I was always interested in how human languages originated and why they had the same structures.
Some rapid research on the internet to be elaborated tomorrow...
But in the meantime some contributors can already read what there is on on the subject...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC298679/
http://goo.gl/mZDYN5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_s/d_10_s_lan/d_10_s_lan.html
https://thomscottphillips.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/scott-phillips-2010-ep-and-language-origins.pdf


Kind regards, Paul.

Paul, this recent research produced by Durham University might be of interest to you. While the actual worth of the research findings in relation to tracing origins of human speech is actually not quite as established as the headline suggests the researcher Esther Clarke, to her credit, does say within the article that the connection is conjectural.

It seems however like plausible conjecture to me - and interestingly the analysis of the gibbons' communication also appears to provide evidence of variation conforming to both approaches outlined by Scott-Phillips in his journal paper to which you linked. Code-model and ostensive-inferential approaches can both be used to explain the communication process, just as with human speech, but if the gibbons are in fact emulating human behaviour from very early in our own species' development then the ability to impart subtle, complex and vaguely implied concepts successfully (that which ostensive-inferential analysis tries to explain in terms beyond purely mechanical processes) is as old as we are. Not necessarily evidence of our "unique intelligence" therefore, as is often stated, but simply of our being primates (or maybe even just mammals).

It was established some years ago that vervet monkeys used specific vocalisations to indicate "eagle" and "leopard".

From wikimisleadia :-

Quote :

Alarm calls and offspring recognition

A vervet baby monkey clinging to its mother
Vervet monkeys have four confirmed predators: leopards, eagles, pythons, and baboons. The sighting of each predator elicits an acoustically distinct alarm call.^[18] In experimentation with unreliable signalers, individuals became habituated to incorrect calls from a specific individual. Though the response was lessened for a specific predator, if an unreliable individual gives an alarm call for a different predator, group members respond as if the alarm caller is, in fact, reliable. This suggests vervet monkeys are able to recognize and to respond to not only the individual calling, but also to the semantics of what the individual is communicating.^[19] It is believed that vervet monkeys have up to 30 different alarm calls. In the wild vervet monkeys have been seen giving a different call when seeing a human being approaching, leading to researchers believing that vervet monkeys may have a way of distinguishing between different land and flight predators.^[20]
Mothers can recognize their offspring by a scream alone. A juvenile scream will elicit a reaction from all mothers, yet the juvenile's own mother had a shorter latency in looking in the direction of the scream, as well as an increased duration in her look. Further, mothers have been observed to help their offspring in conflict, yet rarely aided other juveniles. Other mothers evidently can determine to which mother the offspring belongs. Individuals have been observed to look towards the mother whose offspring is creating the scream

Vervets are less closely related than gibbons to man (Cercopithecidae rather than Hylobatidae), which might suggest the rudiments of "language" lie even further back than the gibbon results suggest.

nordmann wrote:

Paul, this recent research produced by Durham University might be of interest to you. While the actual worth of the research findings in relation to tracing origins of human speech is actually not quite as established as the headline suggests the researcher Esther Clarke, to her credit, does say within the article that the connection is conjectural.

It seems however like plausible conjecture to me - and interestingly the analysis of the gibbons' communication also appears to provide evidence of variation conforming to both approaches outlined by Scott-Phillips in his journal paper to which you linked. Code-model and ostensive-inferential approaches can both be used to explain the communication process, just as with human speech, but if the gibbons are in fact emulating human behaviour from very early in our own species' development then the ability to impart subtle, complex and vaguely implied concepts successfully (that which ostensive-inferential analysis tries to explain in terms beyond purely mechanical processes) is as old as we are. Not necessarily evidence of our "unique intelligence" therefore, as is often stated, but simply of our being primates (or maybe even just mammals).

Nordmann,

excuses for the delay. So busy nowadays...even on Sunday...

Yes the Scott-Phillips article that I found was interesting.

But there seems still a lot of controversy...which is perhaps normal, as such an evolution is not easy to substatiate by facts...and it will stay perhaps always more or less convincing theories...


I found on the site that I already mentioned some summary in layman's language, which explains quite simplly the several tendencies:
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_10/a_10_s/a_10_s_lan/a_10_s_lan.html
The following theory I find also convincing, from the site above:
"The second major school of monogenism posits a concept of the evolution of Homo sapiens in which language developed from cognitive faculties that were already well established. In this view, the birth of language was triggered not by a random mutation, but simply by the availability of an increasingly powerful cognitive tool. Bit by bit, those groups of hominids who developed an articulate language that let them discuss past and imaginary events would thereby have supplanted those groups that as yet had only a proto-language.

This second school of monogenism is identified with the linguist Steven Pinker, who believes that language may very well have been the target that evolution was aiming for. He argues that the brain has a general capacity for language—a concept often associated with connectionist theory in cognitive science. Pinker invokes the Baldwin effect, for example, as a major evolutionary force that could have led to modern language (see box below). The ability to learn language would therefore have become a target of natural selection, thus permitting the selection of language-acquisition devices that were genetically pre-wired into the brain’s circuits."

And the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar

Something more elaborated about a common grammar inherent to all languages:
"The origin of grammar" by James R. Hurford
http://goo.gl/co507E

 Tomorrow more comments...

Kind regards and with esteem, Paul.

All the theories sound plausible, at least as explanations for the development of speech. The development of language however is a different thing entirely in my view, especially when one takes into account the huge diversity in intonations and sounds employed, often in completely contradictory ways when one language is assessed against another. This would tend to undermine the simplistic theories regarding origins of speech and complicate the already complex ones to a point that they also become untenable as general theory too.

All in all therefore this area of study seems to simply push one round in a circle without resolving much at all along the way - except that humans are capable of a lot of chatter. Whether we are more or less succinct or comprehensive in our communication than, say, a hyena still depends very much on the value and nature of that which is deemed worthy of communication by either species. Maybe we have a thing or two to learn from "dumb" animals.

Is that a boxed topic remark? Dumbness becomes us, then.