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PubMed2005

From monkey-like action recognition to human language: an evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics.

The article analyzes the neural and functional grounding of language skills as well as their emergence in hominid evolution, hypothesizing stages leading from abilities known to exist in monkeys and apes and presumed to exist in our hominid ancestors right through to modern spoken and signed languages. The starting point is the observation that both premotor area F5 in monkeys and Broca's area in humans contain a "mirror system" active for both execution and observation of manual actions, and that F5 and Broca's area are homologous brain regions. This grounded the mirror system hypothesis of Rizzolatti and Arbib (1998) which offers the mirror system for grasping as a key neural "missing link" between the abilities of our nonhuman ancestors of 20 million years ago and modern human language, with manual gestures rather than a system for vocal communication providing the initial seed for this evolutionary process. The present article, however, goes "beyond the mirror" to offer hypotheses on evolutionary changes within and outside the mirror systems which may have occurred to equip Homo sapiens with a language-ready brain. Crucial to the early stages of this progression is the mirror system for grasping and its extension to permit imitation. Imitation is seen as evolving via a so-called simple system such as that found in chimpanzees (which allows imitation of complex "object-oriented" sequences but only as the result of extensive practice) to a so-called complex system found in humans (which allows rapid imitation even of complex sequences, under appropriate conditions) which supports pantomime. This is hypothesized to have provided the substrate for the development of protosign, a combinatorially open repertoire of manual gestures, which then provides the scaffolding for the emergence of protospeech (which thus owes little to nonhuman vocalizations), with protosign and protospeech then developing in an expanding spiral. It is argued that these stages involve biological evolution of both brain and body. By contrast, it is argued that the progression from protosign and protospeech to languages with full-blown syntax and compositional semantics was a historical phenomenon in the development of Homo sapiens, involving few if any further biological changes.

Animal Communication↗
PubMed2006

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution.

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in "social cognitive neuroscience," although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

Animals↗
PubMed1994

Imitations, repetitions, routines, and the child's analysis of language: insights from the blind.

A blind child and her sighted twin sister were recorded at home once a month from 2;5 to 3;5. Their imitations, repetitions and routines (IRR speech) were analysed with respect to three dimensions (type, faithfulness to the model, and function). MLU for IRR speech was greater than that for productive utterances, which supports the idea that these productions facilitate language development. The blind girl used routines and modified imitations and repetitions more frequently than her sighted sister, and her use of modified repetitions increased during the study. She also seemed to use IRR speech for a longer period in her development. Both children frequently used these forms as a means of maintaining conversation and to fulfil their intentions. By introducing modifications (varying some element, or expanding the model) both children, especially the blind girl, analysed language and learned to use these utterances in the appropriate circumstances with a clear pragmatic function. Such behaviour is typical of holistic language processing and acquisition.

Blindness↗
PubMed1994

How mothers teach basic-level and situation-restricted count nouns.

Recent research suggests that young children assume, as a default, that a word applied ostensively to an unfamiliar object (e.g. a man riding in a car) is a basic-level count noun (e.g. person) rather than a situation-restricted count noun (e.g. passenger). In this experiment, 14 mothers and their children (mean age 3.7; range 3.0 to 4.6) participated in a story-book reading session in which the mothers taught their children both a basic-level count noun and a situation-restricted count noun for a series of object drawings. An analysis of mothers' spontaneous teaching strategies revealed that, for a given object, they typically taught a basic-level count noun before a situation-restricted count noun. Furthermore, they tended to teach basic-level count nouns exclusively through ostensive definition, especially when the objects were unfamiliar. Moreover, they were (1) more likely to use ostensive definitions and (2) less likely to provide additional information concerning the application of the word, when teaching basic-level count nouns than when teaching situation-restricted count nouns. The results provide new evidence that word teachers, like young word learners, assume that a basic-level count noun is the psychologically-privileged candidate for an ostensive definition involving an (unfamiliar) object.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1994

Anaphora and branching direction in Japanese.

This paper constitutes a response to Lust & Mazuka's (1989) defence of the Principal Branching Direction parameter and their critique of O'Grady, Suzuki-Wei & Cho's (1986) experiment, which purported to show that even children learning left-branching languages exhibit a preference for forward patterns of anaphora. Results of new experimental work with children learning Japanese are reported and shown to support the claim that there is a universal preference for forward patterns of anaphora in the early stages of language acquisition.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1994

A metrical template account of children's weak syllable omissions from multisyllabic words.

Young children learning English as well as many other languages frequently omit weakly stressed syllables from multisyllabic words. In particular, they are more likely to omit weak syllables from word-initial positions than from word-internal or -final positions. For example, the weak syllable of a weak-strong (WS) word like giraffe is much more likely to be omitted than the weak syllable of a SW word like tiger. Three hypotheses for this omission pattern have been offered. In two, children's weak syllable omissions reflect innate perceptual biases either to ignore initial weak syllables or to encode word-final syllables. In contrast, the SW Production Template Hypothesis states that children have a template for producing a strong syllable followed by an optional weak syllable. When they apply a series of SW templates to their intended utterances, weak syllables that do not fit the templates are more likely to be omitted than those that do. To compare the three hypotheses, young two-year-olds were asked to say four-syllable SWWS and WSWS nonsense words. Children's pattern of weak syllable preservations was highly consistent with the SW production template hypothesis, but not with the perception-based hypotheses. Implications of this research for children's function morpheme omissions and for the relation of metrical and segmental production templates are discussed.

Child Development↗
PubMed1989

On children's uses of from, by and with in oblique noun phrases.

This study was designed to follow up children's early spontaneous uses of from to mark oblique agents by giving 40 children (aged 2;5-6;1), and 10 adults, grammatical and ungrammatical sentences containing from, with, and by to imitate and to repair. As predicted, children's imitations and repairs showed that (a) 2-year-olds produce from for agents, and with for instruments in imitation; and (b) as children get older, they shift to by for agents in their repairs, and keep from to mark locative sources. These findings support the hypothesis that when children first try to express oblique agents, before acquisition of conventional by, they choose from for this purpose because agents, as instigators of actions, are conceived of as the source of the action and its result.

Child↗