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The Origin of Language
G.A. Wells
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Chapter 1. |
Language and
Social Life |
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Chapter 2. |
Concluding
Remarks |
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The Role of
Deliberate Invention in Man and Ape |
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Ideas and
Words |
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[This web page is a copy of
a booklet published in 1999 by The Rationalist Press Association. It is with
the kind permission of Professor Wells that it is reproduced here. G.A. Wells
is Emeritus Professor in the
G.A. Wells
The Origin of Language
Published in 1999 by
The Rationalist Press
Association.
© Rationalist Press
Association
ISBN 0 301 99001 8
Printed by Aldgate Press,
The original version of this booklet was given as the 1997 lecture in the series
‘David Oppenheimer Memorial Lectures’, organized by Professor Margaret Esiri of
the Department of Clinical Neurology, Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford.
Ü Ü Ü
Works mentioned or quoted (listed under their
authors’ names at the end of this booklet) are referenced in my text and notes
simply by the relevant page numbers, prefaced by a date of publication when it
is necessary to distinguish between publications by the same author.
1. The CONTRIBUTION of
the ENLIGHTENMENT
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y
interest in the origin of language began when the late Dr. David Oppenheimer
and I adapted the posthumous papers of one of our teachers, Ronald Englefield,
into a book on the origin and nature of language that was published in
Englefield's point of departure was the neglected
work of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers, best represented by
Condillac, who stressed that man's first efforts at communication must have
involved signs that are self-explanatory. In language as it exists today, sound
and sense are linked purely by convention, and so one has to know the meanings
that have been fixed by convention if one is to understand the words. But this
state of affairs could not have obtained at the beginning, because conventions
could have been agreed only as a result of communication that was already
possible without them. The obvious signs that are intelligible without prior
convention are gestures, which can mimic actions.
It may be objected that there is such a thing as
onomatopoeia – words which imitate natural sounds and so are universally
intelligible. But a vocabulary large enough to be of much use cannot be
obtained on this basis. We recognize most objects and actions by their visible
aspects, not by their sounds. Admittedly, words in many languages may have (or
seem to have) some resemblance
to the objects they denote; but this has little to do with their origin, for
they can often be traced back to earlier
forms, where any such resemblance is lacking. Because the burden of
language on the memory is very great, words of which the meaning is reinforced
by any feature of mnemonic value have a survival advantage in competition with
synonyms which lack any such feature, and this is why we may find words of
which the sound bears some recognizable relation to the meaning.
Condillac, then, posited what he called a “langage
d’action” as the starting point, and as we shall see, it involved not only
gestures, but also pantomiming imitations of all manner of actions. But for the
moment I wish to stress another point he made, because it has so often been
overlooked, namely that the very first signs were not made intentionally as
signs, but were the normal reactions to particular situations. He envisaged
someone trying to reach some object, or to move something heavy and making
movements with his arms in his efforts, and he noted that an observer would
feel an impulse to come and help him:
The first one did not
say to himself ‘I must gesticulate like this to let him [the observer] know
what I want and to get him to help me’; nor the second ‘I see from his gestures
that he wants something. I will give it to him’; but each acted in accordance
with his immediate need, simply by instinct, for reflection could not yet play
any part (pp.261f).
Even today, if someone is seen struggling to
retrieve a page of his papers from the floor, a nearby spectator will feel an
urge to help by picking it up. Having once observed this helpful reaction, he
might on a future occasion do little more than initiate his own movements of
retrieval in order to draw attention to his plight and elicit the spectator’s
help. Hence Condillac argued that, on the basis of the kind of experiences
described in the above quotation, movements and gestures would come to be made
purposefully. In this way, movements, which originally had not been made in
order to alert other persons, became deliberate signals to them, because a
secondary effect of these original movements was first observed and then
exploited. At this stage, the movements will have been abbreviated. Stretching
out the hand towards the object desired (instead of making a serious attempt to
reach it) will have sufficed to elicit the observer’s co-operation, so that
full-scale action became reduced to a gesture.
Condillac went on to note that the use of signs led
to a development of man’s mental powers, and that this in turn led to an
improvement in the signs (pp.263ff). Language and reason, then, developed
together, just as we say today that every function of an organism develops
progressively with the organ on which it depends.
It has often been argued that language cannot have
originated as an invention, since no one could have envisaged the advantages
which would accrue from its use before it existed. But this impasse can be
avoided if, with Condillac, we allow that deliberate communication was not the
starting point, but resulted in time from actions which had served some
non-communicative purpose. As a generalization one may say that all purposive
behaviour that is learnt must be based either on behaviour that was at first
spontaneous, or which served some other previously learnt purpose. If man has
come to learn the advantage of working together with his fellows, of
co-operating with them, he must initially – without purposeful intent – have
got into a situation where someone helped him in what he was doing, and where
he could in consequence become aware of the advantages of such help.
Condillac’s “langage d’action” included all possible
means by which one person may suggest to another an idea of a thing or of an
action. For instance, to make someone think of a boat, I could imitate the
movements of rowing or hoisting sail or grasping the tiller, and also behave as
though I were being rocked about in a boat. To suggest the idea ‘man’ or ‘fish’
I could draw an outline in the air with a finger or make a rough drawing or
model. One can represent actions such as chopping or digging most intelligibly
if one is holding some object that vaguely resembles the tool. On this basis we
may expect not only pantomime, but also rough models and constructions out of
all kinds of handy materials. The point is that every possible method would
have been resorted to. Pantomime was very expressive, but unsuitable for rapid
communication, as it takes too long to perform. Drawing and modelling were also
inconvenient, but for a long time every possible means must have been employed,
each supplementing the other. Where a simple gesture did not suffice, these
other means will have been added to it, until this multiplicity of signs
finally conveyed the desired idea.
This view of the origin of language today commands
sizable assent. Westcott (p.128) noted “a growing tendency” in favour of it,
and Kendon (1991, p.215) agrees that “language began as a sort of pantomime”.
However, many scholars, from the late eighteenth century until and including
Chomsky and Pinker today, have ignored gesture and made speech the starting
point. One reason for this is that the notion of a gesture language was formed
from study of the languages of the deaf and dumb, which are highly
conventionalized and quite meaningless to the ordinary spectator. Gestures of
this kind do not supply any simpler starting point than speech, so it was felt
that one may as well begin with this latter, particularly as in either case it
has to be explained why sounds came to be made at all. In the case of a
gestural origin, re-adaptation is involved to make natural gestures into a
gesture-language. Similarly man must have made sounds in the first place before
he could think of adapting them so that they became means of communication.
Jespersen, who discussed the origin of language without even mentioning
gestures, surmised that man will originally have made sounds as a form of play,
as activity which “had no other purpose than that of exercising the muscles of
the mouth and throat and of amusing oneself and others by the production of
pleasant or possibly only strange sounds” (p.437). This would of course not
exclude a gestural origin for language. It could still be argued that the fact
that noises could be used on a large scale as signs was a discovery, and could
not have been made unless the two components – use of signs and vocal acts –
already existed. The use of signs will have been already there in the form of
gestures and visible representations, and the vocal acts were used in play.
It must, however, be
admitted that recent work has established what earlier investigators could not
readily have envisaged, namely that some non-human primates employ a limited
number of arbitrary sounds to convey meaning. Robin Dunbar instances the work
of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth, who have analysed on a sound
spectrograph the grunts (indistinguishable to the human ear) made by vervet
monkeys, and have shown that calls given when approaching an animal dominant in
the social group differ from those used when approaching a subordinate, and
again from those emitted when sighting another group in the distance, or when
about to move into open country from the safety of the trees. The animals
hearing these different calls respond in ways appropriate to each of them.
These monkeys also use different sounds to warn against different types of
predators. The cry which signals danger from an eagle differs from the warning
against a leopard, and again from that which indicates the presence of a snake.
The behaviour which these cries elicit is again correspondingly different. When
warned against eagles the troupe descends from the trees. The warning against
leopards prompts the very opposite reaction, while the snake call makes the
animals stand on their hind legs and investigate the ground around them.
2. TRANSITION from
GESTURE to SPEECH
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erhaps the most
compelling reason for denying a gestural origin to language is the difficulty
of explaining any transition from something like Condillac’s “langage d’action”
of self-explanatory signs to the sound languages of today. The gesture can bear
a visible relationship to the action or object for which it stands. If I want
to convey the idea that yonder hill is very high, I can point to it and express
the idea ‘high’ by jumping up high myself. But a sound can have such a close
relation to its meaning only in an extremely small number of cases, and the
connection between the two must nearly always be arbitrary and fixed by convention.
Condillac’s view as
to how sounds came into language was
that cries of various kinds were among the natural reactions of the first
period and came to be used as signs in the same way as did gestures. But in
becoming converted to signs they gradually lost their natural emphasis and
became controlled or “articulate” sounds. A groan was originally a spontaneous
expression of emotion; but when it was deliberately made in order to summon
help, it became a simulated groan. More sounds, he says, could be added and
made intelligible by being accompanied with self-explanatory gestures; i.e.
arbitrary sounds would be accompanied with signs of known meaning. And, most
important of all, these sounds would be spoken in situations where both parties
– speaker and listener – were engaged on some specific task and were perfectly
clear about what they were trying to achieve. One can see the force of this
important point if one thinks of a situation in which someone might make the
sign for ‘water’. He might mean that he wants a drink or a swim, or that a
house is flooded or that the crops need watering. What he actually means will
depend on the situation confronting both partners to the conversation – a
situation of which they are both aware and where the one knows what can be
expected of the other if they are to exploit or remedy it. If each knows that
they are both worried about a lost sheep, making the sign for ‘sheep’ and
following it with a joyful expression will convey the information that the
animal has been found. In a different situation, the same sign could mean
something quite different. Condillac put the matter as follows:
In order to
understand how men agreed together about the meaning of the first words which
were introduced, it is sufficient to observe that they would be uttered in
circumstances where everybody would be led to refer them to the same
perceptions. In this way they would fix their meaning more precisely according
as the circumstances, being repeated, accustomed the mind more and more to
attach the same ideas to the same signs. The gesture-language would help to
remove ambiguities and uncertainties which, to begin with, would be frequent
(p.362).
In like vein, Gordon
Hewes has recently observed that “primordial language, gestural or spoken,
would have been far more dependent than formal modern speech or written
language on the immediate social and environmental context for its decoding”
(1976, p.497). Hence it was not necessary that someone or some committee
invented words and promulgated an official list. New words would be introduced,
or at any rate adopted, only if the circumstances of their first use were
sufficiently public. Many would have but a brief existence in the private
intercourse of two companions, or perhaps of a family; but some, because they
were specially useful or specially easy to remember, would have their use
extended beyond the original circle.
In the nineteenth
century this kind of explanation was generally rejected as crude and
psychologically inconceivable. Max Müller, for instance, complained that “no one has yet
explained how, without language, a discussion, however imperfect, on the merits
of each word, such as must needs have preceded a mutual agreement, could have
been carried on” (p.34). Rousseau’s famous paradox had been formulated with the
same objection in mind: “Words would seem to have been necessary to establish
the use of words” (“La parole parait avoir été fort nécessaire pour établir
l’usage de la parole”, pp.148f); that is to say, the invention of so elaborate
an instrument as language, and its adoption by all members of the community,
require an intellectual capacity and a degree of co-operation that could have
been reached only in a community already in possession of language.
The answer to this
paradox is that a spoken language of words never has been the one and only way
of conveying ideas, and still is not the only means today. A threatening
gesture, a disapproving look, and other self-explanatory signs, such as
drawings or models can convey a great deal – just how much has been well
brought out by Macdonald Critchley in his Silent Language. Englefield
too shows that a great deal can be conveyed without words. In a series of
experiments which he carried out on schoolchildren, he found that even simple
abstract ideas could be expressed with a combination of gestures. The following
are among his examples:
Hot:
boy puts hand near fire and pretends to
find it hot, snaps fingers as if burnt,
wipes forehead, eases his collar.
Love: sits
beside another boy, kisses him, puts imaginary ring on his finger.
Empty: takes off
shoe and looks inside; opens empty tin and shows it (pp.175ff).
This is not to say,
as did Sayce, that gesture language is “instinctive” (p.93), but rather that
man is physically and mentally so constituted as to be able to communicate
without convention.
Condillac still
leaves us far from understanding how language came to consist almost entirely
of sounds. He and other eighteenth-century writers saw clearly enough that, if
only sounds can be understood, they have great advantages over all other forms
of communication, in that they are easy to make, and to make rapidly, easy to
combine, can be heard when gestures would be invisible – at a distance (as when
hunting), in mist or darkness (as in the forest), and through obstacles which
impede the view. They also radiate in all directions, unlike gestures, which
require that the performer has his audience facing him. They employ an organ
required for alternative purposes only at meal times, whereas the hands have
innumerable other functions to perform. And – unlike gestures – they actually
attract attention.
Some scholars write
as though these advantages in themselves suffice to explain why arbitrary
sounds took over from self-explanatory gestures, as if the transition posed no
problem. Thus Corballis lists some of the advantages of sounds, and comments:
“These factors may have therefore created a selective pressure that led,
eventually, to gestures being superseded by vocal communication” (p.158).
Others who allow that language began as a sort of pantomime offer mechanisms
for explaining the transition to the vocal mode that are little short of ridiculous.
Sir Richard Paget, for instance, held that hand gestures themselves prompt the
gesticulators to make sounds. In the late nineteenth century, Lazarus Geiger
and Wilhelm Wundt supposed that gestures were, for some reason, imitated by
movements of the lips, tongue and mouth – an idea recently taken up by Gordon
Hewes, who, however realizes that it is in fact “very weak in accounting for
the transformation of gestural language into speech” (1973, pp.10, 19f).
Robin Dunbar is so
impressed by the obvious disadvantages of gestural, compared with vocal
communication that he finds it “difficult to see how a gestural language of any
complexity could get going” (p.135). This objection to a gestural origin has
been answered by Englefield, and, more recently, by Kendon. Because the
self-explanatory signs of which language will have originally consisted would
gradually be abridged through familiarity, they would thereby lose some or all
of their original intelligibility except to those who had been making constant
use of them and who had thus experienced the gradual process of abridgement. To
outsiders they would appear as signs whose meaning depended on conventions. As
already noted, the language of the deaf and dumb, as practised today, is
conventionalized in this sense, and cannot be understood without knowledge of
the relevant conventions. But this abridgement, which cut out the need for
laborious pantomime, led not only to loss of universal intelligibility but also
to a great increase in efficiency in communication between the initiated.
Kendon (1993, pp.57f) illustrates the process with a modern example (from a
1981 paper by Caroline Scroggs) concerning the behaviour of a deaf boy who had
no training in sign language: “When ‘motorcycle’ was first introduced into his
discourse he gave an elaborate pantomime of mounting the cycle, starting it and
revving it up, using hand motions to indicate the twisting of the throttle on
the handlebar. In subsequent references to the motorcycle, however, just this
hand motion was used. Thus a hand action derived from a pantomime of twisting
the throttle came to serve as a symbol for the concept of ‘motorcycle’.” In due
course, as a result of economy of action, this single element from the original
elaborate pantomime “becomes simplified to such a degree that its image-like or
iconic character is no longer apparent. It turns into an arbitrary form”, and,
in ceasing to be a ‘picture’ of something, it “becomes available for
recombination with other forms and so may come to participate in compound signs
or sentences.”
That this can be
presumed to be what happened in the beginnings of language can to some extent
be confirmed by what is known of the origin of writing once it had become
available. Picture-writing became conventionalized and gained in efficiency,
while it ceased to be understood by all except the scribes. Englefield added to
this argument the significant point that, once the originally self-explanatory
signs used for communication had become so abridged and disguised as to be unintelligible
to outsiders, the communicating parties will, sooner or later, have become aware that the signs they were using were conventional,
that communication does not necessarily require self-explanatory signs, that –
given the will to communicate and given that this will is understood by the two
parties to the communication – no special relationship between sign and meaning
is necessary, and that quite arbitrary conventionalized signs can be understood
by those who have learned to use them.
Let me put this
important point as follows: A sign cannot be associated with a thing or event
or action unless the thing is first indicated in some way. Every act of naming
must therefore be preceded by some indication or description of the thing to be
named. This part of the process may consist merely in pointing to or presenting
the object, or executing the action, or imitating the event. But if this part
of the process has been successfully achieved, if the other party has been
brought to understand what thing or event is being referred to, then the
assignment of a sign to denote it may be perfectly arbitrary. In the case of
proper names, it is almost necessarily arbitrary. Dogs in general may be known
as bow-wows, but it would hardly be possible that names should be given on a
similar onomatopoeic principle to every member of a community. The
communicating parties would then in time come to think that, if the signs are
to be conventional, they may as well be sounds, because, as we saw, sounds have
such obvious advantages over other forms. On this basis, names could be
consciously invented, for the will to communicate and the realization of the
means were there. Of course, the need to remember a large number of names leads
to the practice of choosing, if possible, a name that the object itself
suggests, or which suggests the object. Any kind of association will do, and
there is no need for any resemblance. Many objects are named from the place
from which they come, or from the person who invented or discovered them, or
from the use to which they are put.
How difficult
scholars find it to account for any transition from gesture to speech is
illustrated by Merlin Donald’s book. He favours the view that gesture preceded
speech (“mimesis was ahead of language”, p.199) and is aware that, in time,
gestures would be standardized and so would develop into “arbitrary symbols”
(p.220), with the result that “fairly elaborate systems of gestural symbolism”
may well have preceded speech (p.225). He thinks, however, that some additional
mental development was required to effect the transition from the one to the
other: “Mimetic representation laid the groundwork for language and symbolic
thought, but lacked some critical element; the mental modelling apparatus was
still incomplete” (p.233). In fact, however, Englefield’s suggestion seems to
supply all that was needed to effect the transition – namely an awareness that the gesture language had come to consist of
arbitrary symbols, and a realization that, if the symbols
can be arbitrary, they may with advantage be sounds.
This assignment of
arbitrary sounds as names will have been a slow and protracted business. The
advantages of an exclusively oral language would not have become obvious until
a considerable vocabulary had been accumulated, and achieving this will have
taxed unpractised memories. Moreover, if all were to use the same words with
the same meanings, they must have been in fairly close contact; so the whole
process could have begun only in a small and compact community. Here again,
Englefield has a helpful suggestion, namely that the need of small,
tightly-knit groups (perhaps within a larger community) to develop a private or
secret means of communication, with a vocabulary restricted to the special objects of their interest,
could have given a significant start to vocabulary-building: “Under such
conditions a few intelligent individuals could experiment and build up more or
less extensive vocabularies for their private use. By initiating fresh members
into their group they could gradually enlarge the usefulness of the new
language.” He adds: “There is plenty of evidence of the use of secret languages
among primitive peoples….[Such] cases show that one advantage of oral language
has often been exploited, namely that by means of an easy substitution of terms
one can form a system of communication which is intelligible only to those for
whom it is intended. At a later time writing was found to offer the same
advantages [with codes and cryptograms]….Gesture [on the other hand] does not
so readily lend itself to disguise….And it seems a plausible suggestion that,
at a time when communication depended still in the main on the language of
movement and visible signs, the special advantages of using conventional sounds as the names of certain things would be exploited”
(pp.87-88). In sum, conventional sounds could have been used for the sake of
secrecy in restricted groups, “not as a complete language for all purposes, but
as a private supplement to the normal language of gesture… But once such a
language had come into existence it might be learnt by an ever increasing
number of young people, and in time could be degraded into the common language;
a new one being invented, if required, for secret communication” (p.94).
3. The ROLE of
DELIBERATE
INVENTION in MAN
and APE
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hat Englefield stresses most is that, while a few
names may have resulted from the abridgement of natural or imitative sounds,
this could not have produced a vocabulary of any size, and certainly not the
enormous number of words found in every known language, so that at some point
deliberate invention must have entered into the process. We see here, then, as
in other forms of human activity, the increasing influence of reflection: acts
which were first performed because experience showed their effectiveness became
the subject of scrutiny as to what made them effective, and this led to
conscious adaptations and improvements.
Many nineteenth-century anthropologists, misled by
the great differences between their own beliefs and the irrational and magical
beliefs of “savages”, supposed that early man must have been incapable of such
rational reflection – an assessment which overlooks a distinction between
beliefs of two different kinds. There are, first, our beliefs about our
immediate environment; when these are very incomplete or erroneous, our
behaviour is likely to be ill-adapted to our needs, so that we expose ourselves
to some immediate unpleasantness. But in this way, attention is called to our
mistake, and we may be led to rectify it. If, for instance, we act on the
belief that ether is a good fire extinguisher, we shall be in for a rude shock,
and if we survive the experience, the belief will not survive with us. On the
other hand, any ideas we have formed about the nature of the universe, or about
the distant future or past, are unlikely to lead to any noticeably
inappropriate reactions on our part, and so we may well persist in erroneous
beliefs of these kinds all our lives without ever experiencing the smallest
surprise or disappointment. This difference is important, for it explains why
even the most primitive peoples sometimes appear to have made considerable
progress in the practical arts, while continuing to hold quite groundless
beliefs in matters that do not lend themselves to experimental control.
Since chimpanzees can
rationally adapt means to ends in solving problems which interest them, there
is surely no difficulty in supposing the same to have been true of our human
ancestors. De Waal has pointed to "increasing evidence....for cognitive
continuity between humans and great apes" (1994, p.264). In fact very
substantial evidence for this was marshalled by Wolfgang Köhler more than
seventy years ago. The significance of his work is today still widely disputed,
underestimated or ignored (as when the fashioning and use of tools by
chimpanzees is hailed as a discovery from recent study of these animals in the
wild, although Köhler long ago documented it in their behaviour in captivity).
Let us review his masterly observations.
When Köhler put food out of
reach outside the bars of the cage of his chimpanzees, they realized that they
could drag it in if only they had a pole, and so went in search of one. That thinking
was involved was clear from their behaviour. They did not try out various
possibilities at random on the ground, in the presence of the initial
situation, until they happened to hit on some action that would help them. The
focus of the situation, the food, was ignored, and the animal turned away from
it under the guidance of a new goal, the pole. We assume therefore that he was
able to supply in his imagination this feature that was missing in the initial
situation, and could see himself, in his mind's eye, converting this initial
situation into a favourable one with the aid of this missing feature. In one
experiment the animal, during his search, came across an old box in which he
recognized a potential pole, and accordingly broke off a slat, with which he
returned to the bars of the cage and drew in the food. Other substitutes for
poles which these animals sought out included branches from trees, bars broken
from a shoe-scraper and screwed up bundles of straw. It is as if the animal had
formed for himself an abstract definition of the tool required - not of course
in any kind of language, but in terms of the task to be accomplished. He knows,
from comparison of visual aspects, that it must be of a certain length; and
from his muscular and tactile experience he knows that it must have a certain
weight and rigidity, so that a rope or blanket will not do. The animal of
course does not always have in mind all the relevant features of what he needs,
and so sometimes chooses inappropriate tools - returning, for instance, in
triumph with a stick only to find that it is not quite long enough.
There
are still scholars who treat Köhler’s findings with considerable reserve.
Stephen Walker will allow only that he showed that the chimpanzees can remember
spatial features and can manipulate objects (p.348). But surely Köhler showed,
as we shall see, that they can manipulate not merely objects but also ideas of
objects and can think, for instance, not only of stick and fruit, but also of
bringing the one into contact with the other. Against this, Graham Davey
objects that “previous experience with some of the objects in a problem-solving
situation aided solution of the problem" (p.305). But of course. What
Köhler called “insightful” behaviour - that is, first thinking out how a
present situation can he converted into a more desirable one, and then putting
this plan into action - does not, as Davey seems to suppose, imply a mind
devoid of previous experience. Even we humans do not imagine processes or
events which we have not, at least in their elements, experienced. Köhler’s
observations convinced him that experience which these animals had gained elsewhere, whether in play or
business, was deliberately exploited.note 1 Of great significance is the fact that the
bright idea for solving the problem could sometimes come to the animal when
neither the problem situation nor the means of solving it were still visible to
him. Thus on one occasion fruit had been attached to the roof of the cage, and
could easily be reached by standing on a box, but the only available box was
out of sight in an adjacent corridor. The ape looked round for something that
could serve him as a tool, and lighted upon a long bolt fastened to a door. While
trying to detach it, he hung upon the door in such a way that he could not see
the fruit; and the box in the corridor was completely out of sight round a
corner. This is Köhler’s account of what
then happened:
Abruptly
and without external occasion [the ape] stops working at the bolt, remains for
an instant motionless, then jumps to the ground, gallops along the corridor and
returns immediately with the box (p.38).
Clearly, at the moment when the animal stopped
motionless, although both box and fruit were invisible to him, they were
represented in his brain, so that, in his mind's eye, he saw himself moving the
box to under the fruit. In other words, he performed, in imagination, a
manipulation which he then proceeded to carry out in fact. This power to form
ideas and to manipulate them internally is the very essence of thinking.
Because Köhler's findings are still imperfectly appreciated, Derek
Bickerton can declare that “only humans can work on problems that do not immediately confront them”; and he
believes that it is language that makes it possible for man thus to attend to problems not immediately before his eyes. note 2 Now of course the inventions of the ape are closely related to his immediate situation.
But we have just seen that a chimpanzee who had previously seen the fruit in
one place and the box in another could imagine the box moved to under the fruit
at a moment when neither was visible to him. The insight which involves
imagining the initial problem situation, as well as the desired one and the
means of attaining it, is different only in degree from that which can draw on
perception for the initial situation. And language is not necessarily involved
in either case.
Köhler repeatedly showed that there is sometimes an interval during
which the animal seems to have ceased to concern itself with a problem it
cannot solve, yet evidently carries within its mind some trace of this problem;
for if during such an interval the ape comes across a possible tool, he will at
once abandon his apparent lethargy and, seizing the implement, return with new
zest to the task. In man this interval may be longer, so that the terms of one
problem may recur to him while he is engaged on the solution of another. While
sawing or scraping with wooden tools he may strike fire, and if he then recalls
how useful fire is, and how difficult to procure, he may exploit his new
discovery. Man has the further advantage over the ape that he can transmit his
discoveries to the next generation. Language is not essential for this. What is
essential is man's greatly enhanced power of imitation which enables
him to learn many forms of behaviour under the guidance of parents and other
seniors.note 3 Even today, practical
demonstration is often more effective than verbal instruction in teaching
someone the use of tools or apparatus. As Hewes rightly insists, "we still
mainly learn how to make or wield tools and weapons.…by carefully observing their
manipulation by someone already expert" (1973, p.8).
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hy
has the whole idea that conscious application to the task of discovery and
invention played any significant part in the development of language been so
often and so emphatically rejected, even though such conscious application is of obvious and
fundamental importance in human behaviour in general, and even in the behaviour
of the higher mammals? One answer to this question is that there are two ways
of regarding language: first as a means of influencing other people, of
stimulating in them the ideas of the speaker. This was the aspect stressed by
Condillac and his contemporaries. But language can also be regarded as a means
of expressing a single individual's ideas, and if the language involved is
verbal, there will then be a close relationship between the words and the
ideas. This was the aspect stressed in the nineteenth century, and it came to
be supposed that the relationship between ideas and the verbal
expression of them is so close that the ideas are impossible without the words.note 4 If so, then words do not result from invention,
because invention requires ideas and thinking, for which words must - according
to this view - have been there in the first place.
The
nineteenth-century vogue of the view that all ideas - at any rate all those
worthy of the name - depend on words was partly due to the explosion of
metaphysics, particularly in
Other mammals, and not only chimpanzees, manage
to link quite disparate experiences into a single idea, even though they have
no word to effect the linkage. Consider the dog’s idea of the cat. The visible
appearance of a cat varies a great deal according to the angle from which it is
seen, and also according to how much of it is actually discernible, say in undergrowth.
Its cry and smell are different again, yet the dog responds equally readily to
any of these aspects, any one of which activates in his mind his idea of the
cat. It is, then, quite unconvincing when Derek Bickerton states that we humans
need “some kind of arbitrary symbol” - a word, for instance - to tie all the
perceived aspects of the cat together in our minds (p.24).
What often leads linguistic experts astray here
is that - understandably enough - they feel a desire to seek within their own
domain an understanding both of language and of mind. There is nothing new in
this. Vendryes, in his Linguistic Introduction to History quotes from Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French,
German and a dozen other languages. At first sight this seems to be in
accordance with the normal methods of inductive science: to collect data,
classify them, and then look for general principles. But the results, however
interesting and instructive in their detailed bearing on historical and archaeological
questions, have not led to that understanding of language itself which was one
of the chief aims of the inquiry; for what is required is a generalization in
which language is included with other psychological phenomena, and this cannot
be found by merely comparing one language with another. We try to explain the
song of birds, the croaking of frogs and the posturings of all kinds of animals
by showing how they are related to sexual or other biological functions. We
find that a great variety of noises and gestures serve much the same purpose,
and do not expect to discover any special significance in the vocal
idiosyncrasies of different species. The song of the thrush is not the same as
that of the nightingale, but we are not likely to find any clue to the function
of bird-song by a musical analysis and comparison of the two performances.
Equally unimportant for the understanding of the principles of language is the
fact that many languages use similar or different noises to denote the same
thing. What we need to know is how any conceivable set of arbitrary noises can
be strung together in such a way as to convey quite complicated ideas. If
languages were at some time invented as a substitute for some other form of
communication, then it is the psychological principles of invention that we
have to consult, not the grammatical, syntactical or phonetic peculiarities of
Swahili, Sanskrit or Sumerian. The chimpanzee, seeking a substitute for a
stick, must carry in his mind a general idea of the kind of object required. So
man, looking for means to express his aim, must have been able to choose a sign
in accordance with his notion of what a sign should be; and this notion would
be gradually improved with experience.
Today it is something more subtle that exponents
of linguistics have come to regard as fundamental to human thinking; not the
conventions of English, Chinese or any other language, but something more
deep-seated. Chomsky and his followers believe that our ability to learn the
language of our parents or guardians when we are very young can be explained
only if we are born with an intuitive knowledge of fundamental rules of speech
which he supposes to be common to all languages. He is not prepared to accept the
view that whatever is common to them all can be accounted for by the common
terrestrial environment, by the characters which are common to the vocal organs
of all races, and by the common needs of human beings. He thinks instead that
there must be some inherited system of grammatical and syntactical rules, more
general than those which apply to any particular language, but just as
definite. On this basis, he suggests that study of the psychology of thinking
depends on knowledge of linguistics; for universal rules, common to every mind,
must be of prime importance for the thinking process. This is why
linguistics matters so much.note 6 When, however, we ask what these rules are, we do not get very clear
answers. Professor Lyons, a strong supporter, admits in his 1991 book on
Chomsky that “the results that have been obtained so far must be regarded as
very tentative” (p.147). And when we try to learn a language, we rapidly
discover that the principal difficulty is not the grammar, but memorizing the
vocabulary, by which I mean learning both the words and what they mean (or, in
current jargon, their ‘semantic interpretation’). Grammar and syntax are little
more than the necessary means of indicating (e.g. by word order, as in English,
or by inflection, as in Latin) which words in a sequence are to be taken
together and whether a statement pertains to present, past or future. Any
commonalities among grammars will be due to the fact that there are a limited
number of ways of doing this. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane Rumbaugh have noted
that, similarly, implements for carrying water have a certain resemblance in
widely differing civilizations “because of the constraints placed on possible
solutions [to the problem of transporting water] by the demands of the real
world”; and so it would be quite unwarranted to infer from such similarities
that some innate mechanism existed in the brain for making water vessels
(pp.86f, 105f).
During the past two
million years, the hominid brain has increased in size and weight very
remarkably,note 7 and I am not denying that, in the course of this
development, it has become adapted to language,note 8 as the larynx also has.note 9 But these adaptations surely occurred only
after man had begun to talk. Many animal genera possess peculiar faculties,
served by peculiar anatomical structures, and in every case there is an
evolutionary problem to be solved. David Oppenheimer observed, in the
‘Foreword’ we both contributed to Englefield’s book, that early man
was no doubt less fluent, and less reliant on
language than his garrulous descendants, just as the ancestors of the bat were
less skilled at sonar-controlled flight than their modern progeny. The notion
that structure and function develop progressively and simultaneously still
seems to be the only alternative to a theory of divine intervention.
Steven
Pinker, who stresses that speech is an adaptation resulting from natural selection,
confesses that he finds “the first steps towards human language a mystery”
(p.351). So they must remain if, with him and with Chomsky, we
take vocal language as the starting point.note 10 He denies that language is an invention, and
declares that “people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders
know how to spin webs” (p.18). He is somewhat vague about the nature of thought
processes which can be conducted without a specific language such as English,
but thinks that something like language must be involved: “People do not think
in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought” which
“probably looks a bit like all these languages”. He calls it “mentalese”
(p.81), and is clearly among those who are so obsessed with the importance of
grammar that they attribute a grammatical basis to the processes of thought
itself. He will not have sign language as a precursor because, he says, it is
“every bit as complicated as speech” (p.352). Certainly, if by ‘sign language’
is meant the language of the deaf and dumb and similar conventional systems.
But the primitive sign communication must have been very different.
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e can understand why language has, since such
primitive sign beginnings, become so much more refined if we consider the way
in which the needs of human communities have become complex. Man’s physical
weakness compelled him to organize himself in society or perish. Among solitary
animals interest in the behaviour of another animal is restricted to the
relationships between predator and prey, between the sexes, and between parent
and young, and in none of these (except possibly the last) is there much scope
for variety of behaviour. Merely gregarious habits also seem insufficient to
stimulate the tendency. What is required is social organization, in the form of
extensive co-operative enterprises, with inevitable division of labour,
restraint and adaptation to the movements of other team members. It is in
co-operating for a given purpose, in sharing a task, that the attention of one
individual can be concentrated at the same time on what he is doing himself,
and what his companion is doing, since his own action must be accommodated to
that of his helper. This interest in the actions of his fellow will tend to
stimulate in him the wish to interfere, to correct, to guide, and by whatever
means he attempts to do this, there is already the beginning of language. At
its simplest, co-operation consists in not getting in the other fellow’s way,
and even among monkeys and chimpanzees it goes much further than this. Recent
studies have shown that in the wild these animals live in social worlds that
are far more complex than was hitherto suspected. Köhler’s study of his small
captive colony could not reveal this. He found that these chimpanzees would
together drag a box too heavy for a single animal to move so as to position it
under suspended fruit; but once it was in position the most agile animal would
jump on it and secure the fruit for
himself (p.122). Co-operation in a task where the reward for success is
sufficient to satisfy only one individual is likely to end in this way even
where human beings are concerned. It is
necessary to study cases where the rewards can be more fairly distributed; and
it has now been shown that, in the wild, chimpanzees will share prey as food
(but apparently not plant foods such as bananas) and will carry food back to a
base camp for preparation and sharing (Musonda, p.46). They form groups of two
or three or more to hunt arboreal monkeys, and individual member of such groups
perform complementary tasks, some driving the prey, others encircling it so as
to block its escape to a distant tree. De Waal comments that such “orchestrated
hunt is unique among non-human primates” (1996, pp.141f). Kendon has likewise
noted that, with primates other than man, co-operation involving a
complementary relationship between the behaviour of two or more individuals is
largely absent (1991, p.212). Kathleen Gibson points in this connection to the
“minimally social” way in which chimpanzees use tools: when they use them for
cracking nuts or probing for termites, they do so alone and rarely share the
products of these efforts (p.258).
An important condition for progress towards human
language was that each person employing signs to influence others should have
some awareness of the kind of signs by which he himself was or might be
influenced when others made them. If this condition is not fulfilled, each
individual would need both to develop his own mode of expressing himself and
also to understand all the different signs used by his companions. This state
of affairs may well have obtained initially, but the adoption of a common
method by all in the social group was essential for economy and clarity. Such
adoption requires ability to see into the minds of others, to ascribe knowledge
and intentions to them – to have, in fact, what, in today’s psychological
terminology, is called “a theory of mind” about them. To a limited extent this
seems to be within the capacity of a chimpanzee, who can, for instance, become
aware that a desire or intention that he harbours is suspected by one of his
hostile or competing fellows, whom he then sets about trying, by his demeanour,
to deceive into supposing that he harbours no such desire or intention.
Examples of such deception are given by de Waal, who however interprets them
with caution (1996, pp.76, 232). Only social habits could have occasioned such
ability to look into the minds of others, but it was in turn essential not
merely for purposes of deception, but also for the further development of
co-operation.
A great advantage which, in man, prompts this further
development is his ability to learn not only (as the chimpanzee does) what he
can do, by active intervention, in a particular situation and what effects his
own reactions have on external objects, but also how these objects react to one
another. The chimpanzee’s knowledge is largely restricted to phenomena in which
he can intervene directly by his own bodily actions, using, if necessary, tools
attached in some way to his own body, whether these be grasped like sticks or stood
upon like boxes. He is not able to attend nearly so well to events and to
relations between objects which are not so directly related to himself and to
his own movements. Because man can do this, he is able to embark on much more
complicated enterprises, necessitating a much greater degree of co-operation.
The relatively large size of human social groups, as
compared with those of non-human primates, is also something that has
necessitated increased co-operation, and is today invoked as having in itself
prompted the development of spoken language. Gorillas and chimpanzees live in
communities numbering about thirty and sixty respectively. Groups enlarge in
order to defend themselves against predation, and as our ancestors invaded more
open habitats than those which were currently occupied by woodland- or
forest-based primates, they may well have been exposed to greater risks both
from their habitual predators and from other human groups. This increase in
size put a strain on social cohesion, as it is more difficult to sustain
harmony over time in a large group. The cries, grunts and gestures which
monkeys and apes employ as means of communication serve much more to promote
social cohesion, to regulate their behaviour towards each other, than to convey
information about the outside world (Ploog, p.241). Warning cries, indicating
danger from predators, form a striking exception. But the principal mechanism
for bonding non-human primate groups together is physical grooming of one
individual by another. Since harmony becomes more precarious with increase in
group size, larger groups require their individuals to spend more time
servicing their relationships. To sustain cohesion in a large group by grooming
would make impossible demands on time, and so, it is held, grooming came to be
replaced by the more efficient and less demanding alternative of language –
indeed of spoken language, as itself far more efficient as a means of
communication than gesture. On this view “language evolved to facilitate the
bonding of social groups, and….it mainly achieves this by permitting the
exchange of socially relevant information” (
If the genus Homo had been provided only with the resources
of non-verbal communication, an expanding group size, a larger social
community, would not have been possible. But this expansion took place coupled
with increasing brain volume, and seems to have been necessary, on ecological
grounds, for a community of hunter-gatherers. A savanna territory large enough
to furnish adequate nourishment demanded sizable groups of persons
communicating and coming to terms with each other. The pressure of selection
must have been towards the development of a more effective system of
communication (pp.241f).
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he quest for the origin of
language does not mean seeking out an original language from which all others
are derived; for language must have been invented at different times in all
parts of the world. To try to identify some primeval ancestor of them all would
be as vain as to try to discover the original musical instrument. If such a
thing were conceivable it would be possible only with the aid of historical or
archaeological documents, and manifestly these do not exist. What I have tried
to show is that there is an anthropological problem which admits of a
theoretical solution, namely the problem of the origin of speech. Of course we
cannot give precise details, but can say only that this kind of sign would be used and could
develop into that kind. The primitive signs themselves we can never hope to
know, and if the general account given in this booklet is plausible, it would
not even be interesting to know them.
Today it is customary to
ignore or belittle practically all that has been done to elucidate the origin
of language and the cognitive continuity between man and his closest surviving
relatives except what has been produced during the most recent decades. This is
partly because the sheer volume of current literature on these subjects
completely swamps the past, and partly
also because – as I try to show in my 1987 book – nineteenth-century writers
were on the whole very unhelpful in elucidating language origins, so that by
the twentieth century the far more lucid work of the Enlightenment on the subject (by Monboddo note 11 and Thomas Reid as well as Condillac) had been lost from sight, giving
present-day investigators some justification for regarding themselves
incomparably more ‘scientific’ than any predecessors likely to have come to
their notice.
Englefield, in contrast,
learned much about language from eighteenth-century scholars, and much about
the process of reasoning from Köhler. He always insisted, surely correctly,
that, whether or not we agree that oral language is a development from an
earlier form of communication, there is no reason to suppose any additional power
– apart from scope and speed – in the most highly developed language beyond
what exists in rudimentary form in the simplest dramatic or imitative gesture.
The basis of communication remains what it has always been, namely our shared
knowledge of the material world. When we speak to one another, we take for
granted a vast amount of knowledge of this world common to speaker and
listener. If two people, by similar experiences, have formed similar ideas,
then it will as a rule be easy for the one to evoke his own ideas in the mind
of the other by very brief verbal formulas. The ambiguity of many of the
commonest words would be fatal if communication did not take place in a common
environment and context, for it is this real (and not purely verbal) context which
removes most of the ambiguities. ‘He took out a’…. What did he take out? A
revolver, a licence, a tooth? The meaning of the verb differs in each case, but
the context suffices to make clear what is meant – not only the verbal context,
but the real context formed by our knowledge of the relation between a man and
weapons, between client and official, and between dentist and patient. If our
words cannot in this way be brought into connection with this real world, they
remain without meaning. All this may seem too obvious to need stating; but
Donald (p.229) rightly reiterates it in the face of claims and assumptions that
are still being made about language and which betray how little its limitations
are properly appreciated. Man, in the course of his history, formed his notions
first and invented words for them afterwards. Admittedly, today many notions
arise through the misunderstanding of words, and every individual now learns
very many words before he or she forms clearly the notions they conventionally stand
for. But in the history of language we must expect to see language follow in
the train of developing thought and not lead the way. Words multiply as the
progressing analysis of the world gives rise to a larger number of ideas, words
being made necessary by new discoveries and inventions, new ways of
understanding and explaining things. And explaining the meaning of such words
to people who have not had the experiences on which the corresponding ideas are
based normally involves more than recourse to yet other words. Drawings,
diagrams and models will often be necessary, and in the case of words denoting
abstractions, the adducing of all kinds of examples.
Language and thought are
forms of behaviour which have developed together. They can be best understood
if they are studied together, in relation to their origin, their development
and mutual influence. If we can understand how the faculty of speech was
acquired, this should help us to understand the nature and limits of its
function, both as a means of communication and as an instrument of thought.
2. Bickerton, pp.59, 90, 100, 103.
4. Typical is Ludwig Noiré’s statement: “Without
words there would be only fleeting, shadowy and disorderly impressions. An idea
has never existed in man without its material counterpart, the word” (p.50). On
his title page he quotes Max Müller’s aphorism: “No reason without speech; no
speech without reason”. This latter proposition is obviously erroneous.
Language at first served as a means of communication, but in time people came
to think in words; and when the words did not represent any real things, the
result of such thinking could not be very valuable.
5.
Randhawa and Coffmann have summarized numerous studies which demonstrate
how human thinking often appears as a process of internal manipulation of
visual representations of perceptions and actions, just as we have seen to be
the case with Köhler’s apes. See also Bloch’s article (pp.185f) and its references
to Brown’s “many examples of conceptual thinking in pre-linguistic children”.
6. I have tried to show in my 1993 book that this
exaggerated assessment of the importance of linguistics by Chomsky and others
is a reaction against the equally unjustifiable views of the behaviorists,
7. Man’s hominid ancestors of two million years
ago had brains about twice as big as those of present-day apes, yet some 40%
smaller than human brains of today (Leakey, 1997, pp.124, 131).
8. The modern child’s acquisition of language is
an example of something widespread in the animal kingdom, namely a
“predisposition to learn specific things at specific ages” (de Waal, 1996,
pp.35f). If a child has no contact with speaking people before the age of about
seven, he will have the greatest difficulty in learning language later in life
(Blakemore, p.141). Rumbaugh et al. have shown from their work on captive
animals that the capacity of chimpanzees to “acquire an impressive array of
language skills” – including not, of course, ability to speak, but “the ability
to understand the syntax….of requests spoken to them” – is similarly dependent
on their “being reared from birth in a language-saturated environment” where
“communication is emphasized” and “language (both speech and lexigrams)….used”
(1994, pp.320, 330f).
9.
“Humans are able to make a wide range of sounds because the larynx is
situated low in the throat, thus creating a large sound-chamber….above the
vocal cords”. In all other mammals “the larynx is high in the throat”, and this
“allows the animal to breathe and drink at the same time”. In man this is
precluded by the low position of the larynx, so that he is exposed to “the
dubious liability for choking” (Leakey, 1994, p.130).
10.
Hewes commented on Chomsky that “the notion….that a language system could have
come into existence suddenly as the result of a ‘mutation’ seems simplistic and
hardly more plausible than the idea that language is a gift from the gods”
(1973, p.6). I criticize Chomsky in some detail in my 1993 book. For more
recent criticism of both him and Pinker, see Amorey Gethin’s new book.
11. That Monboddo is today
remembered only as a joke is well exemplified by Jean Aitchison’s brief mention
of him (p.4). His Origin and Progress of Language (2nd edition, 1774),
although naïve, is perfectly lucid (in contrast to much of the later literature
on the subject) and, as I tried to show in my 1987 book, some of his mistakes
are based on awareness of real problems in the issues confronting him.
Professor Aitchison’s dismissive attitude is in part prompted by her view that
a gestural origin for language is “unlikely”, and that “gestures probably
simply aided communication then, as they do now” (p.76). However, she shares
Monboddo’s lucidity, and her whole book (with its substantial bibliography) is
very clearly set out, each chapter being concluded with a summary of its
arguments.
Aitchison,
Jean., 1996;
The Seeds of Speech. Language Origin and Evolution,
Bickerton,
D., 1996:
Language and Human Behaviour,
Blakemore,
C., 1977
Mechanics of the Mind,
Bloch,
M., 1991:
‘Language, Anthropology and Cognitive Science’, Man, 26, 183-98.
Boesch,
C.,1993:
‘Aspects of Transmission of Tool-Use in Wild Chimpanzees’, in Gibson and Ingold,
171-83.
Brown,
R., 1973:
A First Language. The Early Stages, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Cheney,
Dorothy L. and Seyfarth, R., 1992:
‘Précis of How Monkeys See the World’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
15, 135-82 (a précis of their 1990 book published by the
Condillac,
E.B. de, 1746
De l’origine et du progrès du langage; Part 2 of Essai sur l’origine
des connoisances humaines, in Oeuvres, Paris, 1798, vol. 1.
Corballis, M.C., 1991:
The Lopsided Ape. Evolution of the Generative Mind,
Critchley, M., 1975:
Silent Language,
Davey, G., 1981:
Animal Learning and Conditioning,
Donald, M., 1991:
Origins of the Human Mind,
Dunbar, R., 1996:
Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language,
Englefield, F.R.H. (Ronald), 1977:
Language. Its Origin and Its Relation to Thought, edited by G.A.Wells
and D.R.Oppenheimer,
Foley, R.A. (editor), 1991:
The Origins of Human Behaviour,
Gethin, A., 1999:
Language and Thought. A Rational Enquiry Into Their Nature and Relationship,
Gibson, Kathleen R. and Ingold, T. (editors), 1993:
Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution,
Gibson, Kathleen R., 1993:
‘Tool Use, Language and Social Behaviour in Relationship to Information
Processing Capacities’, in Gibson and Ingold, 251-69.
Grolier, E. de (editor), 1983:
Glossogenetics. The Origin and Evolution of Language, Chur,
Harnad, S.R., et al. (editors), 1976:
Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech. Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, vol.280.
Harris, R. (editor), 1996:
The Origin of Language,
Hewes, G.W., 1973 and 1976:
1973: ‘Primate Communication and the Gestural Origin of Language’, Current
Anthropology, 14, 5-24. 1976: ‘The Current Status of the Gestural Theory of
Language Origin’, in Harnad et al., 482-504.
Jespersen, O., 1922:
Language. Its Nature, Development and Origin.
Kendon, A., 1991 and 1993:
1991: ‘Some Considerations for a Theory of Language Origins’, Man, 26,
199-221. 1993:
‘Human Gesture’, in Gibson and Ingold, 43-62.
Köhler, W., 1921
Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen, 2nd edition, Berlin: Springer. (There is an English translation by Ella Winter, entitled The
Mentality of Apes, 2nd edition,
Leakey, R., 1994 and 1997:
1994: The Origin of Humankind,
1997: ‘Die Bedeutung
eines vergrößerten Gehirns in der Evolution des Menschen’, in Meier and Ploog,
121-36. (This essay on ‘The Significance of an
Enlarged Brain in the Evolution of Man’ has been translated from the original
English, but no indication is given in this symposium that it has been
published elsewhere in English.)
Lyons, J., 1991:
Chomsky, 3rd edition,
McGrew, W.C., 1991:
’Chimpanzee Material Culture’, in Foley, 13-24.
Meier, H., and Ploog, D. (editors), 1997:
Der Mensch und sein Gehirn, Munich: Piper.
Müller, F. Max, 1880:
Lectures on the Science of Language,
Musonda, F.B., 1991
‘The Significance of Modern Hunter-Gatherers in the Study of Early Hominid
Behaviour’, in Foley, 39-51.
Noiré, L., 1917:
The Origin and Philosophy of Language, 2nd edition,
Paget, R.A.S., 1953 and 1963:
1953: ‘The Origins of Language’, Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale, 1,
399-414.
1963: Human Speech,
Pinker, S., 1995:
The Language Instinct. The New Science of Language and Mind,
Ploog, D., 1997:
‘Das soziale Gehirn des Menschen’, in Meier and Ploog, 235-52.
Randhawa, B.S. and Coffmann, W.E., 1978:
Visual Learning, Thinking and Communication,
Rousseau, J.J., 1755:
Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmis les hommes, in
Oeuvres Complètes, edited by B. Gagnebin et al., vol. 3, Paris, 1964.
Rumbaugh, D.M., Savage-Rumbaugh, E.Sue and Sevcik, Rose A., 1994: ‘A
Comparative Perspective of Chimpanzee, Child and Culture’, in Wrangham et al.,
319-334.
Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue and Rumbaugh D.M., 1993:
‘The Emergence of Language’, in Gibson
and Ingold, 86-108.
Sayce, A.H., 1880:
Introduction to the Science of Language,
Vendryes, J., 1925:
Language. A Linguistic Introduction to History, English translation
(from the French of 1921),
1994: ‘Culture and Cognition’, introductory ‘Overview’ to the section on
Chimpanzees’ Cognition in Wrangham et al., 263-5.
1996: Good Natured. The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other
Animals,
Walker, S., 1983:
Animal Thought,
Wells, G.A., 1987 and 1993:
1987: The Origin of Language. Aspects of the Discussion From Condillac to
Wundt, La Salle (
1993: What’s In a Name? Reflections on Language, Magic and Religion,
Westcott, R.M., 1985:
Review of de Grolier in Language in Society, 14, 127-30.
Wrangham, R.W., et al. (editors), 1994:
Chimpanzee Cultures,
Wundt, W., 1900:
Völkerpsychologie, vol.1, Die Sprache; 4th edition (unchanged),
Stuttgart, 1921.
Addendum
Since I completed this booklet, Professor Corballis has supplemented
what he says on the subject in his 1991 book (listed above) with an article
advocating ‘The Gestural Origins of Language’, American Scientist, 87
(1999), 138-145. It includes a useful bibliography of relevant work published
in the 1990s.
SUPPLEMENTARY STATEMENT
I have argued that language (initially mainly
visible, not vocal) was first used in concrete situations for practical
purposes, and functioned as statements or questions or commands. The latter
were particularly important, in that much early language will have deliberately
aimed at influencing the behaviour of other animals. An attacking animal makes
movements which cause its prospective victim to flee or resist, but these are not
aimed at producing these results. If the mouse flees at the sight or smell of
the cat, the latter’s movements or odorous emissions are not language. But when
the cat induces his master by cries or gestures to supply food or open a door,
this is deliberate adaptation of behaviour to the end of influencing the
behaviour of another animal in a particular way.
Some will object that, to say that much in
language was at first imperative in meaning (designed to evoke a specific
response from someone), gives no basis for explaining what it very largely is
today, viz. indicative communication, where the aim is merely to make someone
aware of certain facts. But transition from the imperative to the indicative
type poses no insuperable problems, since the former, in making clear the type
of action requested, often needs in some way to describe that action. When my
cat (of long ago) wanted to go out, he sat ostentatiously in front of the door
and looked up at the door handle. The request was obvious, but it also indicated
what I was requested to do. The more complicated the action requested, the more
signs will be needed for its description. The imperative may be a (if not the)
primitive mood, but the more elaborate the command, the more it will assume the
character of instructions and so involve what we now feel to be indicative or
descriptive elements.
Conveying information even without linking it
with a request for a particular action will have been possible already at an
early stage. In a rudimentary form it can be seen today in communication from
man to beast. Englefield tells (pp.35f) that, at the end of a family meal, his
two dogs would come and sit one on either side of him to receive biscuits. They
stayed until he indicated by word or gesture that there would be no more. What
they then proceeded to do varied, but they clearly judged from his words or
gestures that the biscuit session was finished, and that they might as well go
about their other business. It may therefore be said that his language was
indicative. It did not command a particular action, but gave information on
which the animals could act according to their judgement.
I have envisaged a stage in which man had
advanced to communicating by means of spoken words, and small sequences of
them, without having to rely heavily on supplementing them with gestures. If
such a small group of words was not understood, a fresh attempt would be made
by re-arranging or changing them. But many today believe that this falls short
of true language which, they insist, involves not only naming but also syntax.
D.F. Armstrong and his co-authors W.C. Stokoe and S.E. Wilcox
declare that it is syntax which “transforms naming into language by enabling
human beings to comment on and think about the relationships between things and
events”; that is to say: “language makes sentences” and “syntax has begun to
emerge when the simplest sentences can be made” (Gesture and the Nature of
Language, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp.19f). These three authors
allow that a mere string of words can convey a speaker’s meaning when the
things or events signified are “all or mostly all in immediate view or in the
top layer of the hearers’ memories” (p.170), i.e. in a specific context of
which both parties are aware. Yet “random arrangements of words do not express
a relationship. To do that requires syntax, a system for….putting words into
certain relationships” (p.172). They seem to overlook the fact that the
relationships between different things to which attention may have to be drawn
are by no means indefinitely numerous and are to a large extent determined by
the nature of the things themselves. The four words ‘dance’, ‘hall’, ‘gas’,
‘stove’ give four ideas to be related, and it might be supposed on mathematical
grounds that this would yield a large number of combinations. Yet such is the
nature of the ideas presented that it is not difficult to guess that such a
concatenation means a stove which burns gas as fuel and is used to heat a hall
where people gather to dance. Admittedly, clarity is helped by syntactical
features such as word combination (‘dancehall’, ‘gasstove’) and the convention
that the final element in a combination gives the basic meaning (a dancehall is a kind of hall, not a kind of dance).
But it seems arbitrary to say that, without such syntax, there is no language.
Even under present conditions rules of grammar and syntax may often be ignored
without making a brief communication unintelligible. My statement ‘me hungry’
conveys a perfectly clear meaning; and in the case of more lengthy statements,
pauses between groups of words which belong together or, in writing,
punctuation, can be just as important for intelligibility as word-order,
word-composition, inflection and particles.
Armstrong and his co-authors are, however, so
convinced that syntax is essential to
language (p.166) that they claim it is present even in individual gestures
which, they allow, probably preceded vocal communication. They suggest that “a
visible gesture….may contain within itself not just a word but syntax and language in embryo”
(p.178). Or, more emphatically: “Embryo sentences are already inherent in
simple visible gestures” (p.161).
Now it is indeed reasonable to suppose that
primitive man, like the modern ape, learned much about his environment by
manipulating it, and that it was not the movement of the hands, the stretching
out of the arm or the bending of the
fingers that interested him, but the bananas and the pole or other tool
that would enable him to reach them. What Armstrong and his co-authors have in
mind is that, when man represented any thing or event with gesture, he will
have become conscious of his bodily movements; he will have analysed or “taken
the gesture apart” (p.182), and in this way distinguished the hand (or other
body part) that acts from what it does, viz. the action or movement of that
part. In this way he will have “found syntax”, for these two elements – what
acts and the action it performs – constitute “the structure of a miniature
sentence: what is active is the agent or subject or ‘S’, and what
it does is the action or verb or ‘V’”, e.g. “grasping or striking
another body” (p.89. Italics original). Hence the SVO (subject-verb-object) pattern is present in a manual gesture
(pp.179, 184). Stokoe reiterates these views in an article written jointly with
M. Marschark in the 1999 symposium Gesture, Speech and Sign, edited by
Lynn S. Messing and Ruth Campbell (Oxford University Press, pp.168, 177).
These authors know well enough that the
distinction between agent and action is continually impressed on us, as on
other animals, independently of the use of language of any sort. (In their 1995
book, Armstrong and his co-authors note, for instance (pp.169ff), that crows
know that the likely behaviour of a man with a gun differs from that of a man
without one.) But they hold that this distinction had to be discerned in
gestural communication before it could be imported into oral sequences as a
distinction between nouns and verbs, “i.e. names for things that act and names
for actions and states” (1995, pp.183f).
Stokoe and Marschark say in the 1999 symposium
that “language had to begin with gestures”, for “only gestures can look like or
point to or hold up or otherwise visibly reproduce what they mean”. So much, we
saw, was well understood already in the eighteenth century, when gestures were
contrasted with vocal sounds on the ground that understanding the latter
presupposes knowing the conventions which determine their meaning. But for
Stokoe and Marschark, knowing these conventions is not enough, and has to be
supplemented by knowing “the rules for connecting the sounds”; for “there is
nothing in unaided sound to show that what is meant is a noun or verb or
something else. Words get to be nouns and verbs only by being, or having been,
parts of sentences” (p.178).
I find it very strange to attach so much
importance to grammatical categories (verb, noun, etc.) when even today we
often cannot say to what part of speech a word belongs unless we know what it
means in a given context, as with the word ‘singing’ in the following examples:
I hear her singing (verb)
A singing bird (adjective)
I hear singing (noun)
We got hoarse singing (adverb)
What matters, then, in any sequence of signs
is what they mean; and although syntax and grammar can help very considerably
to clarify meaning, it seems arbitrary to say that, without them, there is no
language. But such over-emphasis on their importance is characteristic of
recent linguistic studies.
The
Editor invites letters or articles in response
to the piece above, The Origin of Language.
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