(S. Butterfill, Origins of mind 2013)

ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE: a problematic overview

Lorenzo Serini

How do humans come to use language? How do humans come to know about words? Which is therelationship between language and thought? These questions of language origins were asked for thousandsof years by poets, philosophers, theologians, historians, anthropologists, psychologists and linguistics andthey still haven't found an ultimate answer. In this work I want to give a brief and an introductive accountof the status of this inquiries in cognitive developmental and in cognitive linguistics.

0. Introduction

The issue of language is as important as extended; indeed, language play a so crucial role in human

experience of the world that sometimes one might say that it characterizes the whole human life.1 To

delimit the huge questions of the origins language, I want to focus on three particular aspects of the

problem: language acquisition (paragraph one), how children learn language (paragraph two) and

relation of language to thought and cognition (paragraph three).

1. Language acquisition

How humans come from an initial zero state (S0), when the infant is not able to use language, to a

knowledge state (Sk), when the adult is able to fully use language? Although children haven't completely

developed their cognitive ability, they are able to learn the complex system of language very quickly;

surprisingly, a child in few years acquire what humans acquired in eras of evolution and in thousands

years of natural languages formation. How is that possible (Messer 2000, p. 138)? Cognitive theories try

to answer to this question in several ways that can be, helpfully, grouped in three main categories:

– Environmental theories: According to environmental theories, or learning theories, infants were

born with every to learn so that children acquire language, like their other behaviours, from the

surrounding environment. Particularly, bheavourist psychologists suggest that children acquire

language knowledge learning through the experience: imitating adults speech and reinforcing – step

by step – their abilities. This shaping progress gradually develops and brings the children to

acquire fully the use of language. However, environmental theories do not completely and

carefully explain how children can learn so quickly and why many different environment do not

produce many different and significant variations on grammar acquisition. More over is to be

shown how language creativity could arise form an imitating process of learning.

1 See the Aristotelian definition of the human being as 'rational animal' (zòon logihikòn): what distinguishes humans formanimals would be, precisely, the ability to use language and to make rational projects.

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– Nativist theories: Nativist theorists argue that the ability to acquire language is an innate propriety

of the mind; in fact, the stimulus of the surrounding environment would be not sufficient to

support the complex knowledge of language. Indeed, children can learn this complex system of

language only if they are born with this knowledge and are pre-programmed for learning

language apart from the environment in which they grow up. One of the most influential

supporter of the nativistic view is Noam Chomsky, who argues that only an innate and

universal language knowledge can explain children language acquisition. Given that all human

languages share some features (i.e. nouns and verbs) and that the process of language

acquisition is similar in all cultures, he suggests the presence in the human mind of a 'universal

grammar' and of an innate mechanism called 'Language Acquisition Device' (LAD), a system of

principles which role our language knowledge from our born (Cook 1992, pp. 55-57).2 This not

environmental acquisition of language skills seems to be confirmed by studies of language

acquisition in deaf children; deaf children seem to learn sign language in similar stages as

children learning spoken language. Deaf children, who had not been taught sign language,

learnt how to communicate – in this really poor learning environment – by using, at firs, simple

sing that became always more complex (Goldin-Meadow 2005; Senghas and Coppola 2001).

However, nativistic account of language acquisition, focusing only on the innate mechanism of

mind, completely ignores the role and the importance of environment for language abilities: for

instance, the social interaction that appear to be largely relevant for the emerging of language

needs and skills.

– Social interactionists theories: If the environment (learning) hypothesis look out for the importance

of stimuli from the environment, on the other hand the nativist theories focus on the

preeminence of the mechanism of mind. In contrast to the nativistic view, social interactionists

theories believe that language skills are acquired by interacting with other. Giving special

attention to the social nature of language, however, interactionists are not able to account

clearly why different kind of social interactions do not imply relevant differences in grammar

acquisition.

2. Language development in children

After this overview of theories on language acquisition, it appears necessary to see, concretely, how

children learn and develop language abilities. As seen, nevertheless many biological, social and cultural

diversities, it seems that all children learn language, approximately, in the same process in a certain

2 In order to clarify notions as 'Nativism' and 'Innate' and to check their usefulness in cognitive science, see Samuels R.(2004), Innateness in cognitive science. TRENDS in cognitive science, 8(3), pp. 136-141.

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number of stages. Three main stages have been identified: pre-linguistic stage, one-word stage,

development of grammar, understanding of word-meaning.

– Pre-linguistic stage (about from birth to 12 months old): In this first early stage, infants are not able to

use language but they are really sensitive to sounds; from the birth they listen and become

familiar to parents' speech as they could listen a kind of music. However, it's around 8 months

old that infants can recognise parents' sounds as native language; in fact, only around this age

babies start to prefer their own native language to another language sounds. By 9 moths infants

come to recognise words and structures of their native language, before they are able to

produce (re-produce) them (Goldin-Medow 2005; Bee 2000). Recognising words task may be

more difficult than we usually think: how can infants (as well as adult humans) recognise a word

from a sound? For instance, when we listen to a speaker who is speaking an unfamiliar

language, we cannot understand him because we are not able, at all, to distinguish words in

sound. To be able to recognise a word we have to track word boundaries and separate a word

from another in the speech. Analyzing the sound of a speech signal in a wave form, we can see

exactly what we perceive by our auditive sensory system: the sound stimuli are not useful to

distinguish words boundaries (Fig. 1).

(Figure1. The sound wave formof a speech shows the wavelength in time in x- axis and thesound intensity in y-axis).

The words seem not to be part of the signal we perceive, so where do they come from? This

age (from 9 to 10 months) is crucial for developing perception of word boundaries and

acquiring important language abilities. As discussed below there are several theories that try to

account this problem and the question is still not resolved. Indeed, on the one hand it seems

that the mind impose the word to the signal, but on the other hand we are able to perceive

word boundaries in ways that depend on the language we have learned. It might be useful, in

order to well understand this issue, comparing perception of words boundaries to perception of

a geometrical figure (Fig. 2).

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(Figure 2. There is or there is not a triangle?)

Likely in the wave form figure (Fig.1) we couldn't distinguish words boundaries from the mere

input, in this figure (Fig.2) there is not a completely drawn triangle but we can anyway recognise

the triangle form. Although the analogy seems to work and the words boundaries perception as

the triangle form perception seems to come from some mechanism of the mind, the words-

recognising ability, which has been developed in this age, must be, somehow, linked to the

environment and the social interaction.

– One-word stage (about from 12 months old 18 months): After a period of listening and babbling,

children start to use words they have learnt. At first children, develop the use of a single word

to refer to a single object of their needs or to express a complex idea (holophrasis). Then, from

16 and 18 months, children start to learn new words and much more rapidly.

– Development of grammar (about from 18 to 30 months): From about 18 months children continue to

increase their vocabulary and start to combine the words in strings and sentences. Linking more

words in sentences they come soon to develop grammatical roles of how to combine words

(syntax). By using and mistaking rules children acquire grammar and become able to create

more complex and meaningful phrases. (Goldin-Medow 2005; Owens 2005).3

– Understanding of word meaning: How do children learn that a sound, a bounded word, refer to an

object or to an action? How do children come to know the meaning of a sound-word? How

can children understand that the word is not only for the present object or action but stands for

a general class of objects or actions? For instance, how can a children understand that the

sound-word 'dog' refers to the dog, the animal she is watching instead of to a part of the

animal or an action, and how can they understand that the sound-word 'dog' stand not only for

this dog that they are watching but also for other different dogs that they saw and that they will

see? These questions lead to a further issue: the relation between cognition and language

development. Although a definite answer has not been found, it seems that the emerge of the

understanding of the word meaning development must follow some principles. Owens (2005)

3 In a famous experiment Berko (1958) test children ability to use grammar rules: a picture of a fictional creature named'wug' is shown to children who are told 'this is a wug'. Then a picture of two creatures is shown and children are asked '?here are two...?'. The children response by saying 'wugs'.

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suggests that, firstly, children understand that a word refers to thinks, (the word 'dog' refers to

the animal and not to another object). Secondly, they come to understand that a word do not

refer only to a unique object (this dog they are watching) but to a class of objects (the word

'dog' refers to all dogs and not only to one dog). Thirdly, children understand that the word

refers to a think as a whole of its constituent parts and not only to a part (the word 'dog' stay

for the animal with its legs and tail and not to its legs or tail). Thus, the words that refers to the

parts are learnt later in the development of children language. As things stand, learning the

structure of the language, children develop the understanding of word meaning and acquire the

capacity to refer that structure to the world.

3. The world through words

The understanding of word meaning imposes another important issue: 'Knowledge of words and

knowledge of the world must somehow be linked. Words evoke knowledge about the world, and

thoughts about the world are conveyed through words' (Barbara C. Malt and Phillip Wolff 2010, p. 29).

The world consists of a huge variety of stimuli that we manage and translate into a word and into its

meaning. Therefore, naming ability must be deeply related to the cognitive capacity of the human mind,

namely, to the way we perceive and think about the world. Given that, it is necessary to understand the

role of language in cognition and this is, exactly, the hearth of cognitive linguistics. What happens along

the way that goes from stimuli to language? Does language influence the way we think the world or

viceversa thought determine language? Three stages of the cognition of natural phenomena have been,

usually, identified:

– Selection of stimuli. Only few stimuli attract our attention and are perceived by our sensory system

(visual, auditive, tactile, olfactory).

– Identification and classification. Interaction between selected stimuli and our knowledge (the

knowledge stored in our memory).

– Naming. Most identified and classified (and so categorized) stimuli are given names while some

remain unlabelled, e.g 'things to eat on a diet', 'things to pack in a suitcase'.

(F. Ungerer & H.-J. Schmid 1996, p. 6)

According to these, it seems that the naming stage comes late in the process of cognition; indeed,

language would depend on thought and would be determined by our categorization of the stimuli:

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firstly, we perceive the world and, secondly, we would be able to label the categorized stimuli into a

word. Studies of child development led by Piaget suggests that language cannot be used until children

has acquired the appropriate concept: children must understand a concept before using language about

this concept. Conversely, others think that language play an active role in cognition. There are, on the

one hand, cases in which children with cognitive difficulties are able to use language, 4 on the other

hand, there are many evidences that support the influence of language on thought. Although the

famous Sapir (1929) - Whorf (1956) hypothesis that language determines thought (speakers of a

particular language would think, perceive and remember the world in different ways accordingly to that

language) has been criticized and it cannot be maintained, many cognitive studies focuses on a lighter

linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH) of the influences of language on thought. According to this view,

it seems that language influences thought, in particular memory and perception; it remains difficult,

anyway, to quantify precisely the real effect of language on cognition. For instance, some experiments

on the relation between language and memory (Carmichael et al. 1932) underlined that, effectively,

language effects memory; in a recognizing task objects labelled with a word had been more successfully

recognized and remembered than unlabeled ones. Interesting studies on the LRH consider the

importance of colours perception and colours categorization in cognitive linguistics: does language

influences the way we perceive colour? Colour terms differ enormously between different languages

and cultures; for example, the Zuni language has only one word for the yellow-orange colours when the

English has two yellow and orange, indeed. In colours recognizing task Zuni speakers make more

mistakes than English speakers in distinguishing yellow and oranges chips. Therefore, this seems to

suggest that language effects perception of colour (Brown and Lenneberg 1954). As things stand, one

might suppose that the nature of colour categories is arbitrary e deeply dependent by language.

However, other studies in colour perception challenge the LRH; in particular, Berlin and Kay (1969)

study on 'focal colours'. Comparing ninety-eight different languages, Berlin and Kay found that, in spite

of the differences of terms used, all the speakers, when are asked to choose the chip that best represent

the colour term, surprisingly, pick out the same eleven colours: the 'focal colours'. Thus, the results of

this experiment suggest that there are universal colour categories unaffected by language. So, if on the

one hand colour categorization appears to be anchored in focal colours shared by different languages

and to be independent of language, on the other hand, language influences some aspects of memory

and, slightly, some aspect of colour perception; the boundaries of colour categories, indeed, vary

between different languages and even between speakers of one language.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

4 See the case 'Laura' studied by Yamanda (1990).

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Bee, H. (2000), The developing child (9th edn), New York. Longman.

Berko, J. (1958), The child's learning of English morphologhy. Word, 14, pp. 150-177.

Berlin, B. and Kay, P. (1969). Basic colour terms: their universality and evolution. Berkeley, Calif.: University of

California Press.

Brown, R. and Lenneberg, E.H. (1954), A study in language and cognition. Journal of abnormal anch

clinical psychology, 49, pp. 454-462.

Carlmichael, L. & Hogan, H. P. & Walter, A. A (1932), An experimental study of the effect of language

on the reproduction of visually perceived form. Journal of experimental psychology, 15(1), pp. 73-86.

Cook, V. J. (1992), Chomsky's universal grammar (third edn), Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell.

Goldin-Meadow S. (2005), The reliance of language (second edn), New Yorl: Psychology Press.

Lund, N. (2003), Language and thought, London and New York: Routledge.

Malt, C. B. & Wolff, P. (2010), Words and the mind, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Messer, D. (2000). State of art: language acquisition. The psychologist, 13, 138-143.

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Senghas, A. & Coppola, M. (2001), Children creating language: how Nicaraguan sign language acquired

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Ungerer F. & Schmid H.-J. (1996), An introduction to cognitive linguistics, London and New York: Longman.

Yamanda, J.E. (1990) Laura: a case for the modularity of language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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