scholarly journals Reconstructing prehistoric languages

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1824) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Benítez-Burraco ◽  
Ljiljana Progovac
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Functional Features

This theme issue builds on the surge of interest in the field of language evolution as part of the broader field of human evolution, gathering some of the field's most prominent experts in order to achieve a deeper, richer understanding of human prehistory and the nature of prehistoric languages. Taken together, the contributions to this issue begin to outline a profile of the structural and functional features of prehistoric languages, including the type of sounds, the nature of the earliest grammars, the characteristics of the earliest vocabularies and some preferred uses, like conversation and insult. By also correlating certain specific features of language with the changes in brain organization during prehistory, the contributions to this issue directly engage the genetic and the neuroscientific aspects of human evolution and cognition. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages'.

scholarly journals Inferring recent evolutionary changes in speech sounds

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1824) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Moran ◽  
Nicholas A. Lester ◽  
Eitan Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Past ◽  
Evolutionary Changes ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we investigate evolutionarily recent changes in the distributions of speech sounds in the world's languages. In particular, we explore the impact of language contact in the past two millennia on today's distributions. Based on three extensive databases of phonological inventories, we analyse the discrepancies between the distribution of speech sounds of ancient and reconstructed languages, on the one hand, and those in present-day languages, on the other. Furthermore, we analyse the degree to which the diffusion of speech sounds via language contact played a role in these discrepancies. We find evidence for substantive differences between ancient and present-day distributions, as well as for the important role of language contact in shaping these distributions over time. Moreover, our findings suggest that the distributions of speech sounds across geographic macro-areas were homogenized to an observable extent in recent millennia. Our findings suggest that what we call the Implicit Uniformitarian Hypothesis, at least with respect to the composition of phonological inventories, cannot be held uncritically. Linguists who would like to draw inferences about human language based on present-day cross-linguistic distributions must consider their theories in light of even short-term language evolution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

scholarly journals Animal cognition and the evolution of human language: why we cannot focus solely on communication

2019 ◽  
Vol 375 (1789) ◽  
pp. 20190046 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Tecumseh Fitch
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
Communicative Signals

Studies of animal communication are often assumed to provide the ‘royal road’ to understanding the evolution of human language. After all, language is the pre-eminent system of human communication: doesn't it make sense to search for its precursors in animal communication systems? From this viewpoint, if some characteristic feature of human language is lacking in systems of animal communication, it represents a crucial gap in evolution, and evidence for an evolutionary discontinuity. Here I argue that we should reverse this logic: because a defining feature of human language is its ability to flexibly represent and recombine concepts, precursors for many important components of language should be sought in animal cognition rather than animal communication. Animal communication systems typically only permit expression of a small subset of the concepts that can be represented and manipulated by that species. Thus, if a particular concept is not expressed in a species' communication system this is not evidence that it lacks that concept. I conclude that if we focus exclusively on communicative signals, we sell the comparative analysis of language evolution short. Therefore, animal cognition provides a crucial (and often neglected) source of evidence regarding the biology and evolution of human language. This article is part of the theme issue ‘What can animal communication teach us about human language?’

scholarly journals Constructing a protolanguage: reconstructing prehistoric languages in a usage-based construction grammar framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1824) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Hartmann ◽  
Michael Pleyer
Keyword(s):  
Entire Range ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Prelinguistic Communication ◽  
Evolutionary Emergence

Construction grammar is an approach to language that posits that units and structures in language can be exhaustively described as pairings between form and meaning. These pairings are called constructions and can have different degrees of abstraction, i.e. they span the entire range from very concrete ( armadillo, avocado ) to very abstract constructions such as the ditransitive construction ( I gave her a book ). This approach has been applied to a wide variety of different areas of research in linguistics, such as how new constructions emerge and change historically. It has also been applied to investigate the evolutionary emergence of modern fully fledged language, i.e. the question of how systems of constructions can arise out of prelinguistic communication. In this paper, we review the contribution of usage-based construction grammar approaches to language change and language evolution to the questions of (i) the structure and nature of prehistoric languages and (ii) how constructions in prehistoric languages emerged out of non-linguistic or protolinguistic communication. In particular, we discuss the possibilities of using constructions as the main unit of analysis both in reconstructing predecessors of existing languages (protolanguages) and in formulating theories of how a potential predecessor of human language in general (protolanguage) must have looked like. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

scholarly journals The history of number words in the world's languages—what have we learnt so far?

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1824) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreea S. Calude
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Number Words ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language History ◽  
Number Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

For over 100 years, researchers from various disciplines have been enthralled and occupied by the study of number words. This article discusses implications for the study of deep history and human evolution that arise from this body of work. Phylogenetic modelling shows that low-limit number words are preserved across thousands of years, a pattern consistently observed in several language families. Cross-linguistic frequencies of use and experimental studies also point to widespread homogeneity in the use of number words. Yet linguistic typology and field documentation reports caution against positing a privileged linguistic category for number words, showing a wealth of variation in how number words are encoded across the world. In contrast with low-limit numbers, the higher numbers are characterized by a rapid and morphologically consistent pattern of expansion, and behave like grammatical phrasal units, following language-internal rules. Taken together, the evidence suggests that numbers are at the cross-roads of language history. For languages that do have productive and consistent number systems, numerals one to five are among the most reliable available linguistic fossils of deep history, defying change yet still bearing the marks of the past, while higher numbers emerge as innovative tools looking to the future, derived using language-internal patterns and created to meet the needs of modern speakers. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

scholarly journals Hearing and dementia: from ears to brain

Brain ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy C S Johnson ◽  
Charles R Marshall ◽  
Rimona S Weil ◽  
Doris-Eva Bamiou ◽  
Chris J D Hardy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Management Strategies ◽  
Lewy Body Disease ◽  
Stress Tests ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Treatment And Prevention ◽  
Hearing Function ◽  
Diagnosis Of Dementia ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
Neurodegenerative Dementias ◽  
Auditory Plasticity

Abstract The association between hearing impairment and dementia has emerged as a major public health challenge, with significant opportunities for earlier diagnosis, treatment and prevention. However, the nature of this association has not been defined. We hear with our brains, particularly within the complex soundscapes of everyday life: neurodegenerative pathologies target the auditory brain, and are therefore predicted to damage hearing function early and profoundly. Here we present evidence for this proposition, based on structural and functional features of auditory brain organization that confer vulnerability to neurodegeneration, the extensive, reciprocal interplay between ‘peripheral’ and ‘central’ hearing dysfunction, and recently characterized auditory signatures of canonical neurodegenerative dementias (Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body disease and frontotemporal dementia). Moving beyond any simple dichotomy of ear and brain, we argue for a reappraisal of the role of auditory cognitive dysfunction and the critical coupling of brain to peripheral organs of hearing in the dementias. We call for a clinical assessment of real-world hearing in these diseases that moves beyond pure tone perception to the development of novel auditory ‘cognitive stress tests’ and proximity markers for the early diagnosis of dementia and management strategies that harness retained auditory plasticity.

scholarly journals The lure of death: suicide and human evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1754) ◽  
pp. 20170269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Mental Pain ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead

At some point in evolutionary history, human beings came to understand, as no non-human animals do, that death brings to an end a person's bodily and mental presence in the world. A potentially devastating consequence was that individuals, seeking to escape physical or mental pain, might choose to kill themselves. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals’.

scholarly journals Comparing prehistoric constructed languages: world-building and its role in understanding prehistoric languages

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1824) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Schreyer ◽  
David Adger
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Culture Media ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
The World ◽  
Insight Into

In this paper, we compare the languages each of the authors invented as prehistoric languages for popular culture media. Schreyer's language, Beama , was created for the film Alpha (2018), while Adger's language, Tan!aa Kawawa ki, was created for a television series on how early hominins spread throughout the world (the series was green-lit but then cancelled). We argue that though this creative process may seem far removed from classical research paradigms on language evolution, it can provide some insight into how disparate research on the possible properties of prehistoric languages can be brought together to illustrate how these languages might have worked as whole linguistic systems within these imagined worlds, as well as in prehistory. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

Language evolution without evolution

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 669-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Bickerton
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Occam’S Razor ◽  
Syntactic Relations ◽  
Occam's Razor

Jackendoff's major syntactic exemplar is deeply unrepresentative of most syntactic relations and operations. His treatment of language evolution is vulnerable to Occam's Razor, hypothesizing stages of dubious independence and unexplained adaptiveness, and effectively divorcing the evolution of language from other aspects of human evolution. In particular, it ignores connections between language and the massive discontinuities in human cognitive evolution.

scholarly journals Neuroscience needs evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1844) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cisek ◽  
Benjamin Y. Hayden
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Functional Characterization ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Systems Neuroscience ◽  
Behavioural Experiments ◽  
Neural Evolution ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Shed Light

The nervous system is a product of evolution. That is, it was constructed through a long series of modifications, within the strong constraints of heredity, and continuously subjected to intense selection pressures. As a result, the organization and functions of the brain are shaped by its history. We believe that this fact, underappreciated in contemporary systems neuroscience, offers an invaluable aid for helping us resolve the brain's mysteries. Indeed, we think that the consideration of evolutionary history ought to take its place alongside other intellectual tools used to understand the brain, such as behavioural experiments, studies of anatomical structure and functional characterization based on recordings of neural activity. In this introduction, we argue for the importance of evolution by highlighting specific examples of ways that evolutionary theory can enhance neuroscience. The rest of the theme issue elaborates this point, emphasizing the conservative nature of neural evolution, the important consequences of specific transitions that occurred in our history, and the ways in which considerations of evolution can shed light on issues ranging from specific mechanisms to fundamental principles of brain organization. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Systems neuroscience through the lens of evolutionary theory’.

Toward a neuroscope: An application of high-performance computing for real-time evaluation of brain function using MRI

1994 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 922-923
Author(s):  
C. S. Potter ◽  
C. D. Gregory ◽  
H. D. Morris ◽  
Z.-P. Liang ◽  
P. C. Lauterbur
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Complex Signal ◽  
Time Step ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Cognitive Studies ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Imaging And Spectroscopy ◽  
3D Anatomy

Over the past few years, several laboratories have demonstrated that changes in local neuronal activity associated with human brain function can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy. Using these methods, the effects of sensory and motor stimulation have been observed and cognitive studies have begun. These new methods promise to make possible even more rapid and extensive studies of brain organization and responses than those now in use, such as positron emission tomography.Human brain studies are enormously complex. Signal changes on the order of a few percent must be detected against the background of the complex 3D anatomy of the human brain. Today, most functional MR experiments are performed using several 2D slice images acquired at each time step or stimulation condition of the experimental protocol. It is generally believed that true 3D experiments must be performed for many cognitive experiments. To provide adequate resolution, this requires that data must be acquired faster and/or more efficiently to support 3D functional analysis.

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