Natural human languages

Bill McGregor

• My purposes:

– Highlight some features of natural human languages, distinguishing them from other communicative systems;

– Mention some functions of language – and why language has the properties it has.

• Jan focussed on grammar and meaning – what is internal to language;

• I shift focus somewhat, looking outward, to language in its contexts.

Three preliminary remarks

• Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.

• Speech is primary, writing secondary

– Humans have been speaking for at least 50,000 years;

– Earliest writing is only about 6,000 years old

• All writing represents features of speech, more or less;

• Speech does not represent features of writing.

• There are striking differences between speech and writing

– Beyond the obvious of aural vs. visual modes.– Next slide shows wave form for my production of the

farmer kills the duckling

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

Notice that there seems to be a constant stream of sound – it isn’t broken up into pieces like words and letters of writing.

The same holds true for speech production

Th e f ar m er k I ll s th e d u ck l i ng

• Strikingly, despite the analogue nature of the signal, we interpret it in a digital way

– Called categorical perception, we perceive the first sound as a voiced ð rather than a voiceless θ

– We don’t perceive gradations in the ð as actually exist in the sound.

– This feature is illustrated in the following artificially generated speech:

• Speech – language – is not an isolated phenomenon

– It is part of a larger system of communication, including:

• Gestures• Eyegaze• Head movements

– These things go together with language in ordinary speech.

– Try tying someone’s hands, and ask them to tell you how to get to the railway station

Features of natural human language

• Animal communication systems

• Hockett’s design features of human language

• Many animals have systems of communication

– Vervet monkeys have at least 20 different vocal calls:

• Alarm calls warning of different types of predator, including:

– high pitched chutter warns of the presence of a snake;

– a chirp (short but loud barking call) gives warning of leopards and lions;

– a rraup or short cough-like call is given as warning of an eagle

• Also calls indicating emotional states.

• Animals can learn bits of human language.

– Chimps have been taught to use signs from American Sign Language

• In the early 1970s Nim Chimpsky learnt c. 125 signs, and understood at least 200

• He even made up “sentences”, his longest was:

– give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you

• But human language is unique to human beings.

– Perhaps uninteresting – barking is unique to dogs: so what?

– In fact it is a fruitful way of grasping the nature and origins of human language.

• The linguist Charles Hockett suggested a number of design features of human languages, distinguishing them from

– Communication systems of other animals;– Other communication systems of humans;– Formal languages.

• Hockett’s list has undergone changes over the years, but it remains basically the same.

• Here are a few, that may be relevant to thinking about natural vs. artificial human languages.

• Reflexivity – use of language for communicating information about language, as we are doing now.

• Productivity – creativity in use of system: users are not restricted to delimited system of possible meanings they can make, but can make novel meanings. Language is an open system.

• Interchangeability – switching of roles of speaker and hearer.

• Feedback – users monitor their output/ production.

• Prevarication – messages can be false, deceptive, or meaningless (e.g. twas brillig and the slyithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe).

• Cultural transmission – the system is learnt in a social context, and is not instinctive (like barking of a dog).

• Displacement – we often use language to communicate about events and things not present.

• Of these reflexivity seems to be the most robust in distinguishing language from other animal and human (e.g. traffic lights) communication systems.

– No natural communication system of any animal has this property

• The vervet monkey calls are not used to talk about calls

– No evidence that animals taught human language use it reflexively.

• Productivity, cultural transmission, and prevarication are also robust:

– Most animal communication systems are closed.

– Most are instinctive – even in primates; cultural transmission is found in some bird songs.

– Deception (prevarication) occurs in other primates, but is limited compared to humans.

• These are also limited in occurrence in systems taught to animals.

One illustration of productivity in language

Ontogenesis of language

• I’ve already mentioned cultural transmission

– We aren’t born to speak Danish, English, Gooniyandi, or Mohawk.

– The child learns the language spoken around it, regardless of their genetic lineage.

– But we are probably born to speak a language – at least we have the necessary biological hardware.

• Children acquire language – they are not taught it.

– Cf. writing, which is usually taught rather than acquired.

– Children acquire language in stages, which are fairly comparable from child to child

• In order, though not in timing• Next slide shows an overview.

• Attempts to teach children do not work effectively, unless the child is ready.

• A well known illustration:

• Strategies for child acquisition

– Conditioned-response learning (behaviourism)

• Not given much credence these days

– Imitation

• Clearly plays an important role• But is inadequate as a mechanism of language acquisition

– Hypothesis testing (theory theory)

• Advantages and disadvantages

– Innateness – genetic coding, Language Acquisition Device

• But clearcut biological evidence in favour of LAD is lacking.

• Social-interpersonal theories of acquisition• Various investigators have stressed the role of

the individual’s interactions with others in development of human thought and language.

– Vygotsky – sophisticated thought and language emerges through internalisation of interpersonal processes.

– Michael Tomasello and Peter Hobson argue compellingly for a social (usage-based) approach, though from somewhat different perspectives.

• Both stress the significance of engagement with others in development of symbolic thought and language.

• Dyadic engagement with another (generally caregiver) in 1:1 interactions

– Revealed especially in responses and reactions to facial expressions.

– Infants are highly attuned to others from a very early age.

• Face-to-face dyadic mimicking of behaviour.• Exhibit reactions to non-reactions on part of adult

they are engaged with – e.g. distress, disengagement.

• Triadic engagement where the child relates to another person’s relation to things and events in the world.

– At about age of 1 year, child begins to engage in triadic interactions, where the focus of attention is on an external object.

– Both participants constantly monitor one another’s attention to the object, and to themselves.

– This establishes a joint attentional frame within which communication can occur.

(b) Joint attentional frame

(c) Referent event

(a) Perceptual situation

Tomasello 2002:26: The basic adult-child communicative situation (slightly emended for clarity)

• The child’s understanding of other persons’ intentional relations with the world leads them to attend to the means by which the adult achieves those ends.

– Child imitates the intentional actions of adults.– Thus leading to role-reversal.

• A major reason for the child’s development of language – and symbolic thought – is to affect the minds and actions of others.

• Tomasello:

– The child’s understanding of adult intentionality and role reversal is facilitated by the constant imputation of intentionality to the child’s actions by the adult.

Why is language as it is?• Many linguists believe that some features of

language are not arbitrary:

– That there are features of language that reflect the uses to which it is put.

• “Language is as it is because of the functions it serves in the life of man”, as Michael Halliday has put it.

• Note I said “many”, not “all” – there are linguists who take the view that all is arbitrary, i.e. not motivated by external considerations.

– Major division between functionalist and formalist linguists.

• In the preceding quote Halliday takes a fairly extreme functionalist view: everything in grammar is functional.

• This seems certainly to be false –like other biological phenomena, language holds residue of a-functional things (like the appendix)

– An example: English has a number of prepositions, words like to, at, for

– These are functional, meaningful– But their placement before the noun is not – it is a

residue of historical changes.– You can’t say the dog to or the to dog

– On the other hand, the possessive –’s is attached at the end of the NP, although it conveys the same type of meaning as of

• The person you were talking to’s dog died cf. The dog of the person you were talking to.

• The horse that fell’s rider cf. The rider of the horse that fell

• Functionally motivated things in grammar are however numerous, e.g.:

– Word order in many languages

• Recall Jan’s discussion of word orders in the world’s languages:

– SOV– SVO– VSO– VOS– OVS– OSV (e.g. Urubú, Nadëb)

• Order can be seen as functionally motivated (in “fixed” word order languages).

• This is for the following reasons: order distinguishes who is doing what to who (simplifying a lot!)

• Obviously something we need to do in language, if it is going to be a useful system in communication.

• If we change order of phrases, different meaning arises:

– The farmer kills the duckling;– The duckling kills the farmer

» Notice the crucial importance of the existence of contrasts (absent in the case of preposition ordering)

• The “function” distinguishing who does what to who can be achieved in other ways than word order.

– Some languages use case marking instead, and leave word order “free”.

– One of the best known (allegedly) radically free word order languages is the Australian language Warlpiri.

• The words of the following sentence can be permuted in any way, and the “meaning” remains the same – ‘the dog is biting the little child with its blunt teeth’.

– The only restriction:

• ka must be in second position.

• How do we know who is biting who?

– By the case-marking– And knowledge of the world

• Which precludes interpretations like ‘the tooth is biting the little child with its blunt dog’

• One of the crucial problems in grammar in my view is to arrive at independent ways of delineating between the motivated and unmotivated in language

– Or in other words between the semiotically significant and the semiotically non-significant.

Phylogenesis of language

• I’ve already said that we are in some sense born speakers.

– Most linguists agree that something is genetically encoded.

– The big disagreement is how much:

• Genetic encoding of language faculty (one extreme);

• Language ready brain (other extreme – basically my view)

There has been a rash of work on language origins and evolution in recent years – it’s a hot topic – but most of the ideas are no better or worse than this theory

• Was language invented?

– Perhaps – though obviously not by one person

• Could have been a story somewhat like the invention of writing, which first emerged gradually in Mesopotamia from marks on clay representing ideas rather than words.

• Making it like many other cultural artefacts.

– My view inclines this way.

• I don’t have time to get into this issue.• Suffice it to say that I am currently working on a

theory of language origins that:

– Traces language back to earlier systems of action on objects;

– Which came to symbolise – in increasingly symbolic species – actions on con-specifics;

• We are the only species that act on conspecifics by acting on objects

– By processes of abstraction, we arrive at action on objects that are themselves symbols, this being the crucial step in emergence of natural language.

– My guess is that language goes back to c. 60,000 years, coterminous with the explosion of cultural artefacts and processes.

Languages change• Languages change rapidly

– Much more rapidly than biological systems:

• The basic biological features of plants and animals were set down billions of years ago, and have not changed.

• Can trace back all living things to single-celled forms

– Languages change so rapidly that all traces of relatedness “disappear” within 10,000 years or so.

• Beyond that, it is impossible to separate retained characteristics from accidental similarities.

– In the lifetime of an adult they will be able to recognise change in progress in their language.

• These changes are rarely deliberately engineered.

– Deliberate engineering of language (speech) is usually as unsuccessful as teaching the child.

• Most changes come about through unconscious consensus of speakers.

– Some variations in speech catch on for one reason or another, and are adopted (e.g. the Parisean uvular trill in C17);

– Others don’t catch on, and die a rapid death on their production;

– Still others catch on for a while, and die in a generation (e.g. slang)

Conclusion• The major concluding statement I want to

draw out, that picks up on various notions scattered throughout the paper is:

– Natural human language is a mode of action, rather than a means for reflection on the world, a tool for thought.

– The raison d’être of language is interpersonal – to facilitate action on other human beings

Some references on human language

• Aronoff, Mark & Rees-Miller, Janie. 2001. The handbook of linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

• Hudson, Richard. 1984. Invitation to linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.

• Matthews, Peter H. 2003. Linguistics: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• McGregor, William B. 2005. Understanding linguistics. Manuscript.