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Monkey calls give clues to language origins
Two studies suggest that the ability to combine sounds and words to alter meaning may be rooted in a species of monkey.
Protolanguage Was Symbolic
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Deacon favors a “prolonged co-evolution” of vocal-motor adaptations, cognitive adaptations, and social adaptations.
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robustness of language. If language came from a big mutational leap 100 to 150 thousand years ago, we should see only a small number of genes involved in its production.
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Right-handed chimpanzees provide clues to the origin of human language
"hemispheric lateralization" for language may have its evolutionary roots in the gestural communication of our common ancestors. A large majority of the chimpanzees in the study showed a significant bias towards right-handed gestures when communicating, which may reflect a similar dominance of the left hemisphere for communication in chimpanzees as that seen for language functions in humans.
Human-Chimp Gene Comparison Hints at Roots of Language | Wired Science | Wired.com
By comparing how a gene critical for language works in humans and chimpanzees, researchers have identified an entire network of genes involved in the incredible linguistic powers of Homo sapiens.
Babies' Language Learning Starts From The Womb
From their very first days, newborns' cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, reveals a new study published online on November 5th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The findings suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, and certainly long before their first babble or coo.
The World Without Technology
The problem with this line of questioning is that technology predated our humanness. Many other animals used tools millions of years before humans. Chimpanzees made (and of course still make) hunting tools from thin sticks to extract termites from mounds, or slam rocks to break nuts. Even termites themselves construct vast towering shells of mud for their homes. Ants herd aphids and farm fungi in gardens. Birds weave elaborate twiggy fabrics for their nests. The strategy of bending the environment to use as if it were part of your body is a billion year old trick at least.
Is language a replicator?
In a recent review Mark Pagel argues that language is a culturally transmitted replicator (Pagel, 2009).
Human Language Gene Changes How Mice Squeak - NYTimes.com
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. Svante Paabo, in whose laboratory the mouse was engineered, promised several years ago that when the project was completed, “We will speak to the mouse.”
How Does the Brain Form Sentences?
Forming a grammatically correct sentence may seem to require advanced cognitive skills, but it turns out that our creative language capacity might rely on a less sophisticated system than is commonly thought. A recent study suggests that our ability to construct sentences may arise from procedural memory—the same simple memory system that lets our dogs learn to sit on command. (Scientific American)
Lingo: What Child Is This?
Jargon or no, what has evolved to suit the requirements of grown-ups in an information-rich world is Occam's-razoresque: short sentences, simple vocabulary, logical progression. Parents who want their infants to learn language need a lot more than this. They need "motherese," that high-pitched sing-song dialect that puts everything in the third person and diminutizes it.
Why Don't Babies Talk like Adults?
This finding—that having more mature brains did not help the adoptees avoid the toddler-talk stage—suggests that babies speak in baby talk not because they have baby brains, but because they only just got started learning and need time to accrue sufficient vocabulary to be able to expand their conversations. Before long, the one-word stage will give way to the two-word stage, and so on. Learning how to chat like an adult is a gradual process. (Scientific American)
Chimps show that actions spoke louder than words in language evolution
To understand the role of gestures in the origins of human language, Amy Pollick and Frans de Waal decided to see how they are used by our closest relatives - the chimpanzee and the bonobo. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
interdisciplines : Issues in Coevolution of Language and Theory of Mind
The relation between language and theory of mind remains in need of clarification, both at the level of language evolution, language acquisition and the very content of theory of mind. This raises the question of the very nature of theory of mind. Is it a monolithic, more or less modular mental faculty; or is it a combination of different mechanisms, some of which may be rather low-level? How much theory is there in theory of mind and how much is needed to evolve a language? Very much the same questions apply to language acquisition. This workshop will attempt to analyse the coevolution of these two uniquely human capacities, their co-dependence and interaction.
The Science of Gossip: Why We Can't Stop Ourselves: Scientific American
* In recent years researchers have turned to the study of gossip—our predilection for talking about people who are not present. Why is news about others so irresistible?
* As it turns out, gossip serves a useful social function in bonding group members together. In the distant past, when humans lived in small bands and meeting strangers was a rare occurrence, gossip helped us survive and thrive.
* Our modern-day infatuation with celebrities reveals the ancient evolutionary psychology of gossip in sharp relief: anyone whom we see that often and know that well becomes socially important to us.
Colour, is it in the brain?
"Language requires the coordination of perceptually grounded categories with a socially-negotiated set of shared linguistic conventions to express them; i.e. language is based on shared groups of meanings that arise from our perceptual interaction with the external world and the way in which we convey that relationship to other human beings. Deacon’s opinion is that neurological predispositions and socio-ecological constraints sponsored the development and evolution of language, and that the subsequent feedback system gave rise to a complex coevolution of the two. Founded neurological determinism within evolutionary and socio-ecological boundaries drives the core of his argument." « Neuroanthropology
Ability to use symbols appeared 35 million years ago?
"Humans are sometimes said to be distinguished as "The Symbolic Species." A Research Highlights note in Nature point to the work of Addessi et al., who show that capuchin monkeys, who diverged from the human lineage ~35 million years ago, can be trained to use and assign value to tokens (symbols) for different items of food." (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)
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