been there, done that. I've built half a dozen systems that can understand nominally infinite expressions -- compilers -- and I can assure you that none of them sprang fully formed from my brow. Give me a week of free time and I can write a new one and show you twenty intermediate steps, including ten versions which can understand larger and larger finite numbers of expressions, and another ten that can all theoretically understand infinitely many, even though each of those can understand a lot of expressions the previous version can't, because the capabilities will keep improving step-by-step even after the infinity barrier is breached.

Chimps seem to be able to handle nouns and adjectives.

Chimps have shown to have a finite ability to deal with labels.

You have a finite ability to deal with labels. You can't remember a million labels for a million different things.

What they have will never grow step by step into something capable of creating and understanding infinite expressions.

Only because chimps will most likely go extinct before they have the time and environmental pressures to evolve a language organ like ours. If humans somehow wipe ourselves out without also killing off the chimps, give them seven million years and their vocalizations might evolve into language. It's happened before.

This of course does not mean the number of words understood can be infinite, but it can easily be large enough to produce infinite phrases. Since of course in theory any single phrase could be infinite in length.

No it can't. There's no grammatical rule that allows for an infinitely long phrase. (Not that it matters -- an infinite number of finite phrases is as much infinity as you need.)

You have to propose some limit to the ability to create and understand new phrases to claim the ability is not infinite.

Been there, done that, upthread. You do not know a million words, and you cannot create or understand a million-word-long phrase. Therefore 1000000^1000000 is an upper limit on your ability to create and understand new phrases.

Because that advance merely raised the number of possible sentences from a million to a trillion?

In the wild chimps have very few verbal labels. They do not use verbal labels much at all. If at all.

It is considerably less than a million.

Indeed so. The fact that H. erectus is extinct does not entitle you to take for granted that an H. erectus couldn't understand a million possible sentences. The fact that H. heidelbergensis is extinct does not entitle you to take for granted that an H. heidelbergensis couldn't understand a trillion possible sentences. You have no evidence that our ancestors went from chimp in the wild level language capacity to George W. Bush level language capacity in one mutation.

 

[untermensche]

In animals there is no such thing as a fraction of a blowhole. Either you're a whale and you have it or you aren't and you don't. This doesn't mean blowholes didn't arise step-by-step; it only means every animal that ever breathed through some opening intermediate between a nostril and a blowhole is dead.

You're comparing a cognitive capacity that arises due to some genetic "rewiring" of the brain with a physical structure.

It's apples and oranges in terms of understanding.

We have little idea how many parts of the brain do what they do.

We certainly don't understand how a brain creates a cognitive capacity. How a brain creates a thought.

So we have no idea how cognitive capacities might change with a single mutation.

Been there, done that. I've built half a dozen systems that can understand nominally infinite expressions -- compilers -- and I can assure you that none of them sprang fully formed from my brow. Give me a week of free time and I can write a new one and show you twenty intermediate steps, including ten versions which can understand larger and larger finite numbers of expressions, and another ten that can all theoretically understand infinitely many, even though each of those can understand a lot of expressions the previous version can't, because the capabilities will keep improving step-by-step even after the infinity barrier is breached.

The theory does not even say that the system capable of infinite expression and comprehension arose all at once. It may have just been a mutation that connected an already intact system to cognition. To something accessible by the conscious animal.

You have a finite ability to deal with labels.

Exactly!

That is how language differs from animal communication which is just placing a label on something.

Human language is something entirely different. It is using many labels to produce infinite expressions that can be understood.

There's no grammatical rule that allows for an infinitely long phrase.

You need something logical to prevent it.

Grammatical rules are arbitrary fictions.

Humans can have incredibly complex language without any of them. And of course probably most humans have lived without them.

The fact that H. erectus is extinct does not entitle you to take for granted that an H. erectus couldn't understand a million possible sentences.

Actually the record of artifacts speaks strongly against any such thing.

Such a complex system would allow for a lot of innovation. But there was next to none.

 

[fromderinside]

In animals there is no such thing as a fraction of a blowhole. Either you're a whale and you have it or you aren't and you don't. This doesn't mean blowholes didn't arise step-by-step; it only means every animal that ever breathed through some opening intermediate between a nostril and a blowhole is dead.

You're comparing a cognitive capacity that arises due to some genetic "rewiring" of the brain with a physical structure.

It's apples and oranges in terms of understanding.

We have little idea how many parts of the brain do what they do.

We certainly don't understand how a brain creates a cognitive capacity. How a brain creates a thought.

So we have no idea how cognitive capacities might change with a single mutation.

Well geez. A blowhole is part of the whales's respiratory system and language is part of the human's nervous system. Since Chomsky doesn't know what part of the brain is responsible for language function we must not compare one function with another with respect to genetic analysis? Are you kidding me. I've already shown links between FOXP2 and autism, a language and behavioral genetically determined anomaly, in an earlier post. It is well known that FOXP2 is critically linked to language. Also I've pointed out why attempting analysis indirectly with physical brain localities is why cognitive neuroscience still remains somewhat less than scientifically determinable.

So spouting off, on the one hand, that the brain can't be analyzed for specific function or capability, whilst, on the other hand insisting language is a single genetic change is just as ludicrous.

Bomb#20's analogy between part and whole is valid. Just because we can see one and cannot see directly (see above problem) the other cannot be used as argument against the analogy. You need something better. Either find a way to define language so it matches or explicitly is different from blowhole or quit arguing that language is something unique because you have no basis for making that assertion. One cannot, out of ignorance, make a claim which is exactly what you do when you claim language function and blowhole function are not similarly determined by genetics. Of course I'm leaving out all the hand waving because that's all it is.

 

[untermensche]

Since Chomsky doesn't know what part of the brain is responsible for language function we must not compare one function with another with respect to genetic analysis? Are you kidding me.

That is a convenient distortion of what I said. Of course Chomsky knows about areas of the brain associated with language. What he or nobody knows is how a brain creates a conscious thought.

Thinking is what changes with language. The spoken stuff is merely a side consequence of thinking.

FOXP2 is associated with normal brain development.

It is not specific for language.

So spouting off, on the one hand, that the brain can't be analyzed for specific function or capability, whilst, on the other hand insisting language is a single genetic change is just as ludicrous.

Stop distorting.

If you can't comprehend it so be it.

But I am talking about how a brain creates conscious thoughts. What specific "process" is involved?

Because if you can give me the genes that create conscious thoughts, or the ability to have thoughts, then you will be talking about the genes related to my point.

 

[fromderinside]

So spouting off, on the one hand, that the brain can't be analyzed for specific function or capability, whilst, on the other hand insisting language is a single genetic change is just as ludicrous.

But I am talking about how a brain creates conscious thoughts. What specific "process" is involved?

Because if you can give me the genes that create conscious thoughts, or the ability to have thoughts, then you will be talking about the genes related to my point.

Either you've gotten used to goal post moving or you are just missing the fact that this thread is about language not thought.

I demolished your point. Just because one can't be physically pointed to doesn't make the analogy wrong. Breathing using blow holes and language produced by brains are functions of respiratory systems and nervous systems respectively.

To your claim that language changes thought is also true for tool use.

FOXP2 remains important in the study of the genetics of language. Further, as far as I can tell Chomsky nor Gould argue cerebellum - a brain region as largely changed as Cerebrum over the history of evolution from ape to man - is affected by language whilst it is featured by others as being affected by tool use.

 

[untermensche]

Either you've gotten used to goal post moving or you are just missing the fact that this thread is about language not thought.

I have said many times that at least to Chomsky language is a system to organize thought. The spoken parts are just add ons made possible by the fact that humans, and pre-human ancestors, were already making complicated sounds.

Humans had enough inherent dexterity in vocalization already to interface this system of thought with the system of vocalizations.

This thinking system was also somehow interfaced with the pre-existing system that comprehended the crude sounds possible before the language capacity.

In fact the current evidence is that even some monkeys have enough inherent ability to make sound that if they had the thinking part they could talk.

We have a difference of opinion of what language actually is.

FOXP2 remains important in the study of the genetics of language. Further, as far as I can tell Chomsky nor Gould argue cerebellum - a brain region as largely changed as Cerebrum over the history of evolution from ape to man - is affected by language whilst it is featured by others as being affected by tool use.

All FOXP2 tells us about language is that an intact brain is a necessary condition for normal language acquisition and expression.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I have said many times that at least to Chomsky language is a system to organize thought. The spoken parts are just add ons made possible by the fact that humans, and pre-human ancestors, were already making complicated sounds.

Humans had enough inherent dexterity in vocalization already to adapt this system of thought to a system of vocalizations.

In fact the current evidence is that even some monkeys have enough inherent ability to make sound that if they had the thinking part they could talk.

We have a difference of opinion of what language actually is.

FOXP2 remains important in the study of the genetics of language. Further, as far as I can tell Chomsky nor Gould argue cerebellum - a brain region as largely changed as Cerebrum over the history of evolution from ape to man - is affected by language whilst it is featured by others as being affected by tool use.

All FOXP2 tells us about language is that an intact brain is a necessary condition for normal language acquisition and expression.

Apes can master language. They just don't have the instinct to tell stories or explain things. They don't use language to bond emotionally. We do. I'd say the evidence of ape language proves you wrong.

 

[untermensche]

Apes can master language. They just don't have the instinct to tell stories or explain things. They don't use language to bond emotionally. We do. I'd say the evidence of ape language proves you wrong.

No, apes can master a few symbols, nothing more.

They have never come close to showing even a child's ability to deal with human language, no less a mastery.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Apes can master language. They just don't have the instinct to tell stories or explain things. They don't use language to bond emotionally. We do. I'd say the evidence of ape language proves you wrong.

No, apes can master a few symbols, nothing more.

They have never come close to showing even a child's ability to deal with human language, no less a mastery.

No. They can understand grammar. They have an instinct for understanding grammar. They can master vocabularies. They can master abstract words and concepts. They can construct sentences. Koko understood and could use thousands of words. But other primates were not far behind.

The problem with non-human primates is that they need to be prompted to do it. Unless there's a banana in it for them, they wouldn't bother. They only time they've been known to volunteer information is when they're trying to blame someone else for a mess that they've made. Then they can get quite eloquent.

Understanding a wide variety of words isn't particularly impressive. There's plenty of birds and woodland critters who can master thousands of vocal signals. The fact that you think that chimps only could master a couple of symbols just shows how little you understand of the mental capacity of animals in general. We're still struggling to explain how the hell squirrels remember all the hiding places for their nuts. There's rodents with warning systems that include a dizzying array of specifics and abstract words.

Animals are smarter than you think they are. A chimp mastering thousands of symbols isn't particularly impressive or unique. Nor is having a language.

Anyhoo... since neanderthals had art and jewellery, the implies that they too shared our instinct to tell stories and bond emotionally through language. And considering they had the biological capacity of speech, they probably spoke to each other.