Writing

Help

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

Review the two sample student essays here:
WA#2-Sample Language Four Source Essay
WA#3-Sample Language Six Source Essay
Compare the two documents.
Review the webpage, Transitions from Purdue OWL
Answer the following prompts and post your responses.
As noted, these essays aren’t perfect. The writer is still working to synthesize the sources.
However, the Six-Source Essay adds some new material and other improvements.

After reading the two articles and the information on transitions, answer the following questions:

(1) Other than adding new sources, how has the writer improved, or changed, the material from
the Four-Source Essay to the Six-Source Essay? (Answer in 1-3 sentences.) (E.g., “The writer’s
thesis has become more focused, centering on…”)

(2) What sources has she added? What effect do the new source(s) have on the paper? (1-3
sentences) (E.g., “The new sources serve to emphasize the writer’s point that…”)

(3) Pick a paragraph section of the Six-Source Essay where synthesis needs to be improved,
and add an appropriate transitional phrase/sentence.

Consider the use of transitions, for example. Transitions are like signs for your readers. They
give direction and they help to link things together. Good transitions move the reader from one
point to the next, and they also focus the attention of the reader on the main idea of the essay.
You can use words or phrases as transitions, but you must be careful to choose words that
indicate the right relationship between ideas. Here are a few examples of relationships you can
indicate with transitions: (1) to show addition: and, also, in addition, furthermore. (2) to give
examples: for example, for instance, specifically (3) to compare: also, likewise, similarly (4) to
contrast: however, on the other hand, yet, although (5) to summarize or conclude: therefore, in
other words (6) to show time: after, before, during, next, finally, meanwhile, immediately (7) to
show place or direction: above, below, nearby, close, far, left, right (8) to indicate logical
relationships: therefore, consequently, as a result, thus, since, because.

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE 1

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE 8

Searching for the Origins of Language

xxxxxx xxxx

xxxx

University of Maryland Global Campus

WRTG 391: Advance Research Writing

xxxxxx xxxx

Introduction

Language is a ubiquitous feature of our lives. As such it may not seem to stand out as a particularly remarkable characteristic of being human, unless one considers what the human animal would be like without the ability to comprehend and use language. In fact, it could be argued that human language is one of the few traits which completely distinguishes human behavior from that of other animals, as so much of our success depends upon our manipulation of complex, language-based, communication. Language involves combining and recombining concepts. You use language in an internal language of thought. It can be used for communication through either speech, signing, or writing. However, in the context of linguistics, writing is considered an externalization which builds upon language, but is not language itself. The capacity for language, rather than the way it is externalized is the issue which has inspired the deepest curiosity. Although over the past seventy years many scientists have studied other animal’s communication systems in the search for insight into the origins of human language, it is cognition which now seems to hold the key to understanding its evolution.

What is the Definition of Language?

When people developed an interest in how human language evolved, they began to study animal communication systems. But to compare animal communication systems to human language they first had to have a clear understanding of the features that defined language. Although people have been analyzing language and describing its grammar for centuries, the modern field of linguistics developed only in the last century. Researchers looked to this emerging field, and to the work of Noam Chomsky in particular, for help in defining the essentials of human communication (Jackendoff & Pinker, 2005).

Human language is comprised of certain core elements which are present whether you’re using speech or sign language; phonology (sound/spatial-temporal quality), semantics (symbols with meaning, like words), grammar (the particular rules of a given language), and syntax (a subset of grammar; more general rules referring to sentence structure) (Suzuki, et al. 2019; Jackendoff & Pinker, 2005). When considering syntax, Suzuki et al. suggest three criteria for compositional syntax: 1. That the meaning of individual signals, and combinations thereof reflect a context; 2. That the meaning of a combination of words is only understood because the component parts are meaningful; 3. And further, that the precise order of the signals (i.e. words in a sentence) can determine the meaning (2019). With this kind of analysis, researchers could determine if animal communication systems had these important characteristics of human language.

What is Unique About Human Language?

Some researchers came to the opinion that there is another essential aspect of human language which is not only characteristic but unique. Bolhuis et al. (2014) locate this uniqueness in a cognitive ability to combine mental representations, then recursively re-combine these to create mental representations of almost infinitely complex ideas—they call this ability “merge.” They claim that merging concepts recursively is the core of human grammar, and that this is innate and uniquely human. The merge concept suggests that these combinations are pairwise: taking n elements, placing them into pairs, and recombining those in nearly infinite compositions.

A competing if similar theory is termed “Unification” (Jackendoff & Pinker, 2005). Based partly on considerations of the nature of idioms, Jackendoff and Pinker propose that a binary rearrangement of similar elements is inadequate to explain the richness of human language. Bolhuis et al. present no explanation for idioms where Jackendoff and Pinker insist that no explanation of human language can ignore sentences which are consistent with proper grammatical usage, but have an actual meaning which is different from their literal meaning (e.g. ‘Bite the bullet’). The merge theory assumes that all sentences are comprised of smaller elements for which we have mental representations. The Unification theory proposes that mental representations are much more flexible, even for an entire sentence, which would be the case for an idiom like ‘Stick ‘em up.’ Humans can think non-linguistically, but a large portion of our stream of consciousness and mental life is in the form of language.

The similarity in both the Unification and merge theories is that we compose sentences by recombining elements. It is these processing characteristics which researchers generally agree most fully typify the core of human language. Therefore these features are what were looked for as a basis for comparison in animal communication systems as well as in the cognitive capabilities of animals.

Animal Communication as an Insight into the Evolution of Human Language

Clearly animals communicate too. When researchers first began investigating the question of the evolution of human language they looked mainly to our closest genetic relatives, the great apes, and to birdsong, the most complex observed example of animal communication. Everyone who has heard birdsong can recognize that it consists of different notes, combined in different orders, and one might imagine that it is used for communication rather than expending energy for no purpose. Writing of chick-a-dee birdsong, Hailman observed that “the staggering variety of call-types created from combinations of note-types and their repetitions is not likely to be haphazard variation” (1985, p. 1). As the title The “chick-a-dee” calls of Parus atricapillus: A recombinant system of animal communication compared with written English suggests, in 1985 there were very high hopes for finding close analogies between birdsong and human language.

However, the study of birdsong as well as other animal communication systems continues. Suzuki et al. give a brief overview of the current state of the field (2019). They describe observations which suggest that various species may combine predator warning calls with contact calls. The significant point is that different calls with consistently observed responses (i.e. meanings) may when combined with other calls provoke entirely different responses. Nevertheless, the evidence is not overpowering. For instance, paired meanings in putty-nosed monkeys are given as a possible example of idiomatic usage (Suzuki et al., 2019, p. 5). However, this may simply be a recombination of two sounds, each with a meaning, where the combined sound has a third meaning such as in the German word Kühlschrank—kühl meaning cool, and Schrank meaning cupboard, which combined means refrigerator.

A different research path was to try to teach language to our closest genetic relatives (chimps, gorillas, and bonobos). They were taught sign languages or language through a symbolic interface, as it was clear that they could not mimic sounds. While people enthused over early results, which exhibited how many concepts apes could learn to sign, combinations were another matter. In fact, one of the more impressive outcomes was announced in 1977, when a chimpanzee named Washoe saw a swan in the park and signed ‘Water + Bird’ (Suzuki et al., 2019). However, given that there were never repeated examples of this kind of spontaneous generation of a combination of words/signs to indicate a concept it is not clear that Washoe’s communication even rose to the level of the putty-nosed monkey’s Kühlschrank.

Cognition as an Insight into the Evolution of Human Language

The research program in the latter half of the previous century attempting to teach great apes human language highlighted the simplicity of great ape signaling behavior, but this stands in great contrast to ongoing research showing the sophistication of great ape cognitive capacities. Tecumseh Fitch points out that “animal signals do not equal animal concepts” (2019, p. 4). In fact, there is now clear evidence that many species have considerable cognitive sophistication. Dolphins for example can demonstrate in their behavioral responses that they are able to interpret complex sentences with grammatical order, as well as concepts like ‘same’ and ‘different’ (Tecumseh Fitch, 2019). Yet they have never been successfully trained to communicate in a way which could be viewed as either resembling or even roughly translating to the system of grammar, and semantics that underlies human language.

Many animals display evidence of highly complex mental representations, intricate concepts, planning for the future, social relationships, and mental maps of their environment (Tecumseh Fitch, 2019). Tecumseh Fitch (2019) describes evidence that some animals even have a theory of mind, which does not begin to develop in humans until about age 3-5. This could be deduced from the fact that they will hide something desirable only once their competitor is not looking, or that they can recognize themselves as an individual in a mirror.

There is always skepticism about recognizing whether animals have these cognitive capacities, because they cannot directly tell us. However, more and more researchers are conducting subtle experiments that can demonstrate that the animal subject is not simply being rewarded for giving the ‘right’ answer without truly having a cognitive representation of the concept under examination. For example, to demonstrate the capacity for the perception of sequencing inherent to syntactic structure, researchers designed an experiment to show that it was not simply incidental rewards that lead to the conclusion that monkeys could make cognitive inferences like, if a is to the left of b, and b is to the left of c, then it follows that a is to the left of c (Jensen et al. 2019). Illustrative of trends in the field, Jensen’s senior coauthor Herbert Terrace famously lead a project in the 1970s attempting to teach language to a chimpanzee subject whom they playfully named, Nim Chimpsky (Sukuki et al., 2019). Clearly in the intervening decades Terrace shifted his focus from animal communication to animal cognition as a central means of insight to the evolution of human language.

Conclusion

The most unique attribute of human language, the process of recombining mental representations, whether best described as merge or Unification, is a capacity which has yet to be conclusively demonstrated in animals. Tecumseh Fitch (2019) emphasizes how important it would be to discover whether the merge process is present in animal cognition, saying that it is crucial to “…explore in detail animals’ abilities to combine concepts. To the extent that they can do so in a flexible, hierarchical manner, I think we can see the germs of the recursive symbolic system that underlies human linguistic concepts” (p. 6). Semantics (i.e. meaningful concepts) are clearly present in animals. The question of whether these concepts can be recombined in a way which resembles recursive syntax is less clear. If the recursive ability which underlies syntax could be found in the cognitive systems of animals, then animals may have something closer to a language of thought than we are currently able to demonstrate. Given the direction that research has previously gone and its current projections, it seems unlikely that the study of animal communication systems alone will provide the breakthrough insights into the origins of human language. The study of animal cognition currently looks more promising.

References

Bolhuis, J. J., Tattersall, I., Chomsky, N., & Berwick, R. C. (2014). How Could Language Have Evolved? PLoS Biology, 12(8), 1–6.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001934

Hailman, J. P., Ficken, M. S., & Ficken, R. W. (1985). The “chick-a-dee” calls of Parus atricapillus: A recombinant system of animal communication compared with written English. Semiotica, 56(3/4), 191.

https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/SEMI/html

Jackendoff, R., & Pinker, S. (2005). The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky). Elsevier Cognition, 97, 211-225.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.04.006

Jensen, G., Alkan, Y., Ferrera, V. P., & Terrace, H. S. (2019). Reward associations do not explain transitive inference performance in monkeys. Science Advances, 5(7), eaaw2089.

https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2089

Suzuki, T. N., Wheatcroft, D., & Griesser M. (2019). The syntax–semantics interface in animal vocal communication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375: 20190046.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0405

Tecumseh Fitch, W. (2019, November 18). Animal cognition and the evolution of human language: why we cannot focus solely on communication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375: 20190046.

http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0046

SEARCHING FOR THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE 1

SEARCHING FOR THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE 2

Searching for the Origins of Human Language

xxxxxx xxxx

xxxx

WRTG 391: Advance Research Writing

University of Maryland Global Campus

xxxxxx xxxx

Language is a ubiquitous feature of our lives. As such it may not seem to stand out as a particularly remarkable characteristic of being human, unless one considers what the human animal would be like without the ability to comprehend and use language. In fact, it could be argued that human language is one of the few traits which completely distinguish human behavior from that of other animals, as so much of our success depends upon our manipulation of complex, language-based, communication. Language involves combining and recombining concepts. You use language in an internal language of thought. It can be used for communication through either speech, signing, or writing. In the context of linguistics, writing is an externalization of language but not considered itself to be language. The capacity for language, rather than the way it is externalized is the issue which has inspired the deepest curiosity. Questions surrounding the evolution of human language are still actively debated today by researchers in a variety of fields, despite having already been studied intensively for many decades. The topic is now being tackled by researchers from a wider range of backgrounds, each brining a special perspective to an established sphere of enquiry.

Within the large body of literature surrounding the evolution of human language, one of the most prominent thinkers is a man sometimes referred to as the father of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky first argued for the innateness and unique nature of human language, and this is reiterated and expanded on in his collaboration with Bolhuis et al. (2014). Bolhuis et al. (2014) locate the uniqueness of human language in a cognitive ability to combine mental representations, then recursively combine these to create mental representations of almost infinitely complex ideas—they call this ability “merge.” They claim that merging concepts recursively is the core of human grammar, and that this is innate and uniquely human. By contrast, Tecumseh Fitch (2019) emphasizes the continuity of the capacity for mental representation between humans and animals. Tecumseh Fitch (2019) wonders if the merge tendency may be observable in animals, saying that it is crucial to “…explore in detail animals’ abilities to combine concepts. To the extent that they can do so in a flexible, hierarchical manner, I think we can see the germs of the recursive symbolic system that underlies human linguistic concepts” (p. 6).

These writers argue about whether there is a gap in cognitive ability to merge mental representations. However, they agree that even if language evolved for the purpose of communication, evidence suggests that it did not evolve directly from great ape communication systems, which are largely based on instinctive calls (Tecumseh Fitch, 2019). Bolhuis et al., (2014) state that “the origin of the language faculty does not generally seem to be informed by considerations of the evolution of communication” (p. 1). Similarly, Tecumseh Fitch (2019) argues using evidence from various animal behavior studies, that great ape cognitive sophistication reached a level where it supplied all the elements necessary for language to evolve. Starting from a less cognitive perspective, Dunbar (2017) hypothesizes that human language evolved specifically to facilitate the social interactions necessary for humans to form larger social groups. Dunbar analyzed data showing that primate species that live in larger groups have larger neocortical surface areas and spend more time in social interactions/mutual-grooming (2017, p. 209). Primates in large groups form alliances through mutual grooming. The implication Dunbar (2017) drew is that even for early humans, maintaining social cohesion in typical group sizes would have demanded more than twelve hours a day spent grooming (longer than there is daylight most places). Humans needed something to allow bonding with more than one potential ally at a time. Being able to gossip and bond using language fit the bill. Another researcher, Donald (2017) proposes a quite different alternative, namely that early humans needed language to communicate about tools. Using paleo genetic analysis and records of human tool construction, Donald (2017) reconstructs the gradual emergence of complex tools early in human history and finds that the “…archeological evidence suggests strongly that human ancestors were skilled [tool makers] long before they were articulate” (p. 205). The cognitive capacity required for making complex multi-part tools, and showing your children how to make them, provided the impetus for tool-making and language to co-evolve.

These writers have very different approaches to finding evidence about the how human language evolved. The issue of exactly how speech per se developed, the steps along the way, are not addressed in any detail except by Dunbar (2017). Donald (2017) proposes that there must have been a stepwise co-evolution from protolanguage and moderately complex material creations to fully developed language embedded in a fully complex material culture. However, no details are mentioned. Dunbar (2017) discusses evidence pointing to the development of voluntary breath control needed for speech. He explains that the breath control for speech requires such an enlarged thoracic nerve that the thoracic spine was modified to accommodate it (Dunbar, 2017). As a consequence, the fossil records show which hominids had breath control. He also considered the issue of how the steps on the road to language would have been rewarded. He suggests that laughter would have been the first rewarding vocal bonding signal (Dunbar, 2017, p. 210). Implied is that it is both rewarding and pro-social even in modern humans. He then speculates that music or chanting may have played the next a role, citing examples of modern humans using songs without meaningful words to bond while working together (Dunbar, 2017). The final stage, developing language sophisticated enough to discuss events and individuals, is not as elaborated. But Dunbar (2017) does note that in modern workplaces a large part of verbal communication is not about work but instead centers around social chatter, and gossip about mutual acquaintances, or famous people.

The range of ideas about the origins of human language is clearly vast. Even ideas about what questions are most important vary. Yet by considering a range of evidence from the fields as disparate as animal cognition, archeology, paleo-genetics, musicology, anatomy, and considerations of the rewarding qualities of various types of speech, an interdisciplinary approach gives hope that progress may gradually be realized. More and more modern researchers are focused on language as a cognitive phenomenon. Even a researcher like Dunbar (2017) who sees language as evolving for the purposes of communication emphasizes that it was to discuss cognitive concepts like the motivations of other individuals (i.e. theory of mind). Given the direction that research has gone and is now continuing, it seems less likely that the study of animal communication systems alone will provide the breakthrough insights into human language origins.

References

Bolhuis, J. J., Tattersall, I., Chomsky, N., & Berwick, R. C. (2014). How Could Language Have Evolved? PLoS Biology, 12(8), 1–6.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001934

Donald, M. (2017). Key cognitive preconditions for the evolution of language. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 204–208.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.3758/s13423-016-1102-x

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2017). Group size, vocal grooming and the origins of language. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 209–212.

https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1122-6

Tecumseh Fitch, W. (2019, November 18). Animal cognition and the evolution of human language: why we cannot focus solely on communication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375: 20190046.

http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0046