How did human language originate?

[untermensche]

There are some plausible intermediate states, states that some of our ancestors may have employed.

A simple one is conjunction: saying A B C D E ... and interpreting it as A and B and C and D and E ...

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.

There is a simple kind of step that can generate infinities: recursion. Using  Backus–Naur form, we can express conjunction as
ELEMENT ::= A | B | C | D | E ...
PHRASE ::= ELEMENT | ELEMENT and PHRASE

That's not to say that we generate and parse in recursive fashion, only that one can use recursion to describe some grammatical constructs. In this case, we'd likely look at A B C D E ... in sequence -- iteration.

This recursion makes it unnecessary to have a separate parse rule for each number of elements. It also makes conjunction infinite. So one does not need some mysterious quasi-creationist jump.

This does not exclude the singing theory of the origin of language. In fact, it can easily be part of that origin. The first step would be inventing words, sequences of sounds for discrete entities and the like. Next would be combining the words, and the simplest type of combination is conjunction. Since it is easy to make conjunction infinite, we have infinity right there. After that would be more elaborate grammar.

You're conflating several things.

The rapidity of the development of the language capacity is hypothesized because of the rapid change in behavior we see in the historical record. The innovation in tools. The rapid exodus from Africa and rapid extermination of similar species.

Not because of the system itself.

And the recursive system is unique. No other primate has anything close.

 

[rousseau]

So did we decide anything yet?

 

[untermensche]

So did we decide anything yet?

What is your definition of "language".

Those that have looked at the question for decades differ in their opinions.

How is it possible it would be settled here?

 

[Malintent]

God created languages and spoke them to people so they would know which languages to use... When people heard god make those noises, they just shrugged and grunted away. Someone forgot to create the intermediate language that God could use to communicate the final set of fixed-in-time languages that we all would have used exactly the same way for thousands of years.

So, God just let it go, and language developed "organically" over many millennia instead.

 

[untermensche]

What we used to think was the work of some god we now see as the expression of genes and interaction with the world.

With amazingly very little information most human children develop a full and complex language.

When a bird builds a nest without ever building one before we understand that somehow nest building is in the genes.

When a human develops a complex language with very little information some claim it is something learned, not an expression of something encoded in the genes.

And these are the two sides on the question of language.

Some that see it as an expression of something in the genes.

And those that think that the only thing in the genes is the ability to learn stuff.

Despite the fact that all modern languages closely looked at are extremely similar.

If language is just something learned then the fact that Chinese is so similar to Spanish is astounding. It defies any expectation from that hypothesis.

 

[Underseer]

By magic. It's the only possible explanation.

 

[Underseer]

Look, Latin didn't just turn into modern Italian by itself.

That would have been an impossibility. One day, a generation would just start speaking modern Italian and be completely unable to communicate with the older Italians. There is no possible way for that transition to happen, therefore it didn't happen, therefore language drift is disproved, therefore the creation of languages by spell-casting pixies is proven. QEDuh!

 

[untermensche]

Look, Latin didn't just turn into modern Italian by itself.

That would have been an impossibility. One day, a generation would just start speaking modern Italian and be completely unable to communicate with the older Italians. There is no possible way for that transition to happen, therefore it didn't happen, therefore language drift is disproved, therefore the creation of languages by spell-casting pixies is proven. QEDuh!

Languages change over time.

But the human language capacity has not changed since in first arose.

 

[fromderinside]

What they didn't have was this hierarchical system of underlying "grammar" that takes an animal from using a few words as labels to filling libraries with books made up of words.

The hierarchical system already existed in mammalian brains. The articulating components of the brain just didn't have access to it. So the mouse and bird had libraries of visual, somotasensory, and olfactory libraries. They just didn't have access to sufficient capacity to produce a grammar sophisticated enough to fill libraries with words. In Other words tool making pressured man into evolving what already existed in other sensory-effector features probably through fortuitous acquisition of those hierarchical capacities already extant in other mammalian systems. Better late to the game than never I always say.

 

[untermensche]

What they didn't have was this hierarchical system of underlying "grammar" that takes an animal from using a few words as labels to filling libraries with books made up of words.

The hierarchical system already existed in mammalian brains. The articulating components of the brain just didn't have access to it. So the mouse and bird had libraries of visual, somotasensory, and olfactory libraries. They just didn't have access to sufficient capacity to produce a grammar sophisticated enough to fill libraries with words. In Other words tool making pressured man into evolving what already existed in other sensory-effector features probably through fortuitous acquisition of those hierarchical capacities already extant in other mammalian systems. Better late to the game than never I always say.

Stop it with your stupid tool making created language nonsense. We have far better tools and the language capacity is no better.

Next to no language is needed to show somebody how to make a stone tool.

What is needed is practice, not language.

What language did, the thinking part, is allowed humans to innovate. Some humans, those with the skill. Not all. To see some existing thing and imagine and plan an improvement.

And humans have lived off the innovations from the few who could ever since.

 

[fromderinside]

That last post was an epitomy of your failing to make your point.

First we have limited capacity to retain items in memory, second we have limited capacity to sustain multiple thoughts, and the beat goes on. All signal limits that were passed when advanced complex tool making came into being. A fifty step tool making process is outside one's normal capacity to hold items in sequence and it is out of capacity to reatin changes in posisiton of whatevcer material one is manipulating.

Two hands are required so passing on something requires one to either stop doing what one is doing, breaking a chain of events to impart information which results in loss of ability to complete either task.

Just putting those together makes it more or less certain that the successful one will have increased communication capacity or method. Replacing sign language and gesture with spoken language seems appropriate route.

On the other hand we can wave Chomsky's hand and have something appear all at once fully formed.

Kind of hard to explain changes in Cerebellum with that one.

Sorry. I retain the view that evolution is incremental and combinational and that other systems (seeing, smelling, etc) already had prototypes or full blown examples of what became available to vocalization.

Humans were already innovating as they moved from climate to climate and from niche to niche usually forced on them by changing conditions as well as their changing behaviors.

No magic bullet here.

 

[untermensche]

That last post was an epitomy of your failing to make your point.

First we have limited capacity to retain items in memory, second we have limited capacity to sustain multiple thoughts, and the beat goes on. All signal limits that were passed when advanced complex tool making came into being. A fifty step tool making process is outside one's normal capacity to hold items in sequence and it is out of capacity to reatin changes in posisiton of whatevcer material one is manipulating.

That is why I say that practice is needed, not language. The steps of a process must move from short to long term memory. But not through language. Through repetition.

Two hands are required so passing on something requires one to either stop doing what one is doing, breaking a chain of events to impart information which results in loss of ability to complete either task.

As long a person can see what is happening they don't need words.

They can then try to replicate what they saw. And watch again, and again.

And practice.

On the other hand we can wave Chomsky's hand and have something appear all at once fully formed.

A capacity. With scope and limitations. Nothing fully formed about any language.

They are all works in progress.

Thanks to a capacity.

 

[fromderinside]

I was addressing practice. Read the limits I posted. Are they language. Nope, the consequence of adaptation to change. Evolution ultimately resulted in language overcoming the limits on memory and practice.

As for capacity, why then does a dog have 4000 times the capacity of man to discriminate and detect odor if it is limited as we are before the magic of Chomsky.

 

[untermensche]

I was addressing practice. Read the limits I posted. Are they language. Nope, the consequence of adaptation to change. Evolution ultimately resulted in language overcoming the limits on memory and practice.

As for capacity, why then does a dog have 4000 times the capacity of man to discriminate and detect odor if it is limited as we are before the magic of Chomsky.

But you did not address it.

I can show you how to make a tool more easily than tell you how to make it.

But for you to make it the key is practice, not language.

Language has next to nothing to do with it and is not necessary. Vision is much more important.

And large capacities are not infinite capacities.

 

[fromderinside]

Practice, too, has limitations. If one is talented at recognizing spatial patter or option one has an advantage that cannot be overcome by practice. If the pattern changes with each stone practice in a certain method isn't useful. You see. In every case different obstacles interfere with practice. Communication, on the other hand can be worked on and revised as method are developed overcoming the need for renewing method with every piece of material. So journeymen, so to speak, by communicating method across many types of material can teach interns how to become masters.

Since tool making is at least a two hand task, sometimes with other items included as jigs, both hands are essential to do the work.

Don't mess with me on this stuff I spent a career in as a Human Engineering Scientist in military and civilian aerospace.

Look I used to teach pilots how to operate under a variety of conditions. Both my hands and my eyes were fixed on the controls. Trainees usually watched from different viewpoints to get the general idea of how and what to do. They would go to a simulator and practice their darn arses off still not understand the tasks. So we provided in flight training with experts narrating what they should to to get the job done, to do each task, to get the proper feel of the mission , etc. Never did a pilot learn a complex mission scenario by just practicing. Brief and debrief was alawys required along with a huge amount of reading (advanced tool making one might say) and Instructional guidance. The same is true for Electrronic Warfare Mission Operators and a variety of other highly skilled tasks.

So no. Practice won't do it. Communication is required. If hands aren't available different mode is needed. Wallah speech.

 

[untermensche]

We're not talking flying jets.

If you got a jet you know there is a language capacity.

But if you have a better spear you are not sure.

Humans have extraordinary vision for things at hands length and closer.

We are talking about breaking rocks. Not flying jets.

Vision and practice. That is most needed.

 

[fromderinside]

Sorry. Tool making was rocket science to protoman. It is better to have a means to communicate without having to use ones hands or make gestures when one is either making tools or instructing others in making tools. Practice is patently insufficient for complex tool making with multiple substrates.

Hominids have been able to make infinite sets ever since they were able to make their way in trees using visual cues.

 

[untermensche]

Breaking rocks isn't rocket science because you say so.

So-called protoman is man without culture, not man without vision and the ability to practice.

Not man without purpose.

 

[fromderinside]

Wow nbow we've laid atr the feet of motivation responsibility for ensuring practice does the job. Yet, those of us in the human engineering business, the education business, the job requirements business all know more than practice is required to get our most advanced work done. Yet, here come modern humans, most all of us with the ability to fashion arrows, spears, clothing, bowls, mortars, colors, housing, and the like out of stone wood and leather after we are trained by parents, teachers, and the like. But the poo Tasmanian emigres lost that ability just because their population got too small. Their communication system broke down even after they had the ability to speak.

We need to examine every nook and cranny if we are to make proclamations my friend. Hillary is right It takes a village.

 

[untermensche]

Wow nbow we've laid atr the feet of motivation responsibility for ensuring practice does the job. Yet, those of us in the human engineering business, the education business, the job requirements business all know more than practice is required to get our most advanced work done. Yet, here come modern humans, most all of us with the ability to fashion arrows, spears, clothing, bowls, mortars, colors, housing, and the like out of stone wood and leather after we are trained by parents, teachers, and the like. But the poo Tasmanian emigres lost that ability just because their population got too small. Their communication system broke down even after they had the ability to speak.

We need to examine every nook and cranny if we are to make proclamations my friend. Hillary is right It takes a village.

The real theory is that the language capacity assisted in the progression of tool making. It came first.

That is a hypothesis that makes sense.

Language capacity first, then the innovation in tool making.

The idea that tool making creates a universal underlying hierarchical grammar is a hypothesis without any evidence.

Chimps have been using crude tools for a long time. But they have no human language capacity. What they have is absurdly pathetic when you compare it to the human language capacity.

And we clearly see what the language capacity can do in terms of tool production today.