Prof. dr. sc. Danica Škara
University of Split
dskara@ffst.hr
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS AND COGNITIVE
ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE
WEEK 4: LANGUAGE EVOLUTION AND
DEVELOPMENT
ANIMAL LANGUAGE
What is language?
“Language is a purely human and non-instinctive
method of communicating ideas, emotions and
desires by means of voluntrily produced
symbols.”
Edward Sapir (1921)
A language is a system for encoding and decoding
information.
 the term refers to the forms of communication
considered peculiar to humankind.
 In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the
human cognitive facility of creating and using
language.
Origin and evolution of language
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To ask where language comes from is to raise the
question of the origin of the cognitively modern
human mind.
The evolution of modern human language required
both the development of the anatomical apparatus for
speech and also neurological changes in the brain to
support language itself, but other species have some
of these capabilities without full language ability.
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The frontal lobes are where ideas are
created; plans constructed; thoughts
joined with their associations to form
new memories; and fleeting perceptions
held in mind until they are dispatched to
long-term memory or to oblivion.
This brain region is the home of
consciousness. Self-awareness arises here,
and emotions are transformed in this
place from physical survival systems to
subjective feelings.
The area of the frontal lobe most closely
associated with the generation of
consciousness is in the prefrontal cortex.
These four areas, which endow human
with fucntions are not available in other
animal:
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1) Belief in divine creation. Many societies
throughout history believed that language is the
gift of the gods to humans. The most familiar is
found in Genesis 2:20, which tells us that Adam
gave names to all living creatures. This belief
predicates that humans were created from the
start with an innate capacity to use language.
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Invention hypotheses. There are several
hypotheses as to how language might have been
consciously invented by humans based on a
more primitive system of hominid
communication.
Each hypothesis is predicated on the idea that
the invention of language and its gradual
refinement served as a continuous impetus to
additional human mental development.
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1) Warning hypothesis. Language may have
evolved from warning signals such as those used
by animals. Perhaps language started with a
warning to others, such as Look out, Run, or Help
to alert members of the tribe when some
lumbering beast was approaching.
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Gestural theory
The gestural theory states that human language
developed from gestures that were used for
simple communication.
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Each of the imitation hypotheses might
explain how certain isolated words of language
developed. Very few words in human language
are verbal icons. Most are symbols, displaying
an arbitrary relationship of sound and meaning.
(Example: the word tree in several languages:
Spanish árbol; French arbre;
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There are three distinct views of how language
evolved:
SOCIAL > Language arose through increased
socialisation in early settled communities and the
need for a communication system to support
hunting and farming.
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PHYSIOLOGICAL: the human articulators
appear to be specially adapted to language.
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NEUROLOGICAL: A lay view holds that
human beings are able to master the
complexities of language because they have
developed a higher intelligence or a larger brain.
Nativists vs. empiricists
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Nativist theories —Chomky is the preeminent
name here—place the distinctiveness of
language in specific genetic endowment for a
specifically genetically instructed language
module. Under that view, there is minimal
learning involved in acquiring a language.
Empiricists like Hobbes and Locke argued that
knowledge emerge ultimately from abstracted
sense impressions.

The precise form of language must be acquired
through exposure to a speech community.
Words are definitely not inbron, but the capacity
to acquire language and use it creatively seems to
be inborn. N. Chomsky calls this ability the
LAD (Language Acquisition Device).
Co-evolutionary theory
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There are also coevolutionary proposals: Language is
not an instinct and there is no genetically installed
linguistic black box in our brains. Language arose slowly
through cognitive and cultural inventiveness.
Language began as a cognitive adaptation and genetic
assimilation. Cognitive effort and genetic assimilation
interacted as language and brain co-evolved.
We have a vast, open-ended number of frames and
provisional conceptual assemblies that we manipulate.
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During the last few years the argument that both
archaic H. sapiens and Neanderthals had the
brain capacity, neural structure and vocal
apparatus for an advanced form of vocalization,
that should be called language, is compelling.
Was there one or more than one original
language? Was there one or more than one
invention of language?
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There are about 5,000 languages spoken on
Earth today. We know that there were even
more spoken in the past, when most people
lived in small bands or tribes rather than in large
states.
Monogenesis vs. polygenesis
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1) The oldest belief is that there was a single,
original language. The idea of a single ancestor
tongue is known today as monogenesis. In
Judeo-Christian tradition, the original language
was confused by divine intervention, as
described in the story of the Tower of Babel in
Genesis.
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The hypothesis of multiple linguistic origins that
often goes along with this hypothesis is known
as polygenesis. Each of the original languages
then would then have diverged into numerous
forms. The major language families of today
would be descended from these separate mother
tongues.
Animal communication
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Transmission of information from one animal
to another by means of sound, viisble sign or
behavoiur, taste or odour, electrical impulse,
touch, or a combination of these.
The vehicle for the provision of this
information is called a signal.
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Different contexts require different kinds of
information and thus different signals.
The number of signals in a species’ repertoire
can range from 5 or 6 in the simplest non-social
animals to 10-20 in social insects, such as bees
and ants, or to 30-40 in social vertebrates, such
as wolves and primates.
Design features of human language
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The following properties of human language have been
argued to separate it from animal communication:
Arbitrariness: There is no rational relationship between a
sound or sign and its meaning. (There is nothing intrinsically
"housy" about the word "house".)
Cultural transmission: Language is passed from one language
user to the next, consciously or unconsciously.
Discreteness: Language is composed of discrete units that are
used in combination to create meaning.
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Displacement: Languages can be used to
communicate ideas about things that are not in
the immediate vicinity either spatially or
temporally.
Duality: Language works on two levels at once, a
surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
Metalinguistics: Ability to discuss language itself.
Productivity: A finite number of units can be used
to create an infinite number of utterances.
Animals and language?
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Is language use a uniquely human ability?
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Parrots - can memorize chunks of human
speech
Polly wanna cracker
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But are they really producing utterances
based on an underlying meaning?
Animals and language?
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Is language use a uniquely human ability?
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Bird use songs to serve territorial and
courtship functions.
Tweet chirp chirp
warble
warble chirp.
Translation: this is my tree
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Can songs be used productively?
Animals and language?
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Is language use a uniquely human ability?
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Honey bees dance to indicate where a source
of nectar is.
• Angle of the dance indicates
direction
• Rate of looping indicates
distance
Some examples
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Animals - use a variety of methods to
communicate
Dogs bark
 Birds sing
 Bees dance
 People talk - we use language (as well as other
methods) for communication
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Animals and language?
Parrot
Dog
Bird
song
Arbitrariness
Displacement
Productivity
Discreteness
Semanticity
Duality of
patterning
?
?
?
?
?
Bee
dance
Human
Language
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Research with apes, like that of Francine
Patterson with Koko or Herbert Terrace with
Nim Chimpsky, suggested that apes are capable
of using language that meets some of these
requirements. However, no experiment has
shown a non-human being to be proficient in all
of these areas.
Can Chimpanzees Talk?
Conclusion
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It seems that we have a ‘language organ’ which other species
do not possess, a segment of our brain which is triggered by a
storage of development.
The results suggest that while chimpanzees and gorillas are
quite intelligent they are not capable of human language.
Rather they have a primitive version of the semantic ability
children use to begin learning language. Human beings seem
to have a different kind of intelligence!
Language has been shaped over many generations into a
system which reflects the way human thought is structured.