According to the Oxford English dictionary, the etymology of the (English) word "language" dates to the 14th century, from both the Middle English and Old French word "lang" (tongue, language), which originated from the Latin word "lingua" (tongue). Language is defined as "being a system of communication consisting of a set of small parts and a set of rules which decide the ways in which these parts can be combined to produce messages that have meaning" (Oxford English Dictionary 1999). De Boysson-Bardies (1999:58) defines language as follows;
Each language has its own vowel space. The number of vowels in a language may differ. Every vowel has a timbre or colour, that is specific to it. This timbre is tied to the pattern of formats (defined by the position of the different articulators: lips, tongue, larynx, etc.).
In contrast, speech is used to refer to the particular auditory/vocal medium typically used by humans to convey language? (Fitch 2000:258). According to Seyfarth and Cheney (1997:249), speech is a ?social behaviour dependent upon an operational agreement regarding word meaning?. Furthermore, human speech is regulated by enhanced motor control of the vocal articulators (lips, tongue, velum, mandible) (MacNeilage 1998; Locke 1998). It is important to note that words do not refer to things. Speakers of a language use words to refer to things. Words are arbitrary conventional symbols. They are arbitrary because there is no inherent relation between a particular sound pattern and its meaning. The relation between words and meanings is a function of the evolution of specific languages, not a function of the physical properties of words themselves (Kuczaj 1999:138).
All theories regarding the origins of language in modern humans share the following premises: 1) there is an innate mechanism/module/hierarchical structure in the (unique) human brain which allows for both the acquisition and processing of language; 2) the ability to physically produce vowel sounds separates modern humans from both extinct hominid species and extant nonhuman primate species; 3) all languages are composed of phonetic syntax, arranged into a specific rule based grammar; 4) this grammar is innate and generalized enough to fit any and all possible languages; 6) syntax has meaning and context which is not limited to phonetic pronunciation (in nontonal languages); and 7) syntax and grammar are employed in such a way that they are not restricted in either space or time.
These theories also share the following biases: 1) they assume that language is unique to humans; 2) they focus upon the end result or adult linguistic abilities rather than the development and acquisition of language by children; 3) most of the studies are based on the language capacity of English speaking, middle class human subjects; and 4) research of the representational meaning of nonhuman primate behaviour is solely dependent upon the observations of reactional behaviours.
Instead of studying the origins of language based upon what we know adult humans are capable of, one could hypothesize that the precursors of linguistic ability are present in all nonhuman animal communication. Secondly, the focus should be placed upon the innate abilities of prelinguistic human children, since ultimately, from an evolutionary perspective, it is the young of a species which direct the influence of new adaptations. Finally, the focus upon grammatical rules not only clouds the issue of language origins, it is heavily biased regarding the grammatical structure of the modern English language.
It is very hard to imagine that modern human languages could have arisen suddenly, without antecedents (Chomsky 1968; Bickerton 1990; Burling 1993; Noble and Davidson 1993; Lieberman and McCarthy 1999). It seems to be quite impossible that a single genetic change could result in a fully developed apparatus for speech and that the relevant changes took place in a short time. It seems to be more plausible to suppose that the emergence of language, as of other complex functions, required a long time and several evolutionary stages. The evolution of language would have entailed complex conceptual structures with some sort of incentive to represent and communicate, in conjunction with a system of rules to encode them (Jackendoff 1999:272). The evolution of speech would have required vocalizations of adequate complexity to serve these linguistic needs. This would have entailed the capacity for vocal learning and a vocal tract with an appropriate phonetic range, in addition to perceptual specialization (Fitch 2000:258; Hauser 1996).
In order to acquire a language, modern humans must memorize a large number of words that have essentially arbitrary sounds. Thus, vocal learning must have been adaptive in some other context, and was later co-opted for learning vocabularies. In nonhumans, the most obvious function of vocal learning is to create an elaborate vocal repertoire (Fitch 2000:264). By accumulating and combining different vocalizations learned from conspecifics, an individual can quickly develop a broad set of vocalizations that are within the species specific range, but which are also individually distinctive (ibid.). Alternatively, vocal learning may have originated to generate vocal complexity as an end in itself, rather than being a vehicle for communication complex concepts (Fitch 2000).
This paper is divided into five sections. Part I critiques the three main theories of language origins (Chomsky's Universal Grammar, Bickerton's Bioprogram, and Pinker's Computational Model). Part II examines how modern Homo sapiens sapiens children acquire language. Part III provides an overview of the vocal anatomy and presumed language areas of the brain of modern Homo sapiens sapiens. Part IV examines some aspects of nonhuman primate communication (i.e. representational calls), the theory of mind, Machiavellian intelligence, grooming and gestures. Part V examines some theories regarding language origins in early hominids.
Part I: Theories of Language Origins
There are two types of theories of the origins of language: the continuity approach (nature) and the discontinuity (nurture) approach. The continuity approach has often labeled itself Darwinian, and looked for predecessors of language, typically in animal communication systems (Aitchison 1998:18; Ulbaek 1998). It claims that language is too complex to have evolved without any precursors. The discontinuity approach argues that language is unique to humans with no precursors among nonhuman animal communication systems (ibid.).
What all theories of language origins hold in common is the underlying assumption of an innate mechanism which shapes language acquisition. However, contention arises when one attempts to define what is meant by innate. The main basis for the claim of a universal language is the argument from the poverty of stimulus for language acquisition. The poverty of stimulus argument states that there is insufficient information in the world to make language learning possible, therefore language must be genetically specified (MacNeilage 1998:227).
These claims were initially supported by early studies of babbling in deaf children. These studies lead to the proposal that infants acquired the sound patterns of their first words in an innate universal sequence of appearance of the basic context independent units of formal phonology, the distinctive features (Lenneberg 1967 cited in MacNeilage 1998:227). Thus, learning was not thought to play a significant role (MacNeilage 1998:227). However, later studies (i.e. Blake 2000; Bonvillian 1999; de Boysson-Bardies 1999; Meir and Willerman 1995; Locke and Pearson 1990) indicated that, whereas normal infants begin to babble by seven months of age, hearing impaired infants do not typically begin until several months later, and the patterns they produce are distinctly abnormal. In addition, studies of infants who were unable to vocalize during the babbling and early speech periods, because they had been tracheostomized, show that these children took several months to acquire normal speech, in spite of their normal auditory histories (ibid.).
Simply stating that a phenomenon is innate is not an explanation unless one can specify exactly what is innate and how this innate ability allows modern human children to parse words from any of the thousands of language to which one may be exposed as a native language. The following section will examine the language origin theories of Chomsky, Bickerton and Pinker.
Chomsky
Noam Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar (UG) has shaped the study and research of the development and origins of modern human languages since the 1950s. Chomsky stated that the defining essence of language was syntax, which no other species was capable of mastering (Beaken 1996:6). While this was not an original proposition, his theory appeared in a critique of a book by B. F. Skinner on the behavioural aspect of language (Loritz 1999). At that time, it was believed that the mind consisted of sensorimotor abilities plus a few simple laws of learning governing gradual changes in an organism's behavioral repertoire. Therefore language must be learned, it cannot be a module, and thinking must be a form of verbal behavior, since verbal behavior is the prime manifestation of "thought" that can be observed externally (ibid.). Chomsky argued that children learn languages that are governed by highly subtle and abstract principles, and they do so without explicit instruction or any other environmental clues to the nature of such principles. Hence language acquisition depends on an innate, species specific module that is distinct from general intelligence. In contrast to Skinner, Chomsky believed that only way to define the nature of humanity was to study language, and not human activity (Beaken 1996:5).
In order to accomplish this, he focused on the form, structure and rules of language, as opposed to the utterances and usage of language. Chomsky (1979) stated that all human language acquisition requires grammar specific innate knowledge and abilities. For example, all languages have nouns and verbs, or innate knowledge of sentence structural relations like subjacency. Prior to Chomsky's theory of UG, language acquisition and development were not separate fields of study within psychology (Loritz 1999). Language was thought to be just one other learned behaviour. As an additional consequence of the UG theory, and studies of vocal physiology, all experimental studies in which nonhuman primates were being taught to speak were abandoned until the 1970s, when symbolic language learning became the norm (ibid.).
The UG theory has the following assumptions: 1) Animal communication cannot develop into human language (Chomsky 1988:167); 2) Language is a result of innate (hardwired) properties of the human brain, and is not connected in any way with the ?social world? (Chomsky 1979:94; Chomsky 1981:8); 3) Children learn the rules of adult language through the usage of a language acquisition device? which determines the form of grammar that individuals make for themselves (universal grammar), as they learn the language around them (Chomsky 1964:134; Chomsky 1979:230); 4) The human mind is composed of various mental modules: syntactic, semantic and science forming (Chomsky 1980:250); and 5) The key to language is the study of syntax (Chomsky 1981:8).
Animal communication cannot develop into human language: According to Newmeyer (1998:306) and Ulbaek (1998:30), one theme unifies all of Chomsky's writings on universal grammar: there is nothing to be gained by searching for any external evolutionary factors that may have shaped the structural properties of language. Ulbaek states that Chomsky has not developed a detailed account of language origins, partly because his central concern is the origin of grammatical rules (Ulbaek 1998:30). Chomsky's position is that language emerged suddenly, and therefore there are no fixed or adaptive functions for language (Aitchison 1998:23; Ulbaek 1998:37). However, from an evolutionary perspective, even a rudimentary form of language within the early hominid lineage would have provided some strategic advantage over time (ibid.).
Since Chomsky believes that human beings are unique among the animal life forms on this planet, it is not surprising that he is dismissive of attempting to find evolutionary precursors for language within nonhuman animal communication. This point of view has insidiously pervaded all aspects of language studies (linguistics, development and acquisition, language origins). These studies all begin with variations on the statement that communication of humans is more complex and contains much more information than that of nonhuman animals (Hauser 1996; Noble 1996; Tomasello and Call 1997; Dunbar 1998; Cavalli-Sforza 2000; Fitch 2000). However, this is an unproven assumption, based more upon the hubris of our species, specifically Western English speaking researchers, than upon experimental or observable data.
Language is a result of innate (hardwired) properties of the human brain, and is not connected in any way with the social world: The UG theory assumes that for certain core aspects of grammar, the child is innately aware of all the possible language variations, therefore, installation of the right language particular structure is a relatively trivial task (Maratsos 1999:194). From an evolutionary perspective, linguistic ability is viewed as being hardwired in the brain, and thus activated by appropriate environmental stimuli. However, no human child can know the grammar of his/her native language in advance. Languages do not differ infinitely in grammatical structure, but they do differ (Maratsos 1999).
While Chomsky admits that there is language variation, he states that the child's innate targeted knowledge of the right language variation is triggered almost as quickly as fixed reaction patterns (Chomsky 1968, 1988, 1992). However, this ability is also seen in nonhuman animals in which a species? biology specifies how a behaviour (communication) is acquired and expressed (Maratsos 1999:194). This assumption seems to be confounded by the fact that in order to master a particular language, children not only need to decode all of the sounds of human speech, with its individual nuances and idiosyncrasies, but to separate these species specific sounds from other environmental background noise (Aslin et. al. 1998). Surprisingly, due to the predominance of the UG theory, no research has been conducted on this particular question (J. Saffran, personal communication).
Additionally, since Chomsky states that the social world has no influence upon these innate abilities, he states that there is a language acquisition device, which is separate from the innate grammatical capacity, in the brain which regulates the learning of language (Chomsky 1964:134; Chomsky 1979:230). Thus, contrary to his own criteria, the social world seems to play a significant role in the development of language. While there are nonhuman animal species which appear to have innate vocal repertoires which do not necessitate vocal learning from a parent or conspecifics, there are no reported instances of human children acquiring a language without assistance from other humans (Burling 1993; Tomasello and Call 1997; Janik and Slater 2000).
Children learn the rules of adult language through the usage of a language acquisition device which determines the form of grammar that individuals make for themselves (universal grammar), as they learn the language around them: Empirical research on the development of speech in children only began in the 1970s (de Boysson-Bardies 1999). Due to the strong influence of Chomsky?s UG theory, these studies focused almost exclusively on syntactic and semantic aspects of mothers? speech (Fernald 1991:44). The central argument in grammatical acquisition studies tended to focus on whether there was a faculty specific innate adaptation and the degree to which innate knowledge preknows the end product of acquisition, not upon whether human language requires innate abilities (Maratsos 1999:193).
In this case one is left to question just what it is that children are learning. If there is a universal grammar, and the adult form of grammar is then mapped upon this template, we are left with two unanswered questions: 1) how did the adult form of grammar emerge in the first place; and 2) why is there variation in the grammar of the (current) world languages One would assume that social influences play a much greater role than merely shaping an outcome. According to Kuczaj (1999:149), the parameters of universal grammar are not set at birth, but instead restrict the number of choices available to children.
The human mind is composed of various mental modules: syntactic, semantic and science forming: Chomsky proposed that there is some biological endowment accounts for the major structural properties of the world's languages and helps to shape the acquisition by children of particular grammars (Newmeyer 1998:305). However, he is not interested in defining where these modules reside in the brain nor how they originated (ibid.). Although Chomsky believes that UG arose as a consequence of brain expansion, due to a mutation or accident, he dismisses the notion of a precursor to UG by stating that parasbility (the ability of the mind/brain to assign a structural analysis to a sentence) is not a requirement that must be met by a language (Chomsky 1992:16; Ulbaek 1998).
However, if the human brain contains mental modules for innate language development, then there is no place for conventional evolutionary explanations of brain development (or hominid evolution) (Beaken 1996:7). Merely stating that a particular trait or behaviour is innate, and then proposing hypothetical mechanisms which support the initial assumption that humans are born with a universal grammar which enables language, seems to be a circular argument. One would not simply accept the statement that bipedalism is innate in Homo sapiens sapiens and there is a module in the brain which regulates balance and motion.
The key to language is the study of syntax: Due to the influence of Chomsky's UG, grammar is assumed to be the fundamentally important feature of language that gives it its unique character. Consequently, all research into the development and acquisition of language in children, and the comparative analysis of world languages in linguistics, have focused upon the usage of nouns and verbs within verbal sentence structure (i.e. Corne 1984; Goodman 1985; Muysken 1988; Holm 1989; Bickerton 1990; McWhorter 1997; Aitchison 1998; Blake 2000). What all of these studies have in common is the comparison of English grammatical rules to those of other linguistic systems. According to Dunbar (1998:100),
Grammatical form bears so close a resemblance to the natural way of thinking about the world that it is difficult to believe that the two are unconnected. The origins of this surely lie in the fact that all mammals seem universally to form hypotheses about the world that are naturally based on causal relationships. This so called mental model approach to cognition implies that animals naturally code the events in the world in what amounts to grammatical form.
That seems to be overstating the point. The question here is whose natural way of thinking about the world? A middle class, educated inhabitant of North America? A Buddhist monk in Korea? An Australian aborigine in the Northern Queensland? While it does sound logical to assume that early hominids labeled all of the objects within their world, and defined causal relationships amongst these objects, this type of reductionist model ignores the most salient feature of communication: contextual information. This would be akin to identifying the four base pairs of DNA (adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine) and stopping all further research.
Bickerton (1998) accuses nonlinguists of being ignorant regarding the importance of syntax and grammar, although both he and Chomsky are equally disdainful of the importance of evolutionary theory. Human specific abilities such as memory and information representation regarding sequences of sound and behaviour no doubt contribute to language acquisition. However, while this may enable grammatical analysis, and may be requisite for learning human languages, it is not an ability specific to grammar (Maratsos 1999:193).
One often cited example of the existence of UG is the innate ability of (English speaking) children to add "-ing" to words describing an action or "-s" to indicate that there is more than one object (Pinker 1994). This seems to be an example of modeling behaviour, since the child has heard countless examples of these linguistic forms in addition to benefiting from the correction of linguistic usage by those in charge of raising him/her. If a French speaking child suddenly started adding "-ing" to the end of action words (va-ing) and added "-s" to indicate that there is more than one object, instead of employing "les" before the object (and in French the "s" at the end of the word is silent), that would be an example of UG. Children do not develop in a vacuum, and regardless of differences in early child rearing practices, their behaviours tend to be modeled upon those around them.
Chomsky has revised certain aspects of his early theories of UG to incorporate certain evolutionary precursors (Maratsos 1999:218). For example, Chomsky (Maratsos 1999:193) states that
the idea that language is completely isolated from other cognitive and perceptual functions cannot have been proposed by anyone... it plainly does not follow that every aspect of language is language specific, or that language is completely isolated from other functions.
However, he still holds that Universal Grammar and the language acquisition device separates humans from all other animals.
There are other influential researchers who have expanded upon Chomsky's UG theory by attempting to incorporate evolutionary processes and cognitive development into language acquisition theories. For example, both Derek Bickerton and Steven Pinker examine the question of language origins by assuming that Chomsky's hypothesis is correct but each offers a different model by which the capacity for language acquisition in humans evolved. Bickerton and Pinker have argued that the basic elements of universal grammar cannot be accounted for by any known feature of serial motor behaviour, and must be produced by a preprogrammed language module in the brain (Donald 1998:46). Thus they seek empirical proof for their theories in language genes and language dedicated brain structures.
