Language
BSCS, Cognitive psychology
Day 3
What is language?
Evolution of Language
How does language affect thought?
Can animals talk?
• It always depends on what you call
talking…
• Talkinganimals movie
• If we are inclined to think that they can,
there are (at least) two reasons
Faces on Mars?
• There are two reasons
– We like to hear animals talk
• There are two reasons
– We like to hear animals talk
– Animals like to imitate us
Is human language special in
any way?
Natural signs – natural language
• Closed ( 30-40
signs)
•Open Lexikon
•Arbitrarily changeable
• Holistic
•Analytic Steven Pinker:
grammar = discrete
combinatorial system
•hierarchy
•recursivity
•infinite?
•Digital
•Detached, distanced
– sounds, smells,
facial expressions
• Analogue (crying)
• Concrete
• inherited
•learned
Inherited signs?
• Vervet monkeys
• Playing them recorded signals
– Different shouts :
• Eagle
• Snake
• Leopard
hide in bush
look under feet
run up tree
• It takes learning to get them right
• Are they in-built measures of fear?
The Vervets again
• Ability to cheat!
– Want to get rid of bigger male?
– Want to hide that you’ve found food?
– Just give a leopard cry!
• What makes possible sentences infinite?
– Recursion
– Diane said that Peter told her that Mary lied
that she was at school that day.
The mouse that the cat chased ate the cheese.
The mouse that the cat chased that the dog
barked ate the cheese.
Human language?
• Hockett’s principles
– Arbtrariness (nonecessary connection
between form and meaning)
– Abstractness (ability to talk about events
distant in time or space)
– Duality (from a few meaningless signs an
infinite number of configurations created)
– Productivity (new linguistic elements can
be formed)
What animals don’t do..
•
•
•
•
past
future
question
Lie - cheat
Careful!
Der Kluge Hans – Clever Hans – effect
(1907 Oskar Pfungst)
A trap set by our intentional stance
ELIZA: http://www-ai.ijs.si/eliza/eliza.html
Argumentation valid for all sentient subjects (H.S. as well) (Rico, the Border Collie)
Two important questions
• Nature-nurture (Skinner vs Chomsky)
– Species similar to us (apes)
– Species adapted to us (dog, cat)
• Natural communicative signs - artificial
– Animals communicating in their natural habitat
– Arbitrary sign taught by human researchers
Irene Pepperberg
Alex the African grey parrot
Avian Lanuage teaching EXperiment
..\BME_evolúcióskurzus\evoluc200607BME\nyel
vevolúció\ALex\alextheparrot[1].mov
Is it human language?
Sentence structure : How many blue blocks?
New words coined: „Bannery”
All in all 200 words
• Paul Bloom (Yale)
• „both a baby and a dog are exposed to
language, but only the baby learns to
talk (Science)”
• Children’s word learning – fast
mapping
–PERSPECTIVES
BEHAVIOR:
Can a Dog Learn a Word? Paul Bloom
(11 June 2004)
Science 304 (5677), 1605. [DOI:
10.1126/science.1099899])
The new chimpanzees
• Rico, the Border Collie (video)
• Juliane Kaminski, Leipzig
• Fast mapping and word learning
– „fetch-the-bunny” One word? – can put it in
a box as well or give it to someone
– Novel item – novel word
• Paul Bloom:
– „for psychologists, dogs may be the new
chimpanzees.”
– „If any child learned words the way Rico did,
the parents would run screaming to the
nearest neurologist
The new chimpanzees
• Questions:
– Talent or learning? (nature or nurture)
– Dogs are evolutionarily selected for
attending to the communicative intentions of
humans
– Can Rico demonstrate understanding of a
word other than by fetching an object?
– Could Rico be told not to fetch a specific
object (akin to telling a human child "don't
touch!")?
– Can Rico learn a word for any object that is
not small and fetchable?
– Can the same results be produced with
nonlinguistic sounds?
Monkeys speaking
• Maybe they could
use a simpler protolanguage?
• Ability not used?
• 3 methods
– Natural speech
– ASL- sign language
– Lexigram signs
• Spoken language
• ASL – American sign
Language
• lexigrams
Gua
(Kellogg & Kellogg, 1933)
– Raised as a family member (9
months)
– Intimate relationship
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/history/wnk/ape.html
Emotional reactions
feeding
Where is your
nose?
In spite of all this, Gua
– Never produced intelligible words
– Only understood few
Viki
(Hayes, 1951)
• Family member
• Reinforceent learning
• After 7! years
– Badly articulated 4 words: mama, papa, up, cup
– Only family members understand him
– Understands few words
60’s teaching chimps
• Complete fiasco
• Is the problem physiological?
– Lack of fine motor coordination
– Movement of tongue
– Control of breathing
– Voluntary control of emitting sounds
Different physiology
Larynx higher -> smaller pharynx and nasal cavity
• Spoken language
• ASL – American Sign
Language
• Lexigrams
• Three stars
• Washoe
(chimpanzee)
• Nim Chimpsky
(chimpanzee)
• Koko (gorilla)
Washoe
(Gardner & Gardner, 1960’s)
• Captured in Africa
• Started to learn at 11 months –
teaching during 51 months
• Brouht up as a deaf child (games,
social activities)
• idea
– Chimps use gestures as a natural sign in
their communication
► ASL, American Sign Language
What did Washoe learn?
Lexicon
• production: 150-200 signs
• Understood more
• More syntactic categories (N, V,
Adj, Pro)
• differentiating
– flower vs. smell
• trasfer
– He learns one particular object and
extends the meaning
• Could create new signs (?)
Duck = water + bird
What did Washoe learn?
Grammar
• Overgeneralization
• Answering „WH-word” questions
• Sensitivity to word order
– You tickle me
– I tickle you
• Combining signs
–
–
–
–
–
Washoe sorry
Baby down
Go in
Hug hurry
Out open please hurry
• Washoe’s step son Louis
– Learned signs spontaneously from Washoe
– Did Washoe teach the signs (?)
Nim Chimpsky & Herbert Terrace
Nim Chimpsky
(Terrace, Petitto, Sanders & Bever, 1979)
• Washoe’s family
• What does his name remind you
of?
• ASL: stricter design
What has Nim Chimpsky learned?
• Lexicon
– 125 signs, BUT stricter criteria would ca 25
• (strict criteiria meaning double-blind studies with signers)
• Grammar
– A maximum of two combinations→if there is az more, it
is usually repetition
• banana me eat banana eat
– The length of sentences does not grow over time
– No relationship between the complexitiy of sentences
and their length (rather, he learned that the more he signs, the
sooner he gets what he wants…)
Nim Chimpsky
• No spontaneous signs
• His utterances
– 90%: reaction, relates to a „here and
now aspect” (eat, play, drink)
– 40%: straight repetition
• Interrupts the signing of teacher
• Does not add new information to the
situation
► „You can teach that to a dove with
operant conditioning” (Herbert
Terrace)
Koko and dr Penny Patterson
..\BME_evolúcióskurz
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\nyelvevolúció\koko\k
oko_first3signs_56[1].
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..\BME_evolúcióskurz
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oko_sign_history_56[
1].mov
..\BME_evolúcióskurz
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eet_koko_psa_56[1].
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Francine Patterson
33 year-old gorilla, learned the
language in infancy (ASL)
Longest ongoing research:
worked together for 33 years
Only research involving a gorilla
Supposedly knows a 1000 signs
and understands written English.
Chatted on America Online
Could communicate toothache
The chat on America Online
PENNY: Hey, Cutie.
Penny swivels Koko's chair around so they face each other.
PENNY: Let me explain what we're doing.
KOKO: Fine.
PENNY: We're going to be on the phone with a lot of people who are going to a
us questions...
KOKO: Nipple. (Koko sometimes uses 'nipple' as a 'sounds like' for 'people.')
PENNY: ...about you and about me. . . Lots of people.
KOKO: That red pink. (Indicating Penny's shirt.)
PENNY: That red pink. Yes, right!
KOKO: Hurry good.
PENNY: This is red—this is pink, exactly.
KOKO: Pink. (Koko reaches for Penny's pocket which contains treats.)
PENNY: OK. That's the kind of things they are going to ask.
KOKO: Good.
PENNY: Questions about colors or how you're feeling. OK?
KOKO: That red. (Indicating her own hair.)
PENNY: Honey, this is black.
KOKO: XXX XXX. (XXX looks like 'sun'.)
Koko is trying to sign 'black.' Penny touch prompts 'black'.
The chat on America Online
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Koko pulls Penny's phone hand closer.
PENNY: OK. She wants to listen. Do you have a question?
KOKO: Listen.
PENNY: She said 'listen.'. . .
AOL: MInyKitty asks Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
PENNY: OK, is that for Koko? Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
KOKO: Koko-love eat ... sip.
AOL: Me too!
PENNY: What about a baby? You going to have baby? She's just thinking...her hands
are together...
KOKO: Unattention.
PENNY: Oh poor sweetheart. She said 'unattention.' She covered her face with her
hands..which means it's not happening, basically, or it hasn't happened yet. . . I don't
see it.
AOL: That's sad!
PENNY: It is responding to the question. In other words, she hasn't had one yet, and
she doesn't see a future here. The way the situation is actually with Koko & Ndume,
she has 2 males to 1 female which is the reverse of what she needs. I think that is
why she said that, because in our current situation, it isn't possible for her to have a
baby. She needs several females and one male to have a family.
• Spoken language
• ASL –
• lexigrams
David and Ann Premack
Savage Rumbaugh
One of the fiascos
MercurySince he did not learn language at
all, he was transferred to do other
experiments
Bad news – good news
• Matata and her son Kanzi
– After 2,5 years of training Matata still wasn’t
very good at lexigrams – they gave up and
sent her to a Primate Center
– They kept Kanzi – luckily!
Kanzi
(Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1990)
• A real star
(played together
with Paul
McCartney-vel +
Peter Gabriel)
• bonobo: supposed
to be more
intelligent, social,
communicative
• Has NEVER been
taught, only her
mother
Kanzi and Alia (2,5 ys)
• Compared them with a
comprehension test, with
toys Kanzi has never seen
before, only videos and
pictures
•
•
•
•
Kanzi, make the dog bite the snake
Kanzi, tickle Rose with the bunny
500 novel sentences
Both Alia and Kanzi were 70%
correct
Kanzi video: http://www.iowagreatapes.org/bonobo/meet/kanzi.php#
Conclusion about ape studies
ape
• Here and now
• No syntax
• explicit teaching
• Does not refuse badly formed
sentences
• Rarely forms questions
• Not using symbols
spontaneuosly
child
• timeline
• syntax
• No explicit teaching –
spontaneous signs with deaf
children)
• Refuses badly formed
sentences
• Frequent questions
• Referential use of symbols
• MLU same
• MLU grows and so does
complexity
•
•
Banana me me me eat.
I am going to eat all the bananas.
Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch
„Human language is an embarrassment for
evolutionary theory”
David Premack
When?
• A. when did language evolve in the history
of mankind?
– evidence:
• Human fossils (speech organs and brain tissue) –
2 million years
• tools – 100 thousand years
• Art – 30-35 thousand years
• B. Why did it evolve?
Why did language evolve?
Two questions:
Continuous or discontinuous?
(step-by step or saltatory?)
Adaptation or exaptation?
1. Evolutionists
• The meteors of
Chomsky
Saltatory approach
meteors
• Noam Chomsky: language could not have
evolved by natural selection
– Too complex
– All the interim forms bring no advantage
• Exaptation?
• Step-by-step evolution
– Different linguistic levels? Bickerton
– evolutionary stable strategy of grammar
Bickerton’s theory
– 0. Australopithecus –apes today (categoriese)
– 1. Erectus – protolanguage, without syntax
– 2. Archaic homo sapiens – symbolic language
with syntax
– 3. developed language
– languages diverging, different language
families (Luigi Cavalli-Sforza)
ESS – Evolutionary stable
strategies
• Think of all the things you might want to
talk about
• What if you invented a different sound for
each?
• Solution
– categorization
– combination
Syntax evolution: the problem
Syntax evolution: the answer
How did language evolve?
• Early linguistic theories
• Ecolocigal models
– hunt
• Social explanation
– Building social relations
• Sexual selection
How did language evolve?
• Early linguistic theories
• Ecolocigal models
– hunt
• Social explanation
– Building social relations
• Sexual selection
Egypt – an interesting experiment
• Pharaoh Psammeticos (7th century B.C.)
– Given two babies to a shepherd to raise them without
saying a word to them – the most ancient language
would be the one they start to speak
– Once they happened to say the word „bheccos”
– It means bread in phrueg, a language now extinct
• Kaiser Franz II. Germo-Roman emperor (10th
A.C.)
– same experiment
– no result
• Jacob IV Scottish king (XVth A.C.)
– The child started to speak something like Hebrew.
Similarity in onomatopaeia
•
Afrikaans: miaau!
Albanian: mjau!
Arabic (Algeria): miau miau!
Bengali: meu-meu!
Catalan: meu, meu!
Croatian: mijau!
Danish: mjav!
Dutch: miauw!
English: meow!
Esperanto: miaŭ!
Estonian: näu!
Finnish: miau! kurnau!
French: miaou!
German: miau!
Greek: niaou!
Hebrew: miyau!
Hindi: myaau! myaauu!
Hungarian: miau!
Icelandic: mjá!
•
Indonesian: ngeong!
Italian: miao!
Japanese: nyaa!
Korean: (n)ya-ong!
Mandarin Chinese: miao miao!
Norwegian: mjau!
Polish: miau!
Portuguese: miau!
Russian: myau!
Slovene: mijau!
Spanish: miau!
Swedish: mjau!
Thai: meow meow! (with high
tone)
Turkish: miyauv! miyauv!
Ukrainian: myau!
Vietnamese: meo-meo!
Otto Jespersen – the reason of the
ban in 1886
• Interlingua – International Auxiliary language
• Bow-wow theory
– Imitating animals - onomatopeia
• Pooh-pooh theory
– Emotion-laden signs (pain, happiness)
• Ding-dong theory
– A sort of verbalizing non-verbal communivation
• Yo-he-ho theory
– Vocalization while working, singing
• La-la theory
– Love, art, poetry, music
How did language evolve?
• Early linguistic theories
• Ecolocigal models
– Hunt
– Toolmaking
• Social explanation
– Building social relations
• Sexual selection
A difference in vocabulary?
• Hunter-gatherers:
– 5000-6000 words
– Half of them is verb, connected to survival
• Modern language:
– 50-60 housand words
– 10-15% verbs
• Language had a larger role in this?
What do you need to know to
survive?
• Places of plants and migration of animals
• Today’s hunter-gatherer’s – little evidence,
more gestures (max. 1-2 words)
• Talk: basicly gossip – life of people, affairs
Tools and DIY
• Constructional ability ~ syntax
• You need
– Model of the outside world
– Manipulation abilities
• Both language and toolmaking are
– sequential
– hierarchical
• Two possibilities
– Making tools presupposes abilities that bootsrap
language
– Making tools needs teaching and cooperation
presupposing language
DIY in hunter-gatherers
• Rarely do they say instructions
– Mostly direct observation
• Cathleen Gibson
– Division of labour
– Social effect
–
Gibson, K. R. and Ingold, T. eds. Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
How did language evolve?
• Early linguistic theories
• Ecolocigal models
– hunt
• Social explanation
– Building social relations
• Sexual selection
• Robin Dunbar
• grooming:
cavorite-lis
n
-fGET
tg/stores/d
communit
rate-item
cust-rec
just-say-no
true
m/justsay
– Hygenic function - originally
– Social and emotional bonds
– Endogene opiates
A
Grooming time for hominids
• Group size ~ grooming
– Reduces agression
– Gets social support
• Max: 70 (20-25% of time)
• Group size ~ brain size
– Cogitive restraint
• humans: 147,8 (150) (42% of time!)
Average size of human tribes
The magic number of 150
• The average size of hunter-gatherer
groups
• Basic military unit
• hutterites – one colony
• Gore-Tex fabric Ltd. 150 parking places
And the solution is…
• Language – a more efficient way of
grooming?
– Can groom various persons at a time
– The hands are free to manipulate
• Trading social information
• Indirect experience – learn novel situation
• Group identity - dialects
When?
• 250-300 thousand years ago we reached
this 70 person limit
The topic – grooming=gossip?
Women
Men
free time
free time
politics, culture
politics, culture
social activities
social activities
work
work
How did language evolve?
• Early linguistic theories
• Ecolocigal models
– hunt
• Social explanation
– Building social relations
• Sexual selection
Geoffrey Miller
Univ of New Mexico
• Altruism of speaker –
are we giving away
information
• language_=nothing
more than a sexual
ornament, a way of
wooing
30
25
20
same sex
both sexes
15
10
5
0
men
women
• Name great writers in History
• Fitness indicator:
• Intelligence correlates with vocabulary 80%
• 60% genetically determined
• Cyrano effect
• Seherzade effect
However
• Women are better at verbal intelligence,
aren’t they?
– Contradictory findings
•
•
•
•
•
Fluency tests
Verbal intelligence test
Vocabulary tests – only until the age of 3-5
The aphasia myth
The autism myth – that is actually true…
Supporting evidence
• Robbins Burling
– In egalitarian societies the chieftain is going to
be the person communicating best
First onomatopeic sounds
First comprehension evolves – then production
(look who’s talking now!)
Evolution of human language
• Nobody denies that it is a powerful tool
• Nobody knows how it came into being
Language and thought
Sapir-Whorf (linguistic relativity)
hypothesis
• The (grammatical) categories of language
influence cognition (perception, memory
thought)
• Linguistic turn:
– Linguistic relativism
• importance of language as a structuring agent
– Philosophical realism
• Language (with capital L):
– the human language capacity
– linguistic universals
• languages (with small l):
– individual languages (e.g., English,
Arabic…)
– types of languages (e.g., Indo-European,
Semitic…)
Language – uniformity or
diversity
• Chomsky and MP
– Language can be traced back to universals
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
– Presupposes that there is a significant (???)
differences between languages
• Grammatical gender marking
–
–
–
–
Hungarian - none
on pronouns (Eng)
On nouns and adjectives (Neo-latin languages)
On verbs (Russian)
• Mandarin & Indonesian: optional tense marking
• Turkish: marking of the source of knowledge
Various stances
• Universalism – Chomsky, Jackendoff, Gleitman
• Strong linguistic relativism – Whorf, Levinson
– Language influences cognition
• Weak linguistic relativism - Slobin
– „Thinking for speaking” – it draws our attention to
certain differences, creating a difference in cognition
• Language as a strategy
– Effects of language are present if the task in the
experience is linguistic only
Slobin, Dan
•
Are these differences relevant? To what degree?
–
–
•
•
Linguistic determinism – strong version
Linguistic relativism – weak version
If each language is simply an alternative code for the
same underlying cognitive processes and states, the
diversity of languages can be ignored by cognitive
science.
• But if linguistic diversity reflects cognitive diversity,
individual languages are critical independent
variables in cognitive science theory and research.
Experimental data
Tests of the hypothesis
• Classical study: words for snow among the
Eskimo
• Colour words among the Dani (Elizabeth
Rosch)
• Time metaphors and their effect on
thought
• Space and thought
The Great Snowball Battle
Franz Boas
• Father of American Anthropology
• The Central Eskimo (1888)
– Is cultural evolution similar to the evolution of
language?
• 1911 Handbook of American Indian
languages –
– A sidenote on morphology „snowballed”
– .just as English uses derived terms for a variety of
forms of water (liquid, lake, river, brook, rain, dew,
wave, foam) that might be formed by derivational
morphology from a single root meaning 'water' in some
other language, so Eskimo uses the apparently distinct
roots aput 'snow on the ground', gana 'falling snow',
piqsirpoq 'drifting snow', and qimuqsuq 'a snow drift'
Sapir Whorf
• By 1940 somehow arrived at the
number 7
• Studying the Hopi
– the Hopi language is seen to contain
no words, grammatical forms,
construction or expressions or that
refer directly to what we call “time”, or
to past, present, or future…
• Hartford Fire insurance Company
– Empty vs full gasoline drums
• Nahuatl, maya – minor mistakes
• 1956 – Language, Thought, Reality
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
•
“We cut up and organize the spread and flow of events
as we do largely because, through our mother tongue,
we are parties to an agreement to do so, not because
nature itself is segmented in exactly that way for all to
see.”
•
• “From this fact proceeds what I have called the
‘linguistic relativity principle,’ which means, in informal
terms, that users of markedly different grammars are
pointed by their grammars toward different types of
observations … and hence are not equivalent as
observers …”
The Truth – so how many?
• 2-4 in Inuit – up to 24 in English
• Geoffrey Pullum
– The entire question is irrelevant – it would be
very surprising if a painter did not know more
words for colours than laypersons.
The Colour debate
• Paul Kay – universalism
– The categorization of the spectrum of
wavelength is not arbitrary
– There is a hierarchy of colours
• Rosch – studies with the Dani
– Modern criticisms
• Paul Kay and Willet Kempton (1984)
– Tarahumara grue studies
Time
With the future behind them
• English
– Falling behind schedule and looking forward to a
brighter future
• Mandarin
–
–
–
–
Quián – front
Hou – back
Shang – up – last
Xiá – down – next
• Priming experiments
– Is March earlier than April?
– The meeting on Wednesday was put forward 2 days.
– People on/off the train/airport experiments.
Language and space
Talmy
• Manner and path type languages –
categorizing verbs
– He went out running of the house.
– Salió del edificio corriendo.
• Gennari et al video memory experiments.
– No memory effects
– Conscious similarity effect exists
Bowerman studies
• Containment vs support in EU languages
– subtle differences in the grammatical markers
• Tight/loose fit and attachment – Korean
– Bowl (nehta) vs envelope & magnet on a
refrigerator (kitta)
• McDonough (habituation, looking preference)
– adult British subject can’t discriminate tight vs loose fit
– Preverbal infants can
The problem
• Levinson vs Li and Gleitman – the war is not
over yet
– Chickens, eggs and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
– in other words how many words do YOU know for
snow? (oh, and how many for different neurotransmitters...?)
• And now the tricky question:
– Raise your left hands, please
– And point towards your office in ST
• (N.B. if you also murmur Accio coffee, you might even stay awake
for the rest of the talk!)
SPACE – the final front in here?
Language & Cognition – the easy
solution
• Language:
– Absolute
– Intrinsic
– Relative
• Spatial
cognition
– (Geocentric)
– Allocentric
Abolute description: Both Harry
Ginny would
– and
Egocentric
agree that the Phoenix is coming from oppositestatue.*
Intrinsic description: Both Harry and Ginny would
agree that the Phoenix is somewhere in front of the
statue.
Relative description: Harry would say that the
Phoenix is to the left of the statue. Ginny would say
that the Phoenix is to the right of the statue.
*let us suppose that the statue in this putative case
is a fixed reference point, such as „hill” is in Tzeltal.
Spatial reference frames made
Well, from here
difficult
on the North
ThePole
Basilisk
the is
Basilisk
under me.
is to
the south polar
bear.
The Basilisk
is behind
me.
Look Ginny, the
Basilisk is to the
right of the
statue!
(=Avada Kedavra…)
.
Vector
Origo
Geocentric
Linguistic diversity in Spatial
language
• Languages differ in
the ratio of the use of
the different
descriptions
– Man and tree test by
Penelope Brown
Languages and space
• Absolute
• The Quill is to the south of the
Diary.
•
•
•
•
Ya koon.
A., I descend
B., I go downhill.
C., I go south.
Majid
et al. 2004. Can language restructure cognition? The case for space.
Trends in Cognition.
Li & Gleitman
Li and Gleitman, 2002
The pointing task deadreckoners
Hypothesis
• Speakers of languages using absolute
frames of reference will be good dead
reckoners – r-statistic close to 1.00
• • Speakers of languages using relative
frames of reference will be poor dead
reckoners – r-statistic approaching zero.