Origins and Evolution of Language
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~jim/origins2017.html
Eight 2-hour lectures at LSA Institute, University of
Kentucky
Prof. James R Hurford
Prerequisites
Prior acquaintance with Linguistics, to at
least Upper Division undergraduate level. A broad knowledge of all
core sectors of linguistics, namely Pragmatics, Semantics, Lexicon,
Syntax, Morphology, Phonetics and Phonology would be a great advantage
Aims and objectives
The course will show how understanding of all
the main subdisciplines of Linguistics can be enhanced by viewing them from an
evolutionary perspective. Thus, in cases where other approaches to language do
little more than describe the linguistic facts, or at best explain them by
stipulated abstract principles, Evolutionary Linguistics can often
provide more satisfactory explanations by showing a route by which the facts
could have arisen. In short, where much linguistics says `This is how language
is', evolutionary linguistics attempts to say 'This is how language got to be
that way'. The course will apply this approach to all levels of linguistic
analysis, thus outlining areas aptly labelled as Evolutionary Pragmatics,
Evolutionary Phonetics, Evolutionary Semantics, Evolutionary Phonology, and
Evolutionary Syntax.
In addition, the course aims to give Linguistics students a survey of the
main issues in the evolution and origins of the human language faculty and of
actual human languages. The subject matter is inevitably somewhat speculative,
but the course will set out a basis of relevant facts accumulated from a range
of disciplines within and outwith Linguistics, including animal behaviour,
evolutionary theory, computer modelling, genetics, language acquisition,
paleontology, archaeology. Where facts are scarce, methodological questions about
how best to proceed will be examined. After the course, students should be able
to speak and write informedly and responsibly about the origins of language,
know how to keep track of fresh developments in the field, and be able to put
such developments in perspective.
Course Structure
Lectures (with some discussion): Monday and
Thursday mornings, 11.00 - 12.50, in room 231, Jacobs Science Building.
Readings are specified below for each lecture of the course. There is
a lot to read, more than can be done in the time. Students should read
at
least one of the specified papers each week.
Course content: Lecture topics and readings
- Lecture 1, July 6th:
Preliminaries.
Biological and cultural evolution. Phylogeny,
glossogeny and ontogeny. Adaptation, preadaptations, natural selection,
spandrels, linguistic selection. Language as the outcome of interacting
complex systems.
Readings:
Hurford, James R. 2003 ``The Language Mosaic and its Evolution''. In Language Evolution, edited by Morten
Christiansen and Simon Kirby, Oxford University Press, pp.38-57.
- Hurford, James R. 1999 ``The Evolution of
Language and Languages''. In Robin Dunbar, Chris Knight and Camilla
Power (eds) The Evolution of Culture, Edinburgh University Press.
pp.173-193.
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Lecture 2, July 10th: Evolutionary Pragmatics.
Social and socio-psychological preadaptations for language. Acts,
ritualization, mindreading and manipulation, theory of mind. Conveying practical
information, gossip, courtship, deception, manipulation. Machiavellian
intelligence, social intelligence. Group size, altruism, mimesis.
Readings:
- Krebs, J. R., and Dawkins, R. 1984.
``Animal Signals: Mind-Reading
and Manipulation'', In Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach,
edited by J.R.Krebs and N.B.Davies, Blackwell Scientific Publications,
Oxford.
- Haiman, John (1994)
``Ritualization and the Development of
Language'', in Pagliuca, William (ed.) Perspectives on
Grammaticalization John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp.1-28.
- Chapters 6 - 9 of James R Hurford The Origins of
Meaning Oxford University Press, 2007:
To access these files, you need a username and a password, which will
be announced in class.
Chapter 6,
Chapter 7,
Chapter 8,
Chapter 9.
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Lecture 3, July 13th: Evolutionary
semantics.
Animal concepts, simple and complex. The origin of predicate-argument
structure. The origin of reference in deixis. The human semantic
explosion due to symbols and compositional syntax.
Reading: - Wynne, Clive D L
``Other Ways of Seeing the
World -- II: Abstract Dimensions'', Chapter 5 of his book Animal
Cognition: the mental lives of animals (Palgrave, Houndmills,
Hampshire, 2001).
- Chapters 1 - 5 of James R Hurford The Origins of
Meaning Oxford University Press, 2007:
Chapter 1,
Chapter 2,
Chapter 3,
Chapter 4,
Chapter 5 ,
To access these files, you need a username and a password, which will
be announced in class.
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Lecture 4, July 17th: First lexicons.
Was there a one-word stage, with no combination of words into higher
structures?,
What did the first words mean? Dyadic-triadic, imperative-declarative,
Synaesthesia, Groups converge on arbitrary signs,
Speech or Gesture?, Words affect thought,
Bickerton's protolanguage, just prior to syntax.
Reading: -
Chapter 2 of James R Hurford The Origins of
Grammar Oxford University Press, 2011:
Chapter
2.
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Lecture 5, July 21st: Precursors of human syntax.
Animal precursors of syntax. Is recursion the key to human
syntactic ability, and can only humans control recursion? Grammaticalization
and creolization. Compositionality, rules with variables and generalization
by learners. Self-organizing spread of compositional syntax across
generations. Are syntactic universals specific to language?
Reading: In order of importance (but they all important)
- Newmeyer, Frederick J.,
``Uniformitarian Assumptions and Language
Evolution Research'', Chapter 17 of The Transition to Language,
edited by Alison Wray, Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Jackendoff, Ray,
``An Evolutionary Perspective on the
Architecture'', Chapter 8 of his Foundations of Language: Brain,
Meaning, Grammar, Evolution, Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Selected chapters of J. R. Hurford
(2011) The Origins of
Grammar. Most recommended are:
Chapter 1, on
syntax in animals - birdsong etc.;
Chapter 5,
what languages are like.
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Lecture 6, July 24th: Cultural evolution of languages.
Languages that emerge from nothing, Pidgins and creoles, Grammaticalization,
Language growth and layering, Before and after the ``Golden Classical Age''.
Reading:
- Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva,
``On the Evolution of
Grammatical Forms'', Chapter 18 of The Transition to Language,
edited by Alison Wray, Oxford University Press, 2002.
- The following chapters of The Origins of Grammar:
Chapter 8, an
early-stage evolutionary story;
Chapter 9,
grammaticalization.
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Lecture 7, July 27th: Evolutionary phonetics.
Human and animal hearing compared. Evolution of the human vocal tract and fine control over the vocal apparatus.
Reading: Two chapters from Philip Lieberman's book The
Biology and Evolution of Language (1984, Harvard University Press).
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Lecture 8, July 31st:
Evolutionary phonology.
Evolution of characteristic phonological systems. Syllables, consonants and vowels as basic units of speech, distinctive features.
Reading: At least one of
- Lindblom, B., MacNeilage, P., and Studdert-Kennedy, M. 1984.
``Self-organizing processes and the explanation of phonological universals''.
In B.Butterworth, B.Comrie, and O Dahl (Eds.), Explanations for Language
Universals, Berlin: Mouton. 181-203.
- de Boer, Bart (2000)
``Self organization in vowel systems'', Journal of Phonetics 28 (4), pp. 441?465
- de Boer, Bart (2000)
``Emergence of vowel systems through self-organisation'' AI Communications 13 pp. 27-39.
Powerpoint slides: To access these slides, you need the class
username and password:
Assessment
- A 1000-word essay/project, on a topic to be
agreed with the instructor.
Hint: The title of your essay should
be a question (i.e. interrogative in form). The question should be
very
narrow in scope, typically relating to no more than about 3-4 slides
from one of the the lecture presentations, or to some part of one of the
readings. The essay should consider what
data would help
to answer the question of the title, or present data that does help to
answer it.
Submit one hard copy on the last day of class, August 31st, and one
electronic copy in a file named with your
surname, attached to an email to jimporty@hotmail.com .
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~jim/origins09-10.html
updated 26 September 2009