DEAR STUDENTS!
WELCOME TO THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE SEMINAR ABOUT THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRAIN, CULTURE, AND LANGUAGE!!
We are looking forward to a semester of very interesting reading materials, exciting talks, hot discussions, and deep thoughts, and we expect to have tons of fun on the way!
On this site we will post weekly information about new reading materials which you will get by mail to the e-mail address you supplied, but also from a designated folder on the UM drive.
We also expect you to post comments, questions, criticisms, kudos, or other wise thoughts about the reading materials on this blog and encourage you to respond to or comment on each others posts. Posts need to be in by Wednesday morning at 9am!!
This will help us to focus class discussions on areas of interest, or misunderstandings, and we will try to provide you with further information on these topics!
Your CogSciTeam
Kim, Stan, and Julia (Ulrike Griebel)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletethis is another test
ReplyDeletetest too :)
ReplyDeleteTest:)
ReplyDeleteHello everyone! This is a class about the language, so could tell me the definition of the language?
ReplyDeletetest:)
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure where to post my discussion question/thoughts about the article, but I guess I'll post it here for now:
ReplyDeleteI found the article interesting, if not a little confusing. However, there are some questions I have regarding the relationship between culture and language. The authors seem to argue that the existence of culture in Neandertal society is justified by certain practices that existed in Neadertal beings, such as burial rituals, and that language is required for these practices. If language is needed for these kinds of cultural practices, then we must admit that certain animals have language. For example, elephants are known to partake in burial rituals, but I'm not sure if there is evidence that elephants have linguistic capabilities. So, if this thesis wants to be held, namely that language or some proto-language is required for cultural practices to evolve, then we must admit that elephants have language or a proto-language. If there is no evidence that elephants do have a language, then this claim falls flat. However, maybe this isn't what is important. Perhaps cultural practices arise out of an animal's ability to be empathic (as used in the theory of mind literature), or to engage in social cognition in general, and it is this that grounds their further ability to develop a language or proto-language. That is, once they have some non-linguistic way of understanding a conspecific, they then, if evolution has given them the biological prerequisites to produce language, begin constructing a language to share further ideas with their conspecifics. Or, maybe it's just that certain cultural practices can arise without language but others, perhaps more intricate and demanding ones such as complex tool making, require language to come about.
This also seems to imply that biological capacities for speech production are not the only thing required to evolve a language, but perhaps also more pro-social abilities, which the authors seemed to have touched on on page 10, but I'm not sure if this is exactly what they were getting at. Either way, I think it requires further fleshing out.
I don't mean to seem as if I'm supporting the "myth of the 'modern human revolution.'" I just mean to suggest that maybe the account needed to undermine that myth requires a finer grained explanation. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the paper, as it was steeped in terminology, phrasing, and a framework that I lack deep knowledge in, but it seems to me that this criticism/question is one worth pursuing.
I want to take up a few things that Brad and Hanwen said and continue the conversation there a bit.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I want to echo Hanwen's concerns about definitions of language. In the paper the authors define language as "the full suite of abilities to map sound to meaning, including the infrastructure that supports it (vocal anatomy, neurocognition, ethology of communication)." That seems fine for the purposes of this article, but i think we should all be careful to notice exactly what the articles are referring to as language each week and not to conflate different meanings. This could lead to confusion pretty quickly.
Second, I want to talk about something Brad said. While I agree that neandertal culture, as described in the article, doesn't itself prove that neandertals had language, I took the thrust of the article not to hinge on something like that. Rather, I took the authors to be arguing that when confronted with the breadth of things we know about neandertals, it becomes more difficult to assume that Neandertal robustness, for instance, implies "strength compensating for restricted intelligence.' When we think holisitically about all the stuff we apparently know about neandertals, this just doesn't seem right. The article seemed to be demonstrating this by collecting as much of this knowledge about neandertals in one place as possible.
Finally, I would like some clarification on the concept of "genetic drift." I googled around a bit, but had trouble making sense of what I found. If anyone understands this concept, I'd love to chit chat, or if there's time perhaps we could get clear on it tomorrow in the seminar if other people are similarly concerned. It was a minor thing and referred to briefly in the article though, so its entirely possible that its not that important for our purposes.
I found this article both interesting and confusing. I did think that it was a valid assertion that modern humans evolved from the interbreeding of hominids. However, I would have to agree with Brad that the idea that cultural rituals reflecting an absolute existence of language a bit farfetched. Burial rituals and tool making are not concrete indicators that these groups were using communication in the form of linguistic capabilities as they were described in this article. I am not sure if that is what the article was addressing but I think that it is probably a little bit more complex than that.
ReplyDeleteAlso, are we defining language as having structure (i.e. morphosyntax) or simply a set of proto-words collected into a system of communication? And by system of communication I mean one lacking grammar but possessing a capability for labeling. Additionally, I think of this in the context of hunting and living in a more predatory environment.
Another thought this article brought to my mind was sign language. Page 10 refers to gestural communication. We often think of language in the sense of verbal communication that you can hear and comprehend. However, sign language activates regions of the auditory cortex in the same way. If there is a neural basis for language, it seems that verbal communication is debatable. I do not contest that Neandertals possessed the capacity for modern language but would it possible that their culture was more dependent on non-verbal forms of communication? Is it possible that though verbalization may have been made in the form of proto-words, a non-verbal language with grammar and vocabulary existed? These are just my thoughts and truly questions.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI’m unfamiliar with many of the specific technical terms in the paper, so my apologies if I’m parsing definitions that are obvious to those in other fields.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure what is meant on the first page when it is stated that “in some influential circles” they consider the Neandertals to be a "not quite human species.” As they don’t specify who these shadowy intellectuals are that make this claim, I have no way of knowing what their criteria are for being human, and, by contrast, how the authors’ criteria differ.
Also from the first page - are there really those in the scientific community that believe that linguistic and cognitive evolution are NOT a current, ongoing process? Perhaps I’m misreading this or they are referring to some other implications.
If, as on page 4, we stop thinking about the three lineages as separate species, how ought we to think about them? Also, how species are differentiated is not clear here, as they gesture to other papers (on both page 4 and 5) instead of giving a precise definition. I would have liked for them to spell out precisely what they mean when they use the term.
I’m not sure that I caught the definition of “speech" either, which is important beginning on page 10.
Mike and Hanwen, I share your concerns about making sure we are all on the same page about language. Mike, at another point in the paper, they restate the definition and add "theory of mind" to the list of infrastructure components. I’m still considering how I feel about this inclusion.
If someone could clarify for me what the difference is between proto-language and language is exactly I’d appreciate it.
I have never deeply thought about origin of language before reading this paper. I agree with this paper’s perspective that languages have been gradually developed since long years back, rather than sudden mutation in modern human gives rise to usage of language. Actually, I have this view in my mind even before taking these evidences from the paper. Because I believed that mankind has advanced and been evolved little by little genetically even though abrupt change happen which cause boundary that splits human into different species or categories.
ReplyDeleteThis is a rather dumb question getting off the subject. When I see debating about such a historical issue, I have no idea that why we don’t have ancient documents or something to prove something. Mankind has never experienced extinction and been in progress. If then, does it make sense that we have resources or materials containing historical records? Or at least, it could be handed down from mouth to mouth over generations?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would be very helpful if we have a chance to get a good grasp of unfamiliar technical terms.
ReplyDeleteI have a few thoughts on this paper. First, I got why the authors of this paper find the evidence of modern speech capacity from the similarity of morphology of larynx. However, I think the similarity of morphology of larynx does not provide ample evidence of speech capacity. As well known, though the morphology of vocal tract of non-human primates is similar to that of human infants, speech capacity is known to be very different between them. Thus, I think there must be other important factors to be found for emerging speech capacity, beyond the similarity of morphology.
Also, on page 7, the authors states that precise tool replication provides ample evidence for the necessary cognitive capacity in another modality. This seems relevant to the article we read last week. Though replicating a tool may reflect cognitive capacity, direct link between vocal imitation and tool replication seems questionable.
The paper hypothesized that a prolonged childhood may be an early characteristic of the genus Homo (p.5). The advantage of having a long childhood, I presume, is to develop a complex and flexible linguistic and cognitive system, but I wonder if the length of the childhood in Neandertals might still be shorter than it is now because the environment in Neandertals might be relatively dangerous. Children in Neandertals had to learn how to communicate or use tools as fast as possible to survive.
ReplyDeleteIf it is true that the length of childhood is equally long at both times, there could be higher birth and mortality rates in Neandertals and only the ones who developed and communicated earlier (or better) will have the greater chance of having a next generation. In contrast, birth rate and mortality rates are low and the selection pressure from the caregivers nowadays might not be as critical as in the Neandertals because it is more likely to invest equal amount of care to each child in the family.
I would like to expand a bit on the topic raised by Megan concerning sign language and non-verbal forms of communication. In their second proposed upshot from the Consequences For The Study Of Language and Linguistics section (pp. 10), the authors briefly comment on the relationship between hand and mouth for communicative practices. While I am satisfied with their acknowledgment that the hand, mouth, and face all perform as a single system in this regard, I would like to discuss in more detail the claim that "The recurrent natural emergence of sign language attests to the unified nature of the hand+mouth system, since sign language merely shifts the burden from mouth to hand but use both". More specifically, it seems dubious to claim that both protolinguistic and fully-developed sign language solely or primarily function to redistributed the bulk of work from mouth to hand, instead of doing most work in the hand without the need for the mouth or by doing linguistic work in a differently embodied manner. Or it is at least questionable enough that I would like to see more evidence in support of the authors claim before accepting it as accurate or true.
ReplyDeleteThe Dediu and Levinson article reflects part of a broader cultural revisionism we discussed in class, in which as humans we are viewing ourselves less as unique, more as continuous with the rest of animal life. Our hierarchical view of ourselves above and distinct from other species is being reexamined.
ReplyDeleteThe genetic research which is possible now, Didiu and Levinson note, has not been available for long. They provide rough percentages of human DNA from varying parts of the world that indicate interbreeding with Neandertals and Denisovians.
I have read that other recent research indicates that genetic codes are not as static as we once believed them to be. That is, where we once thought a genetic code was established at conception and retained throughout life, we are in the process of discovering more and more ways in which our environments and behaviors influence our DNA. I have read of beetle offspring, whose shells were harder if there mothers had experienced certain stressors. Based on this evidence, I think that evolution itself is not purely accidental but is also in some as yet mysterious fashion formed by what the species chooses to become.
I would agree with the conclusion of this paper that with intense training, not all but many animals having similar cognitive mechanisms to those of humans may learn language like behavior, but still there is a huge gap between humans and animals in the use of language.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what I find interesting is that social reinforcement plays an important role in training. As the authors of this paper mentioned, though animals that were trained in the prior studies are highly social, their socialization does not foster human-like communication. Then, I wonder what was special about social reinforcement between humans and animals in the training and how it works well between different species.
Last, I need clarification on two terms: Baldwin effects and functional referentiality