scholarly journals Reflexivity, Functional Reference, and Modularity: Alternative Targets for Language Origins

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis LaCroix
Keyword(s):  
Language Origins

Language Origins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Przemysław Żywiczyński
Keyword(s):  
Language Origins

scholarly journals Speech, gesture and the origins of language

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLEM J. M. LEVELT
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Genetic Evidence ◽  
Language Origins ◽  
Sole Purpose ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Articulatory Movements ◽  
The 19Th Century

During the second half of the 19th century, the psychology of language was invented as a discipline for the sole purpose of explaining the evolution of spoken language. These efforts culminated in Wilhelm Wundt's monumental Die Sprache of 1900, which outlined the psychological mechanisms involved in producing utterances and considered how these mechanisms could have evolved. Wundt assumes that articulatory movements were originally rather arbitrary concomitants of larger, meaningful expressive bodily gestures. The sounds such articulations happened to produce slowly acquired the meaning of the gesture as a whole, ultimately making the gesture superfluous. Over a century later, gestural theories of language origins still abound. I argue that such theories are unlikely and wasteful, given the biological, neurological and genetic evidence.

Sciences of complexity and language origins: an alternative to natural selection

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Víctor M Longa
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Specific Property ◽  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Language Origins ◽  
Complex Design ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
Sciences Of Complexity

AbstractNatural selection is claimed to be the only way to explain complex design. The same assumption has also been held for language. However, sciences of complexity have shown, from a wide range of domains, the existence of a clear alternative: self-organisation, spontaneous patterns of order arising from chaos. According to this view, design derives from internal factors (dynamic interaction of the elements within the system) rather than from adaptation to the environment by means of selection. This paper aims to apply sciences of complexity to language origins; it shows that preexisting and well established ideas can be rethought according to such a view. The main objective of the paper is to illustrate the new and promising horizons that complexity could open as regards the origins of the most specific property of human beings.

The Contribution of Psycholinguistics to the Study of Language Origins

1992 ◽  
pp. 183-193
Author(s):  
Walburga Raffler-Engel
Keyword(s):  
Language Origins

Studies in Language Origins

1989 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Origins

Studies in Language Origins

1991 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Origins

Sharpening Occam's razor: Is there need for a hand-signing stage prior to vocal communication?

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conrado Bosman ◽  
Vladimir López ◽  
Francisco Aboitiz
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Communication ◽  
Mirror Neuron System ◽  
Mirror Neuron ◽  
Language Origins ◽  
Neuron System ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
Evolutionary Scenario ◽  
Occam’S Razor ◽  
Laryngeal Control

We commend Arbib for his original proposal that a mirror neuron system may have participated in language origins. However, in our view he proposes a complex evolutionary scenario that could be more parsimonious. We see no necessity to propose a hand-based signing stage as ancestral to vocal communication. The prefrontal system involved in human speech may have its precursors in the monkey's inferior frontal cortical domain, which is responsive to vocalizations and is related to laryngeal control.

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