Is Gradualism Really That Impossible?

An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development" · Is Gradualism Really That Impossible? · Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated?

While I was beginning to be a Christian, at age 9 or a little earlier, I had read the Gospels but not Genesis. Even after reading Genesis, I was hoping some time for a loophole for evolution to be true also. I mean, so much detective work had gone to it, and I was a fairly big sucker for detective stories. One thing that helped me decide for fullfledged creationism rather than evolutionism, if not fullfledged Biblical chronology yet, was the question how total non-speakers of a human language (any language whatsoever) could develop a language. If Tolkien could invent Quenya, he already had experience of knowing other languages (Finnish and Greek had helped to inspire Quenya, Spanish and Welsh had inspired Naffarin, Latin at least gave the rythm for Quenya and Sindarin with its antepaenultima rule, he already knew English and perhaps some French before starting Latin ... all starting when his mother taught him English at the apropriate age). So, let's go through a few hairbrained and detailed ideas.

One or two over the internet have suggested, when someone came up with saying the sound "tiger" when seeing a tiger, this had a survival advantage. Actually, no. Green monkeys have three danger signals, depending on whether the threat is tiger, eagle or snake. The tactic is different. Please note, if you recall, the animals generally have up to 500 signals, unitary, with well defined phonemes constituting the morphemes that constitute the entire signals. And getting to shift the entire tactic of communication, introducing more than one phoneme per morpheme and a notion of classification into the morpheme, is not the kind of thing you do in a hurry. It's like saying a Morse telegraph developed ASCII code of computers by being heavily shaken.

I found a theory (a bit more seriously) that language came by as a way for mothers to communicate with offspring they couldn't carry on the back like monkeys do. Or however it is monkeys do carry them. Well, in that case, the arguable outcome of not being able to carry offspring the normal way for a female would not be to develop a new way of communicating, but rather to lose the offspring and therefore get extinct.

Back when I was a child, about ten, I saw the theory, the first phoneme, morpheme, sentence of the human language was a bilabial f, the sound phoneticians describe by Greek letter φ - what you get when you blow through pursed lips. Why? The same sound is needed to light fires, once you master the fire. So, the one sound came to mean "fire" and "light a fire" and (since you do it with your breath) "breath" and "soul" (the thing that ceases to breath in your body when you die) and obviously "die" and "death" as well ... all this for one sound. Meanwhile, ee came to symbolise "here, by me", ah came to symbolise "there" and oo came to symbolise "yonder" ... I think one consonant and three vowels is a bit thin to actually start sorting out the diverse meanings of the original sound-word φ ...

And in Sarlat, in a library, I saw the theory Homo erectus spoke with ten speach sounds stringed vowel + cosonant and ten other ones stringed consonant + vowel. These twenty "phonemes" were also morphemes, and each had a fairly abstract meaning, with ad + am = earth + harmonious (samples of "living fossils" from this one included Eden, Aden, Adam!) ...

Enough of hairbrained ones, here is a reference, Pascal Picq, and here are my responses to one of his books:

Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

Here there is not much of an idea, the one salient point being that the language capacity of two year olds would represent the past language capacity of human ancestors at an un-precise past.

And my idea about it being that Pascal and his pals hadn't even started to scratch the problem. Plus, the suggestion makes one wonder - wouldn't a language with capacity for only positive and indicative two word sentences be a source of misunderstanding and a liability for survival rather than anything else?

Now, I'll mention Jean Aitchison with respect. Her book Language change: Progress or decay? (3rd edition (1st edition1981). Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001) was an eye-opener in 1993 about the process I've likened to repainting a house or resewing a pair of pants or shorts - the gradual changes you see between different human languages, all of which are already perfectly human. She has also written, and I have not yet read, The seeds of speech: Language origin and evolution. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (Also, with new extended introduction, in C.U.P. Canto series, 2000.) It is probably the best one, it basically says (as far as I have gathered) that human or pre-human courtship came to include certain songs that came to be associated with meaning outside courtship as well.

And now I'll try to fill in the details, a bit like I tried back when I was a child with "φ as in φanning a φire being the φirst word". Notable difference, to that one the book hadn't given details, and with Aitchison, I haven't had occasion to read them.

Human anatomy involves the capacity for infants to babble indefinitely and for both themselves and the surrounding adults to hear the babbling. On what I take Jean Aitchison's theory to be, this babbling came to be reused in courtship. And let's imagine some male not-yet-quite-human wooer got into saying "pat-pat-pat" while strewing nuts before the object of his desires, while in another not-yet-quite human tribe the sound at that moment would have been "pal-pal-pal" and the offering would have been apples. And the two tribes unite and some time later they note they are using "pal-pal-pal" for "give me an apple" and "pat-pat-pat" for "give me a nut" ... no, I don't think this is much better than the φ-theory already alluded to. I was going to write off that ape courtships don't have the sufficient complexity for this, but this appears to be not true, some chimps do have complex courtship.

But even so, it would take very much for distinguishing foods from combinations of courtship rituals to actually coming anywhere near a human language. It would among other things also involve inventing sentence structure and negatives and conditionals and pasts and futures as much as the other theories. And having a language lacking these would, as said, be hazardous.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Saturnine
29.XI.2021

PS: I think my impression of Jean Aitchison's work on language origin came from another preview than these two:

The seeds of speech: Language origin and evolution. Aitchison Jean. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp 281.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguistics/article/abs/seeds-of-speech-language-origin-and-evolution-aitchison-jean-cambridgecambridge-university-press-1996-pp-281/3D19734EA6CA3C0C6938D39BF6D26F54

The Seeds of Speech Language Origin and Evolution
Jean Aitchison
Excerpt
https://beckassets.blob.core.windows.net/product/readingsample/443426/9780521785716_excerpt_001.pdf

However, the comparison to bird song and the statement about birds using song for nesting reminds me of the thing I half recalled./HGL

Off the Bat

Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

Picq is in fact very honest on the reasons speaking for human speech being a divine gift, even if he does not mention this possibility.

Double articulation? "Rat" and (Fr) "Chat" (in Engl. obviously "Cat") differ arbitrarily by exchanging precisely one phoneme, hey presto, they are two very different words. He misses a bit on taking only conjugation with endings as example on how "monemes" (ones says morphemes in English) add up to changes in meaning. It is equally true for contraposition of words in phrases and sentences, "I eat" is as much second articulation as Spanish "com-o" (and more than spoekn version of French, unless you add subject pronouns). Recursivity, adding loops on loops in structural elaboration of a sentence, and its use, allowing great precision, is equally admitted as a purely human quality.

One problem : his interviewer Cécile Lestienne and he seemed to agree there was some kind of referential function in some very few observed instances : a parrot could pronounce forty nouns and say "no" when offered an object belonging to another one. Green monkeys have three different alarm cries. So the parrot can distinguish a carrot from a grain, the monkeys in flock can distinguish panthers, eagles, pythons.

I would not agree that these things are really referential function, while they involve recognition of objects, they are never talking about them, they always have a practical purpose : obtaining a treat or a fun game of looking at things in the case of the parrot, saying "no thanks", also the parrot, and imposing on the flock three different strategies for dealing with danger, for fleeing from danger. With a snake and a bird of prey, you don't flee to the same directions.

So, the two examples of referential function are in fact no examples of it at all.

Now, apart from this feeble attempt of pushing referential function on animals, confer Ghislaine Dehaene saying it appaers as a primary drive in human babies, Picq is very open on human speech being really and truly unique.

Now, what was his straw, the one he clung to? Comparing elephants' trunks. With Stephen Pinker, he says that we think language very marvellous because we are equipped with it, elephants arguably would think the trunk as marvellous - if they had human speech to speak about it! - but we still don't conclude, I am paraphrasing Picq's reasoning, that one day two hyraces had a little one with a trunk and the trunk then spread by survival of the fittest, all through their population, until a hyrax population had become a proto-proboscidean one.

We creationists admit that one mutation can't lead to a trunk. We still don't believe Proboscideans descended from Hyracoideans. Neither gradually, nor suddenly. We believe Proboscideans were created separately from Hyracoideans on day VI. And we believe God created Adam separately from both later on on day VI, and had the exhausting but probably still pleasureable work of giving them different names. And showing the good sense of not seeking a bride among either, so God created Eve even later on than that.

This "makes economy of" (excuse the Gallicism) both sudden one mutation radical change and slow and gradual change. I have never quite believed the latter, when I was an evolutionist age 6, I believed Crossopterygian coelacanths one day mutated fins to amphibian legs. Which brings me to age 12, From Nothing to Nature (not yet appeared under that title in English at the time, that title is for an edition later than Swedish translation) that gradual evolution from fins to legs is impossible.

Back to language. In fact, the elephant neither marvels at human speech or own trunk. Man, with speech, marvels at both. A bit like Tolkien's elves in Cuivienen marvelled at the stars.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XI
St Denis of Paris
St Abraham
9.X.2019

Lutetiae Parisiorum natalis sanctorum Martyrum Dionysii Areopagitae Episcopi, Rustici Presbyteri, et Eleutherii Diaconi. Ex his Dionysius, ab Apostolo Paulo baptizatus, primus Atheniensium Episcopus ordinatus est; deinde Romam venit, atque inde a beato Clemente, Romano Pontifice, in Gallias praedicandi gratia directus est, et ad praefatam urbem devenit; ibique, cum per aliquot annos commissum sibi opus fideliter prosecutus esset, tandem, a Praefecto Fescennino, post gravissima tormentorum genera, una cum Sociis, gladio animadversus, martyrium complevit.

Eodem die memoria sancti Abrahae, Patriarchae et omnium credentium Patris.

Back to Picq

Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

I am now reading La Plus Belle Histoire du langage, where the journalist Cécile Lestienne inteverviews the experts Pascal Picq (palaeoanthropology), Laurent Sagart (linguistics - my "own" field from the university studies, though I am much into a transdisciplinary approach, an essayist rather than an academic), and Ghislaine Dehaene (paediatrics).

It is from 2008. I had previously read Les origines du langage in an edition from 2006.

In the part where Cécile Lestienne interviews Pascal Picq, he does seem to have sth to add to the previous work, meaning, I am very glad my guardian angels were preventing me from writing a post about how Picq doesn't answer challenges. I simply hadn't met his yet.

So, I am preparing a follow up by borrowing (done) the book from 2008 and intending to reread his contribution and the other ones as well.

As one preliminary, I can state already that lots of his conclusions are based on the long time spans. And overall evolutionary world view.

Homo Erectus / Homo Ergaster must have had some kind of language "500 000 years ago" (agreed), but as to a fully human one, he won't agree to that since, it is so long ago and the "species" known to have it - Homo sapiens sapiens and arguably (on his view too, which I welcome) Neanderthals - were not yet around. So, it may have on his view have been on the "me Tarzan, you Jane" stage. Supposing there was one.

(Checked, yes, he attributes 500 000 BP to Ergaster, and if I was unsure, it's because I had read somewhere Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals diverged around that time, which doesn't mean they were either of them already around).

I obviously do not agree language has to have had a development, nor on the time scale. Carbon dates of 70 000 BP - 40 000 BP (or 35 000 BP) are preflood, and carbon dates younger than that post-Flood. 500 000 BP is not a carbon date, and it is obtained by a method where even relative direction of compared dates is lacking, where anything from 4 million to 1/2 million, anything from 100 000 years to 100 000 000 years ago can point to diverse depth and coolnesses of the water quickly cooling lava during the Flood, which was 2957 BC whatever fancy date the Argon measures point to.

So, I will differ from him in saying, Ergaster had a fully human language. Descending as he did from Adam and a somewhat distant cousin to the Cro-Magnon race (with Neanderthal and Denisovan admixture) which was aboard the Ark in 8 persons, 4 men and 4 women.

Apart from this preliminary, I will write no more right now, but read the book and re-read his portion of it, before continuing.

Hans Georg Lundahl
St. Maur
Holy Guardian Angels
2.X.2019

Human Language Revisited

Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

The other day, I was reading a work by Pascal Picq and two others. Yes, right, Les origines du langage, and the two others were Bernard Victorri and Jean-Louis Dessalles.

I will leave the book in the luggage for now, and add footnotes later, on who wrote what.

One of them very rightly said that human language is based on double articulation, as already observed by Chomsky : a meaningful phrase or word articulated into morphemes, and morphemes articulated into phonemes. Distinction being, a morpheme has some kind of lexical or syntax enhancing meaning on its own, while phonemes do not.

Dog bites man.

Four non-zero morphemes : dog, bite, -s, man. Or even six, dog, before verb, bite, -s, man, after verb.

Latin : Canis hominem mordet.

Six non-zero morphemes : cani-, -s, homin-, -em, morde-, -t.

Latin -s corresponds to English zero morpheme for plural plus before verb. Two meanings in one, singular and nominative.

Latin -em corresponds to English zero morpheme for plural plus after verb. Two meanings in one, singular and accusative.

Most morphemes are more than one sound or an arrangement of other morphemes, and each sound that has a meaningful reason to be there is a phoneme, but each phoneme lacks meaning.

The fellow that barks is designated in English by d-o-g, in Latin by k-a-n-i/e. The fellow that speaks is designated in English by m-æ-n and in Latin by h-o-m-i-n. The act is designated by English b-ie-t, Latin m-o-r-d-e. The syntactic relation of "now" is in English -s, in Latin choice of morde rather than momord or mors, and zero morpheme for possibilities -bi- / -ba- / -a-, that of one actor not speaker or spoken to by English -s (two meanings in one) and Latin -t. The relation of who does it to whom is in English word order and in Latin -s or -em (with two meanings in one for singular involved).

It was not very clearly spelled out, more taken for granted. And the linguist who had pointed this out before them, Chomsky, has been called "the creationists' linguist" - because no non-human animal communicates this way. Not one has double articulation, message divided into potentially more than one meaningful morphemes, morphemes divided into potentially more than one, in themselves meaningless phonemes.

Similarily, it was taken for granted that a very simple syntax (or even lack of it) with words or morphemes already articulated into phonemes could develop syntactic complexity. To the authors, Homo erectus went around saying equivalents of "man bite dog", "man dog bite", "bite man dog", "bite dog man", "dog man bite" and "dog bite man" all to convey the latter meaning, dog bites man. Fixing the syntax came later. But this already pre-supposes having multipurpose phonemes meaningless in isolation, usually, so as to have a broad repertoir of words, fixed by convention.

As I can recall, none of them even attempted to explain this one very closely.

They also claimed, or one of them did, that the evolutionary advantage of the first, syntax-less, language, was to provide information and seem knowledgeable, the advantage of the latter, developing syntax, was arguing and depreciating the contributions of others if fakers.

But they left out how man could be interested in non-present and not immediately verifiable information, when brutes are not.

You tell apes the equivalent of "there are bananas over there" and if they believe you and follow you and there are bananas, you count as knowledgeable. If there aren't, they will scold you for faking. If you fake often enough, they will give a shrug equivalent to "says you!"

You tell men the equivalent of "there were bananas over there yesterday, but a flock of apes came and stole them" your story will definitely evoke interest. In some contexts, you would be suspected of having stolen them yourself. But leaving out that, you would count as knowledeable for providing the interesting background to banana trees where there are no bananas any more. Even if no one could check your story about yesterday and even if no one cared to eat one more banana. OK, someone might want to depreciate that too, but to apes you could neither convey that type of message nor make them interested if you could.

Why is man different from that?

Well, there is an old story which Jean-Louis Dessalles, Pascal Picq and Bernard Victorri have so far not superseded.

Genesis 1:26 And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:16 And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: [17] But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death. [18] And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself. [19] And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name. [20] And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself.

[21] Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. [22] And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam. [23] And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. [24] Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.

Hmm ... understanding a conditional threat? Naming animals? Understanding his relation to Eve in concepts?

Sounds very unlike anything one claims for beasts, and can be explained by God creating Adam specially.

If you are somewhat read in books like the one by Jean-Louis Dessalles and two more and critical of things that seem to make no sense, well, you might also have this very solid feeling, not only did that book by an evolutionist give no better version than our special creation, but neither will the next book of the kind.

While one of them gives a discussion of Merrit Ruhlen's proposal of monogenesis of language, while depreciating his actual etymologies, this is peanuts compared to why we have language at all, and the one merit of the book is, unlike many popular believers in evolution and therefore in hominisation, these three are not confusing the issue.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Audoux
Third Day of Pentecost
11.VI.2019

Afterthought next day : perhaps sth as specific as "there are bananas over there" is even that too much for apes. Probably researchers teaching chimps sign language have taught them signs for banana and orange, but if there is also a sign meaning "[come] over there" and you combine it with "bananas" - is it sure they will be even mildly surprised at seeing oranges instead? I don't know, but I suspect not./HGL

As to promise or threat to add footnotes, I spent two hours at this library (other than yesterday) checking up on people (including for debates) and writing an article on my main blog, New blog on the kid./HGL