The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature Trådens avsändare: Jacek Krankowski (X)
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Jacek Krankowski (X) 
Engelska till Polska
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Inspired by a thread on JL Borges may I quote the Master:
... \"The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature.\" -
Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to \"El otro, el mismo.\"
Anthropoetics 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1999)
The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language
Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Atlanta, June 1999
Eric Gans
Department of French
University of California, Los Angeles
... See more Inspired by a thread on JL Borges may I quote the Master:
... \"The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature.\" -
Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to \"El otro, el mismo.\"
Anthropoetics 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1999)
The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language
Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Atlanta, June 1999
Eric Gans
Department of French
University of California, Los Angeles
[excerpts]
...According to the late hypothesis, the first speakers were the so-called
Cro-Magnons, Homo sapiens genetically identical with ourselves. The late
hypothesis could therefore be maintained only if one assumed that our modern
brain and speech-production apparatus could have evolved independently of
language. In this case, language would arise as what Stephen Gould calls an
\"exaptation,\" a mere accidental byproduct of the interaction between
cognitive evolution and pre-linguistic communication systems. (Chomskian
linguists are fond of this position because it seems to justify their idea
of a \"language module\" evolving independently of any overt human behavior.)
In contrast, the originary hypothesis presupposed that language as the first
human act would arise among creatures with no prior brain and vocal tract
adaptations and would itself drive their acquisition of these adaptations.
This is the logic of all evolutionary modifications; the first ancestor of
the whale to take to the ocean would not have had fins designed in advance
for this contingency.
Yet, despite all this, I was attracted to the late hypothesis ...
A possible cure for my dissociation was the compromise hypothesis proposed
by Derek Bickerton, one of the major figures in the study of language
origin. Bickerton is best known for his 1981 book, The Roots of Language...
Thus the emergence of syntactically mature language as we know it, which
Bickerton situates at the time of late origin around 50,000 years ago, would
have reflected evolutionary developments in the brain that were realized in
language all at once in some inexplicable final mutation...The fact that no
intermediate forms of language exist today is no more proof that modern
syntax emerged all at once than the absence of intermediate forms between
lizards and snakes proves that the latter lost their legs all at once. Even
if all modern languages derive from a common ancestor spoken around 50,000
years ago, there is no need to assume that this Ursprache itself emerged in
a single mutational leap beyond primitive pidgin-type languages. Students of
sign language suggest persuasively that the link may be provided by gesture.
Today I have emerged from my dissociative state; I accept the theory of
early origin and reject that of late origin... The originary hypothesis is
an attempt to come to grips with the most salient truth about human
language: that language as we know it, the language of the sign rather than
the signal, represents not a gradual development of animal communication but
a radical break from it. When I wrote The Origin of Language, I was aware of
no other researcher who took this position. Even today, most writers on the
subject have not yet grasped the difficulty it poses. Bickerton and Terrence
Deacon-whose ideas on the subject I will discuss shortly-are virtually alone
even now in treating this radical break as a problem for evolutionary
theory. ...
The core of the originary hypothesis is not the hunting scenario I have
suggested as the scene of the origin of language but the simple affirmation
that there was an event, a minimally unique scene of origin of the human
defined by language. The originary hypothesis proposes that the linguistic
sign, unlike all previous modes of information transfer, from the
persistence of subatomic structures through the genetic code to the
evolution of signal systems among mammals, depends neither on hard-wired
connections nor on learned associations but on the memory of a historically
specific founding event. Animals learn from the past and plan for the
future, but only humans experience events. ...
Taking a position for the early origin of language sharpens the radical
implications of the originary hypothesis that were mitigated by leaving the
moment of origin indeterminate. The originary scene of which we speak must
be the origin not just of language but of all the fundamental categories of
the human. If we are permitted to retain in our imagination the images of
our Cro-Magnon ancestors hunting mammoth, burying their dead, and creating
cave-paintings, statuettes, and carved bone tools, it becomes much easier to
conceive a scene of origin in which all the categories of human culture have
their common root. If, on the contrary, we reject any such imagery and
accept that the first moment of language must have taken place among
creatures not yet adapted to it in either brain nor behavior, who looked and
behaved more like bipedal apes than humans, whose very first \"word\" may well
have been a gesture lacking any phonic component, then we are forced to face
up to just how radical our hypothesis really is. But far from putting the
entire enterprise in doubt, the striking rapprochement between this minimal
formulation of the originary hypothesis and the conclusions of recent
scientific research make it not only plausible but even, I regret to say,
almost respectable. ...
If human monogenesis seems uncomfortably close to the Biblical creation of
man, it is because the Biblical narrative expresses, in however unscientific
a form, a truth of human origin that science has not yet faced up to: that
it must have taken place in and as an event. The origin of the sign is the
origin of a new symbolic consciousness, and this consciousness, even in its
most rudimentary form, could not have emerged unconciously.
What does it mean to say that the origin of language was a \"speciation
event\"? Clearly the genetic constitution of the participants themselves was
not modified. But from this modest but not imperceptible beginning, the
creators of the new symbolic culture separated themselves off from other
bands of hominids who did not have such a culture. The advantage of this
culture that fashioned our ancestors into a new species was, to cite the
one-sentence formula of the originary hypothesis, that culture effects \"the
deferral of violence through representation.\" There are two complementary
elements in the hypothesis that scientific research has not yet assimilated:
the origin of the human sign in an event, and the function of the sign as
the representation of the sacred, which is, as Girard has taught us, the
externalization of the human potential for self-destructive mimetic
violence. We cannot understand the one without the other. For the sign to
commemorate an event as the origin of the human community, this event must
be both absolutely and minimally memorable. I will speak in a moment about
its minimality. But its memorability implies the absolute necessity of the
event for the group\'s survival, which is to say, the deferral of its mimetic
self-destruction and its establishment as a human community.
This does not mean that all other groups of hominids who did not create
language or adopt it from those who did were destroyed by internal conflict.
Because the language users, who were also culture users, had at their
disposal a more stable bulwark against internal violence, they were able to
acquire more potent and potentially dangerous means of violence. Such means
include not only improved weaponry but more elaborate ethical structures
involving differential roles protected by laws, including the marriage laws
that characterize all human societies and that are often referred to in
rather misleading terms either as \"incest prohibitions\" or as rules for the
\"exchange of women.\" Human societies governed by sacred interdictions could
withstand mimetic pressures that in non-human societies would lead either to
breakdown in violence or to the abandonment of communal unity. Hence over
the course of generations the neo-humans would inevitably absorb, kill off,
or drive away their prehuman rivals.
Understood in this manner, early origin only strengthens the originary
hypothesis. The idea that the members of a society that evolved apparently
little over hundreds of thousands of years would have had \"nothing to talk
about\" is true only if we think of language as primarily a means of
conveying information about the world. But if we understand it as first and
foremost a means of deferring violence through the designation of a sacred
mediator, then it becomes perfectly plausible that it could evolve very
slowly without lacking in functionality at any stage. Ritual activity, like
artistic activity, always contains information about the world, but this
information is subordinate to the human order it subserves. As the brain
became increasingly adapted to language, language itself could become
increasingly complex both in vocabulary and in syntax. The complexity of
society could not overstep the limits of the symbolic culture of which
language was the formal underpinning, but the existence of such a culture
would continually move natural selection in the direction of the
language-culture adaptation, with more complex and efficient social orders
continually driving out, killing off, or absorbing their rivals.
Nor, incidentally, does the fact that language reached maturity with the
fully evolved Cro-Magnon brain imply that language since that time has
remained in a steady state. This Chomskian dogma, reinforced by the fear of
appearing to acquiesce in the colonialist stigmatization of \"primitive\"
languages, has only recently been breached. We know of no \"primitive\"
languages; given the appropriate lexicon, all extant and historically
attested languages are equally capable of expressing all thoughts. But, as
Bernard Bichakjian has observed, all languages of whose historical
development we are aware have evolved irreversibly from a more to a less
highly inflected state (for example, from Latin to French) and, in
general-this is Bichakjian\'s major thesis-in the direction of being
assimilable by children at an increasingly early age.
What is not explained by this attractive hypothesis is, if Bickerton\'s
creole studies demonstrate that we \"naturally\" adopt a subject-verb-object
word-order-based syntax, and if, as Bichakjian observes, children learn this
type of language more easily than any other, why the older generation of
languages was so highly inflected. I would suggest that this gives credence
to the idea that language was, until the relatively recent time of the
cultural take-off that inspired the late origin hypothesis, designed
specifically (which does not mean consciously) to be difficult for
children-or adults-to learn. Vestiges of linguistic initiation rites remain
in the institutions of religiously oriented language instruction in our own
society-Church Latin for Catholics, Biblical Hebrew for Jews, Koranic Arabic
for Moslems, not to speak of the sacrosanct Latin and Greek of Eton and
Oxford. The take-off itself, rather than being attributable to our sudden
acquisition of a \"syntax module,\" is perhaps preferably explained in the
inverse fashion as a product of the final liberation of language from the
strict confines of the sacred and its extension to more general social
usage.
...I would like to suggest how, thus situated, the hypothesis provides the
key to beginning the arduous process of integrating the humanities,
including religious thinking, with the social sciences.
Let me begin by saying a few words about an important book that appeared in
1997, Terrence Deacon\'s The Symbolic Species. Deacon is a neuroscientist
whose presentation of the emergence of human language is founded on ongoing
research into the structure and evolution of the brain; but unlike most
laboratory scientists, Deacon also has a real grasp of the relevant
anthropological issues. He is keenly aware of the qualitative difference
between human language and animal systems, a difference that he expresses in
the terms of Charles S. Peirce as that between indexical signs-those learned
through association with their object, as in Pavlov\'s famous experiment
where a dog is taught to make the ringing of a bell an \"index\" of the
presence of food-and the symbolic signs of language, which are, as Saussure
called them, \"arbitrary\" because their reference to a worldly object is
mediated through a sign-system in which the signs are interrelated with each
other. Finally, whereas Bickerton views language and thinking strictly from
the perspective of the individual speaker, even refusing Chomsky-like to
define language as a mode of communication, Deacon is sensitive to
language\'s communal nature.
Deacon\'s central point, that the human brain with its unusually large
prefrontal cortex evolved as a result of language rather than being the
cause of its emergence, is not new, although it has never before been
presented in such persuasive detail. But in the domains of greatest concern
to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Deacon\'s work makes a number of
decisive advances. His knowledge of the brain\'s \"Darwinian\" internal
structure-dictated not by a genetic blueprint but by the \"survival of the
fittest\" synapses-frees him from the monolithic Chomskian view of syntax to
which Bickerton\'s double-emergence theory still pays tribute. Above all,
Deacon dismisses the traditional \"pragmatic\" scenarios for language origin
and comes very close to my own originary hypothesis.
Deacon\'s explanation for the origin of symbolic representation begins with
the dependency of proto-human societies on meat, procured by all-male
hunting and scavenging parties whose activities would oblige them to be away
from home for long periods of time. Under such circumstances, these
societies would be highly motivated to maintain female fidelity by creating
a symbolic bond of marriage as opposed to the merely \"associative\" bond of
animal monogamy. Such symbolic reinforcement would have clearly advantageous
effects on reproductive fitness, the driving force of evolution.
Deacon\'s reasoning, amazingly daring and subtle by the standards of the
social sciences, does not lead him to propose an originary event as such.
But his discussion includes many key components of such an event:
meat-eating and sharing as essential to proto-human survival
the difficult necessity of maintaining peace among members of the male hunting group
the necessity that hunters refrain from eating their prey on the spot but bring it home to their mates and offspring
the first sign as functioning to establish an ethical insitution
the collective nature of the meanings of language
the reinforcement of symbolic reference through ritual
If we combine these six points in a scene of ritually repeated
renouncement-followed-by-division, mediated by the sign, of the meat of the
sacred animal/victim, we have, for all intents and purposes, the generative
hypothesis of the origin of language.
Reading Deacon\'s book aroused in me mixed feelings. ...
...If human monogenesis seems uncomfortably close to the Biblical creation
of man, it is because the Biblical narrative expresses, in however
unscientific a form, a truth of human origin that science has not yet faced
up to: that it must have taken place in and as an event. The origin of the
sign is the origin of a new symbolic consciousness, and this consciousness,
even in its most rudimentary form, could not have emerged unconciously. ...
http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0501/gans.htm
(More about Eric Gans and generative anthropology can be found at:
http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/gaintro.htm
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/gilgengans.html)
[ This Message was edited by:on2003-01-31 11:30] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jacek Krankowski (X)
Engelska till Polska
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | A must in language acquisition | Jan 31, 2003 |
Language Acquisition
Steven Pinker
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chapter to appear in L. R. Gleitman, M. Liberman, and D. N. Osherson (Eds.),
An Invitation to Cognitive Science, 2nd Ed. Volume 1: Language. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
NONFINAL VERSION: PLEASE DO NOTE QUOTE.
[excerpts]
\"Human Uniqueness. A related question is whether language is unique to
humans. At first glance the answer... See more Language Acquisition
Steven Pinker
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chapter to appear in L. R. Gleitman, M. Liberman, and D. N. Osherson (Eds.),
An Invitation to Cognitive Science, 2nd Ed. Volume 1: Language. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
NONFINAL VERSION: PLEASE DO NOTE QUOTE.
[excerpts]
\"Human Uniqueness. A related question is whether language is unique to
humans. At first glance the answer seems obvious. Other animals
communication with a fixed repertoire of symbols, or with analogue variation
like the mercury in a thermometer. But none appears to have the
combinatorial rule system of human language, in which symbols are permuted
into an unlimited set of combinations, each with a determinate meaning. On
the other hand, many other claims about human uniqueness, such as that
humans were the only animals to use tools or to fabricate them, have turned
out to be false. Some researchers have thought that apes have the capacity
for language but never profited from a humanlike cultural milieu in which
language was taught, and they have thus tried to teach apes language-like
systems. Whether they have succeeded, and whether human children are really
\"taught\" language themselves, are questions we will soon come to.
Language and Thought. Is language simply grafted on top of cognition as a
way of sticking communicable labels onto thoughts (Fodor, 1975; Piaget,
1926)? Or does learning a language somehow mean learning to think in that
language? A famous hypothesis, outlined by Benjamin Whorf (1956), asserts
that the categories and relations that we use to understand the world come
from our particular language, so that speakers of different languages
conceptualize the world in different ways. Language acquisition, then, would
be learning to think, not just learning to talk.
This is an intriguing hypothesis, but virtually all modern cognitive
scientists believe it is false (see Pinker, 1994a). Babies can think before
they can talk (Chapter X). Cognitive psychology has shown that people think
not just in words but in images (see Chapter X) and abstract logical
propositions (see the chapter by Larson). And linguistics has shown that
human languages are too ambiguous and schematic to use as a medium of
internal computation: when people think about \"spring,\" surely they are not
confused as to whether they are thinking about a season or something that
goes \"boing\" -- and if one word can correspond to two thoughts, thoughts
can\'t be words. (...)
It is tempting to think that if language evolved by gradual Darwinian
natural selection, we must be able to find some precursor of it in our
closest relatives, the chimpanzees. In several famous and controversial
demonstrations, chimpanzees have been taught some hand-signs based on
American Sign Language, to manipulate colored switches or tokens, and to
understand some spoken commands (Gardner & Gardner, 1969; Premack & Premack,
1983; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991). Whether one wants to call their abilities
\"language\" is not really a scientific question, but a matter of definition:
how far we are willing to stretch the meaning of the word \"language\".
The scientific question is whether the chimps\' abilities are homologous to
human language -- that is, whether the two systems show the same basic
organization owing to descent from a single system in their common ancestor.
For example, biologists don\'t debate whether the wing-like structures of
gliding rodents may be called \"genuine wings\" or something else (a boring
question of definitions). It\'s clear that these structures are not
homologous to the wings of bats, because they have a fundamentally different
anatomical plan, reflecting a different evolutionary history. Bats\' wings
are modifications of the hands of the common mammalian ancestor; flying
squirrels\' wings are modifications of its rib cage. The two structures are
merely analogous: similar in function.
Though artificial chimp signaling systems have some analogies to human
language (e.g., use in communication, combinations of more basic signals),
it seems unlikely that they are homologous. Chimpanzees require massive
regimented teaching sequences contrived by humans to acquire quite
rudimentary abilities, mostly limited to a small number of signs, strung
together in repetitive, quasi-random sequences, used with the intent of
requesting food or tickling (Terrace, Petitto, Sanders, & Bever, 1979;
Seidenberg & Petitto, 1979, 1987; Seidenberg, 1986; Wallman, 1992; Pinker,
1994a). This contrasts sharply with human children, who pick up thousands of
words spontaneously, combine them in structured sequences where every word
has a determinate role, respect the word order of the adult language, and
use sentences for a variety of purposes such as commenting on interesting
objects.
This lack of homology does not, by the way, cast doubt on a gradualistic
Darwinian account of language evolution. Humans did not evolve directly from
chimpanzees. Both derived from common ancestor, probably around 6-7 million
years ago. This leaves about 300,000 generations in which language could
have evolved gradually in the lineage leading to humans, after it split off
from the lineage leading to chimpanzees. Presumably language evolved in the
human lineage for two reasons: our ancestors developed technology and
knowledge of the local environment in their lifetimes, and were involved in
extensive reciprocal cooperation. This allowed them to benefit by sharing
hard-won knowledge with their kin and exchanging it with their neighbors
(Pinker & Bloom, 1990).
Humans evolved brain circuitry, mostly in the left hemisphere surrounding
the sylvian fissure, that appears to be designed for language, though how
exactly their internal wiring gives rise to rules of language is unknown
(see the Chapter by Zurif). The brain mechanisms underlying language are not
just those allowing us to be smart in general. Strokes often leave adults
with catastrophic losses in language (see the Chapter by Zurif, and Pinker,
1994a), though not necessarily impaired in other aspects of intelligence,
such as those measured on the nonverbal parts of IQ tests. (...)
More interestingly, there are syndromes showing the opposite dissociation,
where intact language coexists with severe retardation. These cases show
that language development does not depend on fully functioning general
intelligence.\" Much more:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/pinker.langacq.html
[ This Message was edited by:on2003-01-31 16:30] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jacek Krankowski (X)
Engelska till Polska
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Another perspective | Feb 8, 2003 |
Consciousness, Communication, Speech
- A Condensed View of the Origins of Language -
Walter Koch
Professor Emeritus of English philology
and General Semiotics
Ruhr University
The following bits of thought are to outline a general framework for reconstructing the \'origin\' of language. More particularly, they will dissuade us from indulging in \"single step\" or \"big bang\" kinds of theory. The evolution of langu... See more Consciousness, Communication, Speech
- A Condensed View of the Origins of Language -
Walter Koch
Professor Emeritus of English philology
and General Semiotics
Ruhr University
The following bits of thought are to outline a general framework for reconstructing the \'origin\' of language. More particularly, they will dissuade us from indulging in \"single step\" or \"big bang\" kinds of theory. The evolution of language needs many modes and many stages. We should more properly speak of the \"origins\" of language. And, even more specifically, one of the decisive substeps in the evolution of modern oral language is - contrary to widespread theories - proposed to be a trendsetting innovation in the lexicon, rather than in syntax. (...)
11. Evolution of the Lexicon. While it seems obvious that word-like units in pantomime and gestures should be imbued with iconicity, the iconic quality of words in vocal language is held to be of a peripheral kind. Oral language, and, by extension, language in general, is thought to be essentially of an arbitrary nature.[38] My hypothesis is that no mode of language, be it pantomimic, gestural or vocal, creates its words without an iconizing motivation. In order to lend plausibility to this hypothesis I would need quite a few pages. I have to cut my story very short here.[39]
I claim that it is highly likely that ultimately any word or morpheme in any language can be traced back to some iconic etymology. Humans have evolved three primary successive design schemes for word formation: 1. the ta ta scheme (as in words like mama or papa), 2. the bow wow scheme (as in words like cuckoo or bow wow), 3. the ding dong scheme (as in words like weeny, teeny, tiny). Fig. 8 discusses a particular ding dong root (which may be about 30,000 years old), namely, ºKUNA, ºKONA This supposedly ancient homo-sapiens-sapiens root was related to such meanings as \"woman\", \"to give birth to\", \"knee\", i.e. \"the joint in the leg\" etc. Ding dong is the latest and most powerful \"sound-symbolic\" scheme to evolve. It consists in translating a visual sensory stimulus into an auditive motor response. Let us concentrate on the visual scheme I,1 in Fig. 8: An outstretched limb (or more abstractly, a linear segment) tends to be manifested by the consonantal sequence \'kt\' or \'tk\'. The basis of observation is the actogenesis of language (experiments[40] on sound symbolism, interpretation of various types of onomatopoeia in different types of language etc.), ontogenesis (baby talk, \"first words\"[41]) etc. Perceptual schemata that include an \"IN-part\", i.e. a \"joint\" or \"pivot\", have in their vocal equivalent a nasal consonant: n. Protowords such as ºKANAT, ºKUNA, ºKONA, ºGUNA, ºANKA are iconically suitable to render such concepts as \"knee\", \"haunch\", \"finger\", \"chin\", and, by extension, \"angle\", \"anger\", \"queen\", \"gynecology\", \"gene\", \"genesis\" etc. - note that these present-day words have somehow kept the ancient K + N. Fig. 8 lists a series of words containing ºKUNA.ANKA etc. as their deep etymologies. Of course, for normal speakers most modern words have become entirely opaque or arbitrary. But the point is that, at the time of their initial invention, roots were iconic. Thus, the starting-point of our root/concept was some such idea as \"the flexing of a limb\" which, through \"(pressing one\'s) knees\", \"giving birth to\"[42] led to words such as Greek \'gyne\' (long e), Russian zhena, Gothic qino - all meaning \"woman\" - and, of course, also to English quean and queen. Similar roots for \"woman\" can be found in all language phyla of the world.[43] It is highly probable that human vocabularies during the Würm glaciation should have been fairly transparent and iconic. - It goes without saying that there is a specific rationale for the powerful translation trick of the ding dong scheme - which we cannot go into now. (...)
15. Mosaic for the Reconstruction of the Evolution of Language. We will focus on vocal (Fig. 11: v) language, with pantomime and gesture (g) lingering in the background. Fig. 11 shows a reduced format of a mosaic. (A real mosaic should include eco-factors such as social structure, habitat etc.). In the horizontal dimension we have 5 design levels. In the vertical we have 10 design schemes. The first design scheme is called pooh pooh. It is typical of prehuman primates. Its vocalizations are mainly limbic, not cortical. Its communication situation is \"To Whom It May Concern\". There are no definite phonic segments. Syntax is rudimentary in that two phases (Focus (F) and Comment (C)) are merged into one (vocal) call: thus a particular scream says \"I am here and I am angry\", but in one segment. Primate calls are indexical. The next scheme sets in 2 mya. Homo habilis engages in vocal bla bla. It is the equivalent to ontogenetic \"babbling\". Phonic segments emerge, likewise intonation and, especially, face-to-face communication. Protowords resemble primate calls. There is nothing but index. However, the repetitive staccato rhythm of babbling and cooing conveys an emotional-cognitive atmosphere of mutual attention. Phonation becomes more cortical. It becomes regular and syllabic.[54] The mother-infant dyad is the cradle for vocal communication. There is an eco-chain of coevolving factors: Ice-age climate[55] > neoteny[56] and neophily[57] > mother-infant dyad[58] (cf. Fig. 3). While adults probably used pantomime and gestural communication, mother and infant evolved, in their specific emotional-cognitive niche, a vocal strategy which slowly developed one new scheme after the other, until, about 100 kya, the ding dong scheme proved very flexible and was subsequently admitted to the adult sphere. What made ding dong so successful? The preceding schemes made auditive copies of auditive stimuli. ding dong enables humans to copy visual stimuli (i.e. 95 per cent of perception) via the auditive. Phonic acuity becomes extreme. Vowel contrasts enter into the picture: phases of referents come into focus: \"ding\" and \"dong\" etc. Syntax remains iconic in that thematic roles are copied from the cognitive; the standard word order could have been: patient + action + agent. In the course of the following schemes, vocal communication leaves the mother-infant niche behind and becomes more and more integrated into adult communication. Words and sentences lose more and more of their iconicity as soon as texts become longer and the repertoires of word and sentence types grow more numerous (cf. \"convention\" - scheme VIII -). Iconicity becomes the preserve of higher cultural units such as poetry, mythology, while symbolicity (bought cheaply from the mere erosion of icons) has the advantage of a greater range for the collocation of segments. Thus, in contrast to BICKERTON, I assume that the phonic takeover of syntax was relatively undramatic. And symbolic syntax was thus relatively late. BICKERTON\'s main units participating in the crucial step from \"protolanguage\" to language, namely \"phonetic structure\", \"theta rules\" and \"conceptual structure\", constitute themselves crucial innovations which emerge at fairly different times, namely in bla bla and in ding dong, respectively, while the quality of conventionality, in BICKERTON\'s view indirectly the main asset of both syntax and lexicon, is again evolving as a separate phenomenon.
http://www.trismegistos.com/IconicityInLanguage/Articles/Koch/Koch.htm
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| | | | | Should you post such long 'excerpts'? | Feb 9, 2003 |
Quote:
Anthropoetics 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1999)
The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language
Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Atlanta, June 1999
Eric Gans
Department of French
University of California, Los Angeles
[excerpts]
...
Here is a statement from the page you cite:
\"Anthropoetics subscri... See more
Quote:
Anthropoetics 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1999)
The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language
Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Atlanta, June 1999
Eric Gans
Department of French
University of California, Los Angeles
[excerpts]
...
Here is a statement from the page you cite:
\"Anthropoetics subscribers may copy or download this text from the network, but its distribution or publication shall constitute an infringement of the Author\'s copyright.\"
I\'m no expert on copyrights and intellectual property, but I have a feeling the \'excerpts\' you post are rather too long to satisfy any \'fair use\' or other applicable criterion!
Regards
David Sirett ▲ Collapse
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Jacek Krankowski (X)
Engelska till Polska
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thanks for pointing it out, David | Feb 10, 2003 |
J
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