{"id":1739,"date":"2010-12-04T15:25:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-04T15:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2018\/11\/28\/1010-revision-v1\/"},"modified":"2019-07-09T12:42:35","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T12:42:35","slug":"the-origin-of-speech-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/12\/04\/the-origin-of-speech-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origin of Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Origin of Speech<\/em>\u00a0is the title of an article published in\u00a0Scientific American<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a01960\u00a0by\u00a0Charles F. Hockett. It is often cited, even today, for its suggestion that there are 13 “design-features” shared by all\u00a0languages.<\/p>\n

The 13 design-features of language:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Vocal-auditory\u00a0channel<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 While it is true that we have\u00a0cultural adaptations\u00a0that don\u2019t require vocalizing\u00a0communication\u00a0\u2013 sign language, writing \u2013 nonetheless\u00a0evolution\u00a0has emphasized our vocal capabilities.<\/li>\n
  2. Rapid fading<\/em>\u00a0– see next point.<\/li>\n
  3. Broadcast transmission and directional reception<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 these two are inevitable\u00a0corollaries\u00a0of language’s vocal component and\u00a0the physics of sound. They refer to the fact that sound is\u00a0non-permanent<\/a>, and has\u00a0spatial<\/a>\u00a0limitations and\u00a0identifiers<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. Interchangeability<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 if a person can understand an incoming message then they can also communicate it outwards. Compare the communication between a mother and infant, or the asymmetry of many\u00a0mating rituals<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  5. Total feedback<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the speaker is aware of what they’re saying. This contrasts, for example, with insects that do not see what they are presenting in their colour displays but nonetheless have the\u00a0instinct\u00a0to display them.<\/li>\n
  6. Specialization<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the communication is for its own sake, and not a by-product. A panting\u00a0dog\u00a0is communicating that it is\u00a0hot, but that is only a by-product of\u00a0expelling<\/a>\u00a0heat.<\/li>\n
  7. Semanticity<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the effect of language depends on its linking\u00a0words<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0representations<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  8. Arbitrariness<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the relationship between the word and its meaning is\u00a0arbitrary<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  9. Discreteness<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 this is easiest to understand with an example: if I pronounce “bin” similar to “pin” I am not saying a word which lies between the two (as if language were\u00a0continuous), but rather merely mispronouncing “pin”. Hence words are\u00a0discrete.<\/li>\n
  10. Displacement<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 capacity to talk about things that are non-present, whether\u00a0temporally<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0spatially<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  11. Productivity<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 capacity to create an\u00a0infinite number of phrases<\/a>\u00a0from a limited pool. By comparison, the author notes,\u00a0gibbon\u00a0communication is limited and so does not display productivity.<\/li>\n
  12. Transitional transmissions<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a transmission that is non-genetic, even if the capacity is genetic. The author notes that with other animals it is not clear how much their language is genetic and how much learned from their environment. Today, for instance, we know that some birds undergo genetically-induced periods of\u00a0neurogenesis\u00a0during which they take up (viz. “culturally”) new songs.<\/li>\n
  13. Duality of patterning<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the limited sounds that make-up language are\u00a0meaningless\u00a0though they combine to form\u00a0meaningful\u00a0words. Consider the words “cat”, “act” and “tack”, which are each made of the same three sounds.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The author suggests that the last four are the most important for understanding human language. The paper also contains a comparison of human language to other species’ communicative capacities.<\/p>\n

    This is an excellently fun read. First of all, because it\u2019s from 1960, and is so assured \u2013 as we are today \u2013 of the progress made by the scientific community in its day. Hackett talks about recent progress, especially in human evolution. But what did they actually know? You\u2019ll forgive me my\u00a0temporal<\/a>\u00a0myopicism\u00a0if I answer “basically nothing<\/a>“. The\u00a0genetic code\u00a0was yet to be cracked, the\u00a0human genome project\u00a0wouldn’t be drafted for another fifty years, and if you\u2019re going to talk about making strides in understanding how we got here, well it was only 2010 when we sequenced the\u00a0Neanderthal genome and found out that we\u2019d spent a good portion of our pre-history in bed with them.\u00a0Molecular biology\u00a0as we know it didn\u2019t exist, let alone exciting new fields which are just beginning to explode like\u00a0systems biology\u00a0and\u00a0synthetic biology. It’s all happening now.<\/p>\n

    Patronizing aside \u2013 it’s worth reading the first two pages just to grasp the problem of studying the origin of language. As\u00a0Edward Sapir<\/a>\u00a0had already noted, we’re not always sure if a society has\u00a0art\u00a0or\u00a0religion, but we’ve yet to find one without language. There isn’t much information out there on the origin of language, and it’s not clear where we should be looking.<\/p>\n

    The thirteen design-features posited by Hockett don\u2019t seem to justify what he says in his introduction. In his introduction, he says that now, more than ever before, we’re in a position to ask about the origin of language. But in what sense are his design-features\u00a0modern? At most, the “modernity” of his approach is limited to his incorporating the fact of evolution into his model, placing importance on the understanding of the communication of proto-humans, other primates, and other animals, for understanding modern human language.<\/p>\n

    Do I agree?\u00a0No idea, but I do have some opinions. It feels like Hockett’s approach is viable \u2013 look for commonalities necessary for all languages. The most obvious danger that should be avoided is\u00a0unfalsifiability<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 it’s tempting to define X as necessary for language, and then when challenged with a language which appears to lack X to simply claim that the language has been misunderstood. The actual terms used by Hockett, and their definitions, are sufficiently vague to be prone to this fallacy – so while I like his approach I think that the details need some major reworking.<\/p>\n

    Another approach, and one which Hockett was in no position to appreciate, is the modern\u00a0neuroscientific\u00a0approach \u2013 attributing functional capacities to\u00a0neuronal\u00a0processes \u2013 in conjunction with powerful new molecular tools such as\u00a0optogenetics\u00a0(creating\u00a0transgenic\u00a0animals that have selected neural pathways that can be turned on\/off with light).\u00a0Guess we\u2019ll see<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Origin of Speech\u00a0is the title of an article published in\u00a0Scientific American\u00a0in\u00a01960\u00a0by\u00a0Charles F. Hockett. It is often cited, even today, for its suggestion that there are 13 “design-features” shared by all\u00a0languages. The 13 design-features of language: Vocal-auditory\u00a0channel\u00a0\u2013 While it is true that we have\u00a0cultural adaptations\u00a0that don\u2019t require vocalizing\u00a0communication\u00a0\u2013 sign language, writing \u2013 nonetheless\u00a0evolution\u00a0has emphasized our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,204,279,16],"tags":[],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-everything2","category-journal-review","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2875,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2014\/08\/25\/the-study-of-language-4th-edition-by-george-yule\/","url_meta":{"origin":1739,"position":0},"title":"The Study of Language (4th Edition) by George Yule","author":"Pala","date":"August 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: The content below is Shai's summary of \"The Study of Language\" (4th Edition) by George Yule[I]. 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