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VI. Life’s Cerebral Cognizance Becomes More Complex, Smarter, Informed, Proactive, Self-Aware

2. Organisms Evolve Rhythmic Protolanguage Communication

Protolang 6. sites.google.com/view/protolang-6/home. A copious website for this sixth edition of the Protolang conference series which took place in Lisbon, Portugal from 9 to 11 September, 2019, along with satellite events. A typical Symposia was Evolution of Language from Perspectives of Hierarchical Complexity led by Misato Hayashi, summary next.

Hierarchical complexity seems to be a key factor for the rise of linguistic capacity during ontogeny and evolution. Several comparative studies were conducted in primates (non-human primates and humans) as well as birds to explore the evolution of cognitive abilities accounting for hierarchical complexity. Formal language studies of the grammatical structure underlying behavioral sequences such as object manipulation, song, and music reveal hierarchical complexities inherent in animal behavior. We will discuss how the hierarchical complexity observed in nonhuman animals promoted the evolution of human language. (Abstract)

The Protolang conference series creates an interdisciplinary platform for scholarly discussion on the origins of symbolic communication distinctive of human beings. Its theme focuses on the genetic, anatomical, neuro-cognitive, socio-cultural, semiotic, symbolic and ecological requirements for evolving (proto)language. We aim at identifying the proximate and ultimate causes as well as the mechanisms by which these requirements evolved; evaluating the methodologies, research tools and simulation techniques; and enabling extended and vigorous exchange of ideas across disciplinary borders.

Arbib, Michael and Derek Bickerton, eds. The Emergence of Protolanguage: Holophrasis vs. Compositionality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Holophrasis is a long phrase into one word; Compositionality means a whole expression. This collection explores these options and emphasis of a holistic image with a discrete communicative carrier. A synoptic paper is “Protolanguage in Ontogeny and Phylogeny” by Patricia Greenfield, Heidi Lyn and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh which concludes that an interplay of both modes was most probably the case. A theme throughout is then a general recapitulation between hominid evolution and how children learn. (Compare with Elizabeth Spelke, et al, Allan Paivio, and other complementary approaches that find these archetypes to distinguish the rise and process of cognition and speech).

Humans have language. It is hypothesised that the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans did not. Evolutionary linguists therefore have to explain how the gap between a non-linguistic ancestor and our linguistic species was bridged. Most scholars agree that there must once have been a predecessor of human language, or protolanguage, but they disagree over its nature, and over how it developed into modern human language. One account (Compositionality) characterises protolanguage as containing a limited set of word-like units with simple, atomic meanings (Bickerton, Tallerman), associated with basic pre-exisiting cognitive concepts, effectively the ancestors of modern nouns and verbs. The other account (Holophrasis) (Wray, Arbib), believes that protolanguage units represented complex propositions, more like whole modern sentences. Both accounts assume that individual units in the protolanguage lexicon are mutually distinguishable, but their disagreement over the level of semantic complexity represented by the protolinguistic forms leads to different visions of how protolanguage could have developed into modern language. (Publisher’s summary)

Atkinson, Quentin and Russell Gray. Curious Parallels and Curious Connections – Phylogenetic Thinking in Biology and Historical Linguistics. Systematic Biology. 54/4, 2005. The growing perception of an ingrained correspondence and synthesis between genes and language, whereby the same features repeat in both cases. Discrete molecules compare with lexicon and syntax, homologies with cognates, mutation with innovation, cladogenesis with lineage splits, plant hybrids with creoles, and so on. Evolution can thus be tracked by the recurrent rise of an informative quality, while by such an implication human knowledge takes on a genetic-like cast.

Many of the fundamental features of biological and linguistic evolution are demonstrably analogous. Just as DNA sequences contain discrete heritable units, so too do languages in their grammatical and phonological structures and their vocabularies. (513)

Balari, Sergio and Guillermo Lorenzo. Computational Phenotypes: Towards an Evolutionary Developmental Biolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. In a volume that reflects endeavors to view the entire arc of life’s evolution as a singular manifestation, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Universidad de Oviedo, systems linguists offer theoretical reasons why language is not unique to us alone. Communicative abilities and media, broadly conceived, can be traced by relative degree and kind to the earliest invertebrates. The “Faculty of Language” notation for our phase is expanded to a “Central Computational Complex” set within the evolution as embryogeny (evo-devo) revival. Dynamic Systems Theory (Thelen and Smith, Kelso), Developmental Systems Theory (Oyama), Emergence (Reid) and Morphological Evolution (Pere Alberch) are then cited in regard. A persistent homologies (similarity among different metazoan creatures from a common ancestry) are recorded, along with Richard Owen’s mid 1800s archetypal forms, to express a recurrent convergence as life’s gestation matures. Companion entries in this section are Bolhuis, Johan, et al Birdsong, Speech, and Language, and Stroik, Thomas and Michael Putnam The Structural Design of Language. For an update review by the authors see The End of Development in Biological Theory (Online May 2014).

This book confronts the hotly debated claim that language is a species specific trait of humans. It also considers the notion that disentangling the evolutionary history of language is one of science's hardest problems. Building on the recent conceptual breakthroughs of the EvoDevo paradigm, Balari and Lorenzo argue that language is not so exceptional after all. It is, rather, just the human version of a fairly common and conservative organic system which they call the Central Computational Complex. The authors also propose that interspecies variation of this organ is restricted to (i) accessible memory resources, and (ii) patterns of external connectivity, both being the result of perturbations on the system underlying its development. The book, written accessibly for both biologists and linguists, offers a fresh perspective on language as a naturally evolved phenomenon.

Baronchelli, Andrea, et al. The Biological Origin of Linguistic Diversity. PLoS One. 7/10, 2012. As the extended quotes attest, Baronchelli, Boston University with Nick Chater, University of Warwick, Romualdo Pastor-Satorras, Universitat Politčcnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, and Morten Christiansen, Cornell University, find broad affinities between genomes and say “languagome,” life’s somatic and cultural phases. Reference 37 in the quote is “Tools from Evolutionary Biology Shed New Light on the Diversification of Languages” by Stephen Levinson (MPI Psycholingusitics) and Russell Gray (University of Auckland) Trends in Cognitive Sciences (16/3, 2012). This paper together with many other entries then seem to imply and verify nature’s textual essence of a genesis uniVerse, that appears to be engaged in writing and reading itself.

In contrast with animal communication systems, diversity is characteristic of almost every aspect of human language. Languages variously employ tones, clicks, or manual signs to signal differences in meaning; some languages lack the noun-verb distinction (e.g., Straits Salish), whereas others have a proliferation of fine-grained syntactic categories (e.g., Tzeltal); and some languages do without morphology (e.g., Mandarin), while others pack a whole sentence into a single word (e.g., Cayuga). A challenge for evolutionary biology is to reconcile the diversity of languages with the high degree of biological uniformity of their speakers. Here, we model processes of language change and geographical dispersion and find a consistent pressure for flexible learning, irrespective of the language being spoken. This pressure arises because flexible learners can best cope with the observed high rates of linguistic change associated with divergent cultural evolution following human migration. Thus, rather than genetic adaptations for specific aspects of language, such as recursion, the coevolution of genes and fast-changing linguistic structure provides the biological basis for linguistic diversity. Only biological adaptations for flexible learning combined with cultural evolution can explain how each child has the potential to learn any human language. (Abstract)

More generally, our findings complement recent results from the application of computational phylogenetic methods to large databases of typological language information (see [37] for a review), indicating that patterns of word order correlations across language families are best understood in terms of lineage-specific histories in cultural evolution rather than as reflecting a special-purpose language system. Such phylogenetic analyses, however, do not provide direct insight into how cultural or biological processes give rise to the diversity of human language as investigated in our simulations. Thus, we advocate a two-pronged methodological approach to understanding language evolution that combines insights from phylogenetic methods into historical processes relating to the diversification of languages with those from computational and mathematical modelling of the interplay between genes and language. (5)

Belyk, Michel and Steven Brown. Perception of Affective and Linguistic Prosody. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 9/9, 2021. McMaster University neuropsychologists contribute early notices that our human communications are actually composed of archetypal complements of literary verbiage and visual movements (facial expressions, hand motions) which serve to convey a meaningful content. See also More than Words: Word Predictability, Prosody, Gesture and Mouth Movements in Natural Language Comprehension by Ye Zhang, et al in Proceedings of the Royal Society B (July 2021) for a later affirmation. Into the 2020s a full appreciation of these biconic prose/poetry, script/score (song) eternal complements grows in evidence.

Prosody refers to the melodic and rhythmic aspects of speech. Two forms of prosody are typically distinguished: “affective prosody” refers to the expression of emotion in speech, whereas “linguistic prosody” relates to the intonation of sentences, including the focus within sentences and stress on polysyllabic words. While these two processes are united by their use of vocal pitch modulation, they are functionally distinct. In order to examine the localization and lateralization of speech prosody in the brain, we performed neuroimaging studies of the perception of affective and linguistic prosody. There was substantial sharing of brain activations, particularly in right-hemisphere auditory areas. (Abstract)

Benitez-Burraco, Antonio and Ljiljana Progovac. Reconstructing Prehistoric Languages. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Volume 1824, March, 2021. University of Seville and Wayne State University, Detroit paleolinguists introduce a wide-ranging edition about this retrospective project. Its several Parts include Prehistoric Sounds; Gestures, Grammar and the Lexicon; Behavior, Cognition, and the Brain, and onto Prehistoric Languages. Typical papers are The Sounds of Prehistoric Speech by Caleb Everett, The History of Number Words in the World's Languages by Andreea Calude, and Metaphors: The Evolutionary Journey from Bidirectionality to Unidirectionality by David Gil and Yeshayahu Shen (search).

This theme issue brings together prominent experts in the field of human evolution to achieve a deeper, richer understanding of the nature of prehistoric languages. The contributions begin to outline a profile of the structures and uses of prehistoric languages, including the type of sounds; the nature of the earliest grammars, the nature of the rudimentry vocabularies; and the role of recently evolved brain circuits. By projecting some specific features of language and brain organization into prehistory, the contributions to this volume engage the genetic and the neuroscientific aspects of human evolution and cognition.

Berwick, Robert, et al. Evolution, Brain, and the Nature of Language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 17/2, 2013. An important paper because authors Berwick, MIT computational neuroscience, Angela Friederici, MPI neuropsychology, Noam Chomsky, MIT linguistic philosophy (on message at age 84), and Johan Bolhuis, Utrecht University cognitive neurobiology, are leading theorists in the quest for a right read on language, broadly conceived, both in a special human phase and its deep evolutionary lineage. A person’s lingusitic “ontogenesis” is seen as due to a shared genetic endowment, an external spoken environment, and “general principles such as the minimization of computational complexity” and “word-like elements” in a lexicon. See also “Twitter Evolution: Converging Mechanisms in Birdsong and Human Speech” by Johan Bolhuis, et al, cited herein.

Language serves as a cornerstone for human cognition, yet much about its evolution remains puzzling. Recent research on this question parallels Darwin's attempt to explain both the unity of all species and their diversity. What has emerged from this research is that the unified nature of human language arises from a shared, species-specific computational ability. This ability has identifiable correlates in the brain and has remained fixed since the origin of language approximately 100 thousand years ago. Although songbirds share with humans a vocal imitation learning ability, with a similar underlying neural organization, language is uniquely human. (Abstract)

Taken together, the evidence on birds and primates suggests that three factors are important in the evolution of speech and language. First, there is neural and genetic homology: similar genes and brain regions are involved in auditory learning and vocal production, not only in songbirds and humans, but also in apes and monkeys. Second, there is evolutionary convergence with regard to the mechanisms of auditory–vocal learning, which proceeds in essentially the same way in songbirds and human infants, but not in apes or monkeys. Third, the combinatorial complexity of human language is unique in the animal kingdom. It may be that the neural mechanisms that evolved from a common ancestor, combined with the auditory–vocal learning ability that evolved in both humans and songbirds, contributed to the emergence of language uniquely in the human lineage. (8)

Bichakjian, Bernard. Language Evolution: How Language was Built and Made to Evolve. Languages Sciences. Online March, 2017. The Radboud University linguist enters a timely expansion of this field of study, akin to other areas, which extends across life’s developmental course to its earliest rudiments. As brain asymmetry and clever behavior is evident from the outset, audible communications can also be traced to deep origins. A further case is made for markings and writings, broadly conceived, much earlier than thought. Once again an initial right hemisphere image phase is seen to precede alphabetic notation in the left brain.

Today's mainstream research in language evolution leaves from the assumption that language is an exclusively human feature, a steady-state entity like our biological organs, and endeavors to discover the phylogenetic event that endowed us with this mental “organ” or the clinching moment language became possible. The fossil evidence from the development of central and peripheral speech organs provides, however, no support for the alleged existence of a fateful event that would have dubbed a speechless ancestor into a speech-vested mutant; instead, it outlines a gradual development of speech organs from the hints detected on the endocranial casts of the most archaic member of the genus Homo to the full-blown apparatus of modern humans. Far from being a steady-state accessory, language has evolved to become an ever more efficient instrument of thought and communication. This paper will argue that it started with implements improvised on the basis of a sensory mapping of the outside world and gradually developed into a set of mentally created alternatives properly crafted for linguistic operations. (Abstract excerpts)

The foregoing was not an attempt to reconstruct the ultimate prototypical vernacular and describe how its features derived to become those of today’s languages. Such a prototypical language never existed, nor was there a discrete biological event, such as the descent of the larynx, or a mental development, such as the computational mechanism of recursion, that made us fit for language. Much like the evolution of biological species, which stretches from a unicellular prototype to humans, the evolution of language is a continuum that extends from the first conventionalized grunt to the most proficient linguistic systems. (10)

Bolhuis, Johan, et al. Birdsong, Speech, and Language: Exploring the Evolution of Mind and Brain. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013. With co-editor Martin Everaert, and Forewords by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky a significant study of the many forms, stages, and articulations of creaturely and human conversations. Typical sections are Phonology and Syntax and Neurobiology of Song and Speech and for chapters The Design Principles of Natural Language, Convergence and Deep Homology in the Evolution of Spoken Language, Behavioral Similarities between Birdsong and Spoken Language, and Building Bridges between Genes, Brains, and Language. Notable authors are Irene Pepperberg, Tecumseh Fitch, Simon Fisher, Moira Yip, and Gary Marcus.

Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase ("babbling"), the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the striking similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language. (Publisher)

Brown, Steven. A Joint Prosodic Origin of Language and Music. Frontiers in Psychology. October 30, 2017. A McMaster University, Canada psychologist and director of the NeuroArts Lab advances the view that creaturely and primate communications have a common gestural musilanguage origin. Akin to Ma, Weiyi, et al herein, this initial phase evolved into dual, complementary rhythmic and linguistic modes, broadly conceived. So once more every instance natural and social phenomena can be seen to take on dual connective flow and discrete detail archetypes. See Brown’s publication list on the NeuroArts site for other articles such as The Narration/Coordination Model (2019).

Vocal theories of the origin of language rarely make a case for the precursor functions that underlay the evolution of speech. The vocal expression of emotion is unquestionably the best candidate for such a precursor, although most evolutionary models of both language and speech ignore emotion and prosody altogether. I present here a model for a joint prosodic precursor of language and music in which ritualized group-level vocalizations served as the ancestral state. This precursor combined not only affective and intonational aspects of prosody, but also holistic and combinatorial mechanisms of phrase generation. From this common stage, there was a bifurcation to form language and music as separate, though homologous, specializations. (Abstract)

Chemla, Emmanuel, et al. Constraints on the Lexicons of Human Languages have Cognitive Roots Present in Baboons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116/14926, 2019. Four French linguists proceed to identify a relative “connectedness” between words or signs as the methodic quality by which a meaningful message can be perceived. By virtue of these broadly conceived associations, non-human simians can similarly be seen to form a relative lexical array. See also Assessing the Uniqueness of Language: Animal Grammatical Abilities by Carel ten Cate in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (24/91, 2017). In all, by our late vantage life’s long emergent evolution seems intent on gaining a linguistic, expressive capacity.

Universals in language are hard to come by, yet one candidate is that words across the lexicons of the world’s languages are, by and large, connected: When a word applies to two objects, it also applies to any objects “between” those two. A natural hypothesis is that the source of this regularity is a learning bias for connected patterns, a hypothesis supported by recent experimental studies. Is this learning bias typically human? Is it language related? We ask whether other animals show the same bias. We present an experiment that reveals that learning biases for connectedness are present in baboons, suggesting that the shape of the world’s languages (both content and logical words) has roots in general, nonlinguistic, cognitive biases. (Significance)

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