Neanderthal Language: did we once have a linguistic cousin?

In a recent paper ("On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences"), Dan Dediu and Stephen Levinson argue that modern language was a feature of both Neanderthals and modern humans, and therefore of our common ancestor as well.  This takes their date for the origin of language to around 4-500,000 years ago at least, far beyond the common (though what I consider as very conservative!) view that language emerged around 100,000 years ago.

Illustration of hypothesized dates and
communication systems, shown alongside
tool technologies and hominin species 

Whether or not Neanderthals had complex language, or any form of complex communication system such as a protolanguage, has been debated for decades.  More and more though, the evidence seems to bolster the idea that our very close cousins were more similar to us than the classical brutish view, both cognitively as well as behaviourally.

In my previous post "Are we being a bit unfair to Neanderthals?", I discussed the tendency for people to be quite negative when thinking about Neanderthals, to compare their culture to more modern examples of our own, and scorn them as "the other" - languageless, dumb, and trying-to-be-human-but-not-quite-getting-it.  It's an unbalanced view, when humans and Neanderthals had broadly similar behavioural and cultural signature in the record, especially when you look at contemporary examples in the record.

Some might say that the classic image of the Neanderthal has had a makeover - we now know that sometimes, some of them buried their dead.  Sometimes, some of them pierced teeth or shells, and used red ochre and black manganese as colourants.  Often, they made beautiful stone tools with great skill and knowledge of flint working.  Sometimes they interbred with modern humans.

But still, the nul hypothesis for some has remained that Neanderthals are crap versions of humans.  Equally, if you are going to attribute intelligence to a species, don't you also need evidence to attribute them with a lack of intelligence?

Now, with evidence of interbreeding between the species, and the Neanderthal genome sequenced, it's harder to think of Neanderthals so simply as 'the other'.  Dediu and Levinson's article doesn't contain the Neanderthal racism I often find myself complaining about.

Most interesting and unique about their article is the implications for studying language evolution and linguistics, suggesting for example,

the present-day linguistic diversity might better reflect the properties of the design space for language and not just the vagaries of history, and could also contain traces of the languages spoken by other human forms such as the Neandertals.

It's a great article synthesizing lots of relevant information on Neanderthals as well as language origins research, and I recommend it as a good read for anyone with an interest!

Languages that lack abstract concepts of time

An article being published in many news sources this week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13452711) claims that an Amazonian tribe called the Amondawa lack a concepts of time - but again, I find the headlines to be a bit misleading.

Disregarding The Sun and The Daily Mail, since it's generally a cheap shot to pick at their science news, we'll take a look at the BBC, who ran the headline: "Amondawa tribe lacks abstract idea of time, study says", while directly below by a few lines, they quote one of the researchers as saying, "We're really not saying these are a 'people without time' or 'outside time'... Amondawa people, like any other people, can talk about events and sequences of events..."

Isn't that contractictory?  

The researchers seem to be commenting more on the way the Amandowan people use their language, and do not appear to map time onto space such as with words like 'hour' and 'year'.  They still seem to use a concept of time, as it is mentioned people's names change as they age and come into a different stage of their life - it sounds like a pretty strong concept of time to me!  Just perhaps different linguistically from the languages we are used to in societies that are constantly watching the clock.

One of the research team along with an Amandowan child and their parent

It is noted, of course, that Amandowans who speak Portuguese are completely able to use these time-space mappings.  This supports how our culture affects our language - while the influence the other way around might be much smaller.

Phonetic Hints towards Language Origins



An article was published in Science and covered in the New York Times on April 14th.  Entitled, "Phonetic Clues Hint Language Is Africa-Born", I was understandably intrigued!!  Here is the online coverage:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/science/15language.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Two young girls from Kalahari, Namibia. 
San is one of the languages famous for its 'clicks'

I haven't read the article published in Science yet, so maybe I shoud withold my judgements... but any theory that makes claims about the specific characteristics of an ancestral language farther back than 10,000 years makes me brace for a lot of skepticism!



The article in the Times says, "Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language.  Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it."

But surely this can't always be the case - there are quite a few language areas that have considerably high phonemic inventories, for example the Northwest Coast of North America, and the Caucasian mountain regions.  The African Continent is covered mainly by very large language families, with a few isolates.  I was looking through some papers on African Language Diversity, and this one here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00124.x/pdf speaks of 10, which isn't very much when I wouldn't be suprised if North America, a continent that has been populated by a speaking species for only a tiny fraction of the time, probably can equal or succeed that number (I'm guessing, I haven't checked!)

To me Africa looks like a continent that has had major language shifts and growths over so many millenia that looking back in time to try and retrieve information on the first languages spoken and what they sounded like, or what phonemes they contained - seems very far fetched to me.  But then again, this is coming from someone who has not yet read the article.  Or the abstract for that matter.  That is great science.  Anyhoo, here is a link to the abstract (which I have yet to read):

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6027/346.abstract

Affordable Japan?

Next year's Evolang conference (Evolang 9 http://kyoto.evolang.org/) is set to take place from 13-16 March, in Kyoto, Japan.  I'm excited about this for a number of reasons, one, that I have been itching to return to Japan ever since my lone travelling experience there in 2006, and two, because I hope this will be my first Evolang conference where I will contribute with a poster or a presentation.  The call for papers is already open, and abstracts are to be in by 15 August.

I have been wondering lately what impact the recent earthquake and tsunami will have on the conference - I hope that it is a positive generator of tourism as I'm expecting Japan will be on the road to recovery next March and will benefit from having a few hundred evolutionary linguists bobbing around.  I was already thinking the location of this conference might put some people off because of the associated cost and distance, but I hope recent events have not prevented people from wanting to experience this amazing country for themselves and having a chance to meet Japanese researchers in language evolution on their own turf.

I hope to encourage people if I can by dispelling some of the ideas that Japan is a really expensive place - the ticket, for most, will be pricy - once you are in the country, things really are no more expensive (and maybe even a bit cheaper!) than parts of Europe.  I'm sure North Americans and Europeans alike will be shelling out close to $800 US to get there.  I have no idea what flights are like within Asia and from the Australian area.  The price of the actual conference has always been a bit pricy for this poor recovering former student.  I can't remember offhand what the cost was in 2010, but in 2008 it was 280 Euros for the non-student early bird fee, plus workshops and dinner. 

Now none of that was very encouraging...  but I promise, other than that, once you are in Japan things are relatively cheap.  Here are some examples of costs while staying in Kyoto:

1) Well first of course you have to get to Kyoto.  If you are flying into Narita airport in Tokyo, you will need to take the train to Kyoto and that can be a bit costly.  However, tourists can benefit from a Japan Rail Pass (http://www.japanrailpass.net/) that is well worth its price if you plan on doing a bit of travelling while you are in the country.  A one week ticket is 28,300 yen ($335 US or £206 GBP), and it allows you to go practically anywhere in Japan except on the super fast trains - and apparently now they also allow you to go on the Tokyo's metro system as well.  A trip or two back and forth to Kyoto makes it well worth the price, and there are also 2 and 3 week tickets.  Anyone who lives in Britain and travels by rail wont find these prices uncomfortable!  Of course you can also fly into Osaka which is much closer to Kyoto.

2) For accomodation, prices are quite reasonable.  I'm speaking from the point of view of cheap hostels, of which I have stayed in 4 in Japan (plus a ryokan and a standard hotel), and found them really well run and very clean, and very affordable at between 2500-3000 yen a night (about $30 USD or £20 GBP). 

Here is an example of a hostel I stayed in in 2006 that was very central in Kyoto: http://kshouse.jp/kyoto-e/index.html

3) Food is the loveliest thing about prices in Japan to discuss, as it is delicious and can be very affordable!  Restaurants can of course be very expensive, but a giant bowl of ramen will only set you back 5-700 yen and green tea is complementary.  There is an udon restaurant called Hanamaru Udon that is very cheap - 100 yen for a plain bowl and then you can add extra bits like tempura.  The food was definitly the highlight of my trip.  Convenience stores and vending machines are everywhere so you will never go hungry or thirsty, and being in Kyoto do make sure you try a regional favourite called okonomiyaki, a type of savoury cabbage pancake with meat.  I'd only budget about 1500 yen a day for eating three meals - you'll be on a budget but will still have a full belly (although if you eat more than a 120 pound girl you might disagree a little).

As an aside, one of my fondest memories of Japan was waking up and going to this strange cafeteria place in Tokyo on the grounds where my hostel was, and paying 400 yen for an amazing buffet breakfast.  I usually had a couple cups of coffee, orange juice, miso soup and a croissant, scrambled eggs, spaghetti and salad(omnipresent at western breakfasts??).  I would sit in a large room full of people about to head off to school or the office and was a really fun way to people watch.

So for my own personal budget for a trip to Japan for next years conference, to get an idea, will probably look something like this (in pounds):

• Flight to Osaka - £450 (train to Kyoto, less than £5)
• Accomodation in a hotel for 5 days - £100
• Food not provided by conference fee - £40
• Conference fee - £300 (hopefully overestimating here!)
• Omiyage (Souvenirs!!) - £100

= rougly £1000 pounds total.  So not pocket change, and more expensive than The Netherlands last year for those from Europe, but doable if you start saving now!! ...I hope to see you there in March!

Please comment with any helpful links or tips for saving a bit of cash in Japan.

3 Upcoming conferences for language evolution

Apologies everyone for the hiatus... 

Excitingly, there are three conferences over the next year (and across the world) where language evolution feature:

1. HBES 2011

Date: 29 June - 03 July 2011

Call deadine: 1 May 2011

Location: Montpellier, France
http://www.hbes2011.univ-montp2.fr/index.php

2. Protolang 2
Date: 19-21 September, 2011

Call deadline: 30 May 2011

Location: Torun, Poland

http://www.protolang.umk.pl/

3. Evolang 9

Date: 13-16 March 2012

Call Deadline: 15 August 2011

Location: Kyoto, Japan

http://kyoto.evolang.org/

Will I be seeing anyone there?

NWLC update: Victoria here I come!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Good news: my abstract to the NWLC conference at UVic has been accepted.  I wasn't chosed for an oral presentation (boo), but I was accepted for a poster presentation, and I still have a chance to submit my essay to the proceedings, which is good (although when I will find time to create this poster along with the essay while juggling a full time job still eludes me!).


Anyways I thought I'd share my abstract and welcome any feedback.  I'd also welcome any poster presentation tips, as this will be my first!

What came first, the noun or the verb?

          Language origins research supports a gradual evolution of human language in our species over a long period of time, rather than an abrupt acquisition in one step (see for instance Pinker and Bloom 1990, Jackendoff 2002, Stade 2009). An important line of enquiry, then, is to explore in what steps language likely developed, such as in the emergence of syntactic structure.
          In the literature, it has been suggested that certain syntactic categories were the first to emerge, mainly nouns ([Smith 1767] Land 1977, Li and Hombert 2002, Luuk 2009). However, theories positing a first grammatical category are problematic; in isolation, an utterance cannot be attributed a syntactic category such as noun or verb unless one uses a semantic definition of what a syntactic category is. A semantic definition of syntactic category is awkward because of language variation, and therefore in modern linguistics it is common practise to attribute a syntactic category based on morphological and distributional properties (Evans and Green 2006, Gil 2000). An isolated word without any morphology or distribution is category-less.
Luuk’s (2009) paper argues that nouns were the first category to emerge, and he offers eleven reasons why this must be so. While Luuk’s paper argues successfully why verbs are unlikely to have emerged before nouns, he has not considered that these categories could have emerged together.
          It is argued here that the first utterances would have been category-less, and it was only in relation to another utterance that syntactic categories could truly exist; hence, two or more categories must have emerged at the same time. This hypothesis is supported by grammaticalization theory, which describes nouns and verbs as being the most primitive categories as they are the least grammaticalized and cannot be derived historically from other syntactic categories (Heine and Kuteva 2007).

Keywords: language evolution, syntax, grammaticalization

Evans, V. and Green, M., 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: an introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.

Gil, D., 2000. Syntactic categories, cross-linguistic variation, and universal grammar. In: Vogel,
P. M., and Comrie, B. Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Heine, B. and Kuteva, T., 2007. The Genesis of Grammar: a reconstruction (Studies in the
Evolution of Language). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jackendoff, R., 2002. Foundations of Language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Land, S. K., 1977. Adam Smith’s “Considerations considering the first formation of languages”.
Journal of the History of Ideas 38, 677-690.

Li, C. N. and Hombert, J. M., 2002. On the evolutionary origin of language. In: Stamenov, M.
and Gallese, V. (eds). Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Luuk, E., 2009. The noun/verb and predicate/argument structures. Lingua 119, 1707-1727.

Pinker, S. and Bloom, P., 1990. Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 13, 707-784.

Stade, C. 2009. Abrupt versus Gradual Evolution of Language and the Case for Semilanguage.
Unpublished MSc thesis, University College London.

Evolutionary Linguistics 101

Biologists are interested in the origins of life, geologists are interested in the formation of rocks, but few linguists are interested in the origins of langauge, as Friedrick Newmeyer once pointed out.  But this is a problem to be rectified... and if I have my way, every linguistics major program will have a required 'origins' component.  I'll write the texbook myself, I will!

But until that can happen (and someone will probably beat me to it), for the budding evolutionary linguist, here are the seminal works to lay a foundation for getting a grasp of the discipline.  This is the best I can do to spread the evo-lingo love:


Pinker, S., and Bloom, P., 1990. Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 707-784.

This paper is commonly cited as starting the snowballing of interest in language evolution.  It was very important for the discipline to be seen as a legitimate line of study as well as for language to be viewed as a complex biological adaptation that had to have evolved.

Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., and Fitch, W. T., 2002. The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298, 1569-1579.

Probably the most widely read paper on evolutionary linguistics because of both the prominence of the authors and the unlikeliness of their co-authoring together.  The paper rocks up with an authoritative air, but kicks off a lot of argument and discussion, namely the resulting papers published by Pinker and Jackendoff in Cognition in 1995.  It was answered by HCF, and another reply by Pinker and Jackendoff was also published, all in Cognition between 2005 and 2007.

Jackendoff, R., 2002. Foundations of Language.

Ray Jackendoff outlines most clearly and for perhaps the first time, a reasonable complete picture of the way in which language likely arose. 

Christiansen, M., and Kirby, S.,2003. The Evolution of Language.
 
This book is an edited collection of essays from the leading evolutionary linguists in the field, speaking about a wide range of topics in the discipline from mirror neurons to the archaeological record to computerised simulations.

Johansson, S., 2005. Origins of Language: constraints on hypotheses.

Constraints are so important for focussing a new and excitable dsicipline like language evolution, and Sverker Johansson's book is a wonderful introduction to the discipline.


Bickerton, D., 2007b. Language evolution: a brief guide for linguists. Lingua 117, 510-526.

Derek Bickerton has been a major name in evolutionary linguistics for ages.  This paper outlines the discipline and provides a real focus on the questions it should be addressing.

Kenneally, C., 2008.  The First Word: The search for the origins of language.

Because the actual discipline of evolutionary linguistics is just as fascinating as the subject it studies, this is possibly my faovurite book on evolutionary lingusitics.

Botha, R., and Knight, C., 2009 (eds.). The Prehistory of Language.
Botha, R., and Knight, C., 2009 (eds.). The Cradle of Language.

These two books are collections of essays that, like Christiansen and Kirby's 2003 book, show a wide range of topics from a wide range of experts in the field giving is a good look at the state of the discipline.

If you manage to read all of these, email me and I will create a badge for you that says 'expert language origins master' or something :)

And if you ever need more, the Langauge Evolution and Computation Bibliography is an excellent source:
http://www.isrl.illinois.edu/amag/langev/

Evolution of Language and the Evolution of Syntax: Same Debate, Same Solution?

I have recently realised that only after submitting my Masters thesis have I really started to understand my main arguement (a bit late perhaps?).  The arguement was located in the paper, but perhaps not clearly enough, probably because I wasn't thinking about it enough myself at the time.  I'll try to explain:

One of the debates that exist in language evolution research is whether language evolved abruptly, or gradually in many steps.  It is one of the topics of research I am most fascinated with, and was the subject of study for my MSc dissertation (you can read it here).

Abruptist arguments follow that language evolved in a mutation (suggested in writings by Gould and Lewontin, Piatelli-Palmerini, Crow, Klein, Hornstein, Lanyon, and even Chomsky), and possibly argue language could not have evolved gradually as an intermediate stage between language and non-language could not have existed (such as in Berwick's writings).  Gradualist arguments, which most contemporary evolutionary linguists side with and I too find much more biologically likely, approach language as not a monolithic thing, but made up of many different components that evolved in several stages over time (such as in the writings of Pinker, Jackendoff, Burling, Hurford, Kirby, Aitcheson, Kinsella, Heine and Kuteva, Fitch, and Johansson to name a few).

In the gradualist explanations of language evolution however, you often see reconstructions where there is a single step from a protolanguage (essentially a syntax-less language) and complex grammar.  I view this step as containing the same problems the idea that language evolved abruptly.  Syntax too is not a monolithic thing, and takes more than one cognitive step.  Modern languages contain complex syntax that requires certain memory capacities, and I think certain types of grammatical relationships would take more than just the learning of one rule, such as "merge".

In my thesis, I went through a literature review of gradual and abruptist arguments for language evolution, and posited an intermediate stage of syntactic complexity where a language might have only one level of embedding in its grammar.  It's a shaky and underdeveloped example of an intermediate stage of language, and requires a lot of exploration; but my reason for positing it in the first place is that I think we need to think of the evolution of syntax the way many researchers are seeing the evolution of language as a whole, not as a monolithic thing that evolved in one fell swoop as a consequence of a genetic mutation, but as a series of steps in increasing complexity.

Derek Bickerton, one of my favourite authors of evolutionary linguistics material, has written a number of excellent books and papers on the subject.  But he also argues that language likely experienced a jump from a syntax-less protolanguage to a fully modern version of complex syntax seen in languages today.  To me that seems unintuitive.  Children learn syntax in steps, and non-human species seem to only be able to grasp simple syntax.  Does this not suggest that it's possible to have a stable stage of intermediate syntax?

So my arguement is not very well developed, and I have a terrible example of what an intermediate stage of syntax might look like in my thesis.  But the errors you will likely find in my suppositions is beside the point; I've come to realise now that what I'm really trying to say is that we are treating the gap between non-syntax and syntax the way we have historically treated non-language and language- as a great leap.  And I would really like to explore the idea that relationships between words could first have been simple, and then relationships grew in complexity over time.

Hmmmmm.....