Language I

Question 1

what differentiates communication from language?

Answer 1

communication involves behaviours that convey information between members of a species, such as turn-taking, intonation, gestures, eye gaze control, and touch. Language is a specialised form of communication with symbols (e.g. words) and rules for assembling the symbols (grammar)

Question 2

What is the significance of protolanguages in evolution?

Answer 2

Protolanguages are considered precursors to complete languages. They represent intermediate stages in the evolution of language, with different types proposed, such as gestural, musical, and lexical protolanguages.

Question 3

What are the proposed timelines for language evolution?

Answer 3

If it is uniquely human, then it emerged about 100,000 to 200,00 years ago. If not, language could be seen as the result of millions of years of cognitive evolution across animal species. In this case, the question becomes identifying when aspects of language emerged in related species.

Question 4

How might language have emerged in humans?

Answer 4

Either slowly through Darwinian natural selection (gradualism), or suddenly due to a genetic mutation or brain reorganisation.

Question 5

What is the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in relation to language evolution?

Answer 5

the increase in creative works in the archaeological record, seen as an indirect proxy for language. Earliest indications of symbolic behaviour come from Homo sapiens, at sites dated roughly 100,000 years.

Question 6

What is the human capacity for language according to Tecumseh Fitch (2010)?

Answer 6

humans have a unique communication system that allows us to represent and communicate arbitrary novel thoughts in detail.

Humans can easily understand sentences they have never heard, and express thoughts no one ever thought before.

Question 7

What mechanisms allow for the human capacity for infinite expression in languages?

Answer 7

Recursive syntax or phrase structure grammar.

Rules can be applied more than once in generating sentences, and there’s no limit to recursion to produce more complex sentences.

Question 8

Who was Nim Chimpsky and what was significant about him, and why was the experiment a failure?

Answer 8

Nim Chimpsky was the subject of a 1960’s experiment aimed to challenge Noam Chomsky’s theories by teaching a chimp sign language. However, despite some apparent successes, Nim’s sign use did not reach the level of infinite expression characteristics of human language.

Question 9

What are modern theories of how our vocally dominated language system evolved?

Answer 9

either a visual/manual communication system like pantomime or gesture (Arbib, Corballis,

a vocal/auditory (“musical”) communication system (Darwin, Brown),

or vocal/auditory communication system with a shared lexicon but no syntax (“lexical”)

Question 10

How do gesture-based theories explain language evolution?

Answer 10

manual gestures provided the “scaffolding” for a system of vocal utterances from which protolanguage emerged. These theories emphasise shared neurobiological mechanisms, cerebral lateralisation of function, and the role of mirror neurons.

Question 11

What distinguishes communicative gestures from non-communicative gestures?

Answer 11

communicative gestures include pantomime and co-speech gestures, used to convey specific information. Non-communicative gestures can express thoughts different from intended communication and are produced even when others are not present, such as when on the phone.

Question 12

What challenges are associated with the transition from gesture to spoken language?

Answer 12

Gesture-based theories struggle to explain how a fully vocal system evolved from a gesture system. Various hypotheses, such as the need to communicate in the dark or freeing the hands for other tasks, have been proposed, but each has significant counterarguments.

Question 13

What are the types of communicative gestures?

Answer 13

pantomime
deictic gestures (e.g., pointing)
iconic gestures (e.g, using hands to show size)
emblematic gestures (e.g, thumbs-up)
beats (matching the rhythmic pattern of speech)
metaphorical/lexical gestures (linked to spoken words).

Question 14

The two neurobiological mechanisms proposed for the gestural evolution of language are cerebral lateralisation and mirror neurons, explain what they mean.

Answer 14

cerebral lateralisation - a correlation between right-hand preference and language lateralised in the left hemisphere.

Mirror neurons are a class of visuomotor neurons that fire when goal-directed actions are observed and executed.

Question 15

What are the challenges associated with the concept of cerebral lateralisation?

Answer 15

The correlation between hand preference and language dominance is statistical and does not indicate a direct casual association. Moreover, left-handers can have right-hemisphere representation of language, which suggests nothing special about the left hemisphere and language.

Question 16

Why are mirror neurons important in understanding the shared mechanisms of neurobiology in gestural protolanguage?

Answer 16

As these neurons fire both when goal-directed mouth or hand actions are observed and executed. They might be involved in understanding action meaning and represent a shared primate neurobiological mechanism for a gestural protolanguage.

Question 17

What are the stages of the transition to spoken language according to Arbib (2005) (the seven stages)?

Answer 17

Arbib proposes seven stages:
1. grasping
2. mirror system for grasping,
3. simple imitation (occurring within our primate ancestors)
4. complex imitation
5. proposing
6. protospeech
7. modern language (resulting in the abilities of modern humans).

However, the selective pressures that promoted the transition from proposing to protospeech remain unknown.

Question 18

What are the issues with cross-species homologies in gestural protolanguage evolution theories?

Answer 18

Major differences are often obscured or ignored by proponents of gestural protolanguage evolution theories. For example, there are unique neural pathways in monkeys and humans that are not equivalent, making meaningful comparisons difficult.

Question 19

What are the arguments against the evolution of language from gesture?

Answer 19

Questions arise such as why language did not remain gestural, given that sign language demonstrates the viability of non-vocal language. Furthermore, the evolutionary risk of choking due to the repositioning of the larynx for speech raises doubts.

Question 20

What is Darwin’s theory of language evolution?

Answer 20

Darwin proposed that language evolved from a musical protolanguage, a system where meanings were attached to various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and instinctive human cries. He considered this evolutionary path from song, not manual gestures.

Question 21

In musical protolanguage, the output of phonological systems is more varied than syntactic and semantic systems. Explain how phonology relates to meaning and linguistics.

Answer 21

Phonology is an independent generative system and meanings are attached to phonological forms. Bare sounds/phonology have a non-linguistic parrallel in music.

Question 22

Counter to the shared neurobiological perspective of music and language, what did Rogalsky et al. 2011, find in their study on language systems and music perception?

Answer 22

Music production does not engage the language system, and judgements about music structure are possible even in the presence of sever damage to the language network. Overall, music perceptions does not engage the language structure - there are no neurobiological substrates for music and language.

Question 23

What are the two neurobiological mechanisms proposed in support of gestural evolution accounts?

Answer 23

Cerebral lateralisation (Corballis) and mirror neurons (Arbib)

Question 24

What is the correlation between hand preference and language dominance?

Answer 24

The correlation is statistical and does not reflect a direct causal relation

Question 25

How does musical “protolanguage” differ from language and why?

Answer 25

It differs due to repetition as language generation is biased towards novelty in conveying meaning and informativeness. Musical protolanguage evolutionary theories do not explain co-speech gestures nor signed languages.

Question 26

Why would learning and spreading musical protolanguage at the population level be difficult?

Answer 26

It would take tens of thousands of yeas to assign fixed meanings/sounds to musical protolanguage. Hence, the evolution of spoken language.

Question 27

What are the issues with cerebral lateralisation providing evidence for gestural evolution of language theories?

Answer 27

Left-handers can have right-hemisphere representation of language due to developmental insult/injury. Songbirds also show left lateralisation for communicative sounds but don’t have hands. In apes, some aspects of gesture are biased towards the right hemisphere.

Question 28

What is the role of mirror neurons in gestural origins of protolanguage forming modern language?

Answer 28

Mirror neurons are a class of visuomotor neurons that fire both when goal-directed mouth or hand actions are both observed and executed. They might transform visual information into knowledge coded at an abstract level.

Question 29

According to Arbib (2005), what are the seven stages in the transition to modern language?

Answer 29

The stages are:
S1 - grasping
S2 - mirror system for grasping
S3 - simple imitation
S4 - complex imitation
S5 - proposing
S6 - protospeech
S7 - modern language

Question 30

What do cross-species homologies represent in language evolution theories?

Answer 30

Homologies between monkey and human neuroanatomy are frequently presented as evidence for gestural protolanguage evolution theories

Question 31

Why is the theory of evolution from gesture questioned?

Answer 31

It does not explain why speech evolved at all, particularly when chocking to death is a potential by-product of speech evolution due to the repositioning of the larynx

Question 32

How does Darwin’s musical protolanguage theory view the evolution of language?

Answer 32

It is the idea that language evolved from a musical protolanguage that connects definite sounds with definite ideas

Question 33

What are the main assumptions of lexical protolanguage theory?

Answer 33

It assumes that a non syntactical lexicon evolved into language as a system of representation.

Communication is a secondary feature, and conceptual representations predate language by millions of years.

Question 34

What is the importance of Nicaraguan Sign Language providing evidence for syntactic language generation?

Answer 34

Nicaraguan sign Language developed de novo by deaf children, transitioning from a pidgin to a fully syntactic language in a single generation. This supports the idea of an innate ability to learn language and the human brain being universally wired for language.

Question 35

In molecular genetics and language, there is consistent mention of the FoxP2 gene being significant in language acquisition in humans. Why is this so significant? (remember: it has something to do with the human-neanderthal split)

Answer 35

This is a gene that carried two amino acid substitutions after the divergence from chimpanzees in evolution. Meaning the human brain was reshaped though several genetic events in the human-neanderthal split, thus providing evidence for a cognitive change in humans exclusively.

Question 36

How did the discovery of the FoxP2 gene change our understanding of language being exclusively human?

Answer 36

FoxP2’s transcription factor when mutated disrupts oral and facial sequencing in humans. A gene that is not shared with other primates.

Question 37

In Molecular genetics and evolution, the FoxP2 gene in humans had a nucleotide mutation to the FoxP2 gene in neanderthals occurring in the last 50,000 years. While it helps with motor sequencing, it doesn’t tell you anything about how you develop concepts, abstract thought, and syntax. So then, what can we assume about language based on this and how do genetics provide insight into cognitive changes for language acquisiton? (think: pleiotropic)

Answer 37

If we assume language is the result of a combination of various traits in related species (audition, vision, short and long-term memory), then language must be a complex trait.

Based on this, complex traits involving gene-to-phenotype mappings, as all genes are pleiotropic (influence multiple, seemingly unrelated traits) then many genes of small effect size relate to language. Therefor, this could be evidence for the cognitive genetic mutations involved in language acquisition.

Question 38

What does the “fixed” language genotype imply for phylogenetic analysis?

Answer 38

Since the language genotype is fixed, it has a fixed neurobiological architecture. Given it is fixed, it cannot be informative for phylogenetic analyses i.e., comparative analysis between species.

Question 39

what is the impact of language acquisition on cognitive development?

Answer 39

It influences the development of working memory, planning, reasoning in the prefrontal cortex. This is evident in studies on linguistic relativism and bilingualism/multilingualism.

Question 40

What is linguistic relativism?

Answer 40

Linguistic relativism proposes that the language we use influences how we perceive and think about the world.

Question 41

What is the effect of bilingualism on cognitive development from birth?

Answer 41

Everyday experiences with more than one language, or bilingualism, have been shown to influence cognitive development from birth.

Question 42

How does language influence our reality according to philosophers James and Wittgenstein?

Answer 42

Language, thought, and reality share a common structure, meaning our language influences our perception of reality.

Question 43

What is the theory of linguistic relativity?

Answer 43

The theory of linguistic relativity, also known as the Whorfian or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, suggests that the diversity of linguistic structures affects how people perceive and think about the world. It often is framed in terms of linguistic determinism, suggesting that your language determines how you think.

Question 44

In the examples of colour, time, and direction being linguistically relative, what does this mean for language perception?

Answer 44

It shows that language differs on temporal and spatial dimensions relative to the language spoken, meaning that language differences are a result of how someone is brought up.

Question 45

What does linguistic relativity imply about spatial and temporal understanding?

Answer 45

According to linguistic relativity, if a language has no future tense or specific words for directions, it can influence the understanding of the passage of time and space. This is evident in languages like Mandarin and Indigenous Australian languages.

Question 46

How does spatial cognition relate to language?

Answer 46

Some aspects of spatial cognition in humans covary with the acquisition of spatial language. For example, 1 to 4-year-old children who produce more spatial language than their peers are more likely to perform better on non-linguistic spatial problem-socking tasks at later ages.

Question 47

How does language influence spatial abilities?

Answer 47

Language acquisition correlates with the emergence of spatial abilities. For example, children who have acquired words like ‘left’, ‘right’, and ‘middle’ perform better in spatial tasks than those who have not.

Question 48

How does FoR (frame of reference) reflect in spatial tasks?

Answer 48

People who use different FoRs to perform non-linguistic spatial tasks usually do so according to their native language FoR. This indicates that there is no single, innate FoR system.

Question 49

How does language influence time perception?

Answer 49

Linguistic relativity also extends to time perception. For example, English speakers often think of time horizontally using front/back metaphors, while Mandarin speakers are more likely to think about time vertically.

Question 50

What is the modern view of linguistic relativity?

Answer 50

The modern view is a ‘soft’ version of linguistic relativism, which suggests that while language influences our perceptions, it is to a limited extent. The belief is that human infants are predisposed to perceive and think in certain ways.

Question 51

What is the prevalence of bilingualism globally?

Answer 51

More than 65% of the world’s population are bilinguals. The three most widely spoken languages in the world are Chinese, Spanish, and English.

Question 52

What are some debates about bilingual vs. monolingual brain activity?

Answer 52

That bilinguals have lower intelligence as a result of bilingualism. These studies are mainly flawed due to age, gender, and socio-economic status variables. Bilingual fluency and competency was not established and there was only an effect in verbal intelligence.

Therefore, this topic is heavily debated.

Question 53

What are the early monolingual advantages?

Answer 53

Language and literacy development are better in monolingual children in early years; with receptive vocabulary and morphosyntactic acquisition being worse in bilinguals.

Question 54

Why is there a delay in bilingual children’s language development?

Answer 54

They receive less input in each of their languages. The delay is a function of exposure to each language and their relative complexity.

Question 55

What cognitive abilities develop earlier in children speaking more than one language?

Answer 55

metalincgusitc awareness, theory of mind, multitasking

Question 56

What is metalinguistic awareness?

Answer 56

The analyses of linguistic representations to extract general grammatical rules and being able to state them explicitly.

It allows controlled attention to different aspects of a sentence or a word such as its phonological form or its meaning.

Question 57

How do early bilingual advantages manifest through experiences of two languages (switching etc.)?

Answer 57

Everyday experience with two languages involves monitoring the situation to select the appropriate language, activating the appropriate language, and inhibiting the inappropriate language. This may lead to an advantage in general executive processing tasks like inhibitory control, monitoring, and switching.

Question 58

What is the theory of bilingual inhibitory control?

Answer 58

Both languages are active but bilinguals develop the ability to selectively attend to candidates in the intended language context. Thus, they should show a response selection advantage.

Question 59

What is theory of mind (ToM) and how does it relate to bilingual children?

Answer 59

ToM is the ability to ascribe mental states to oneself and others, and to predict peoples behaviour based on their mental states. Even though monolingual children outperform monolinguals on false belief tasks.

Question 60

Why might bilingual children have an advantage in ToM?

Answer 60

Bilingual children develop early sensitivity to the language knowledge of their interlocutors. This awareness might be an early form of appreciating other people having a different perspective from their own.

Question 61

What are ‘late bilingual’ advantages in regards to the foreign language effect in decision bias?

Answer 61

decision biases are reduced when gain/loss problems are presented in L2 vs. L1 because L2 elicits less ‘emotional resonance’ than L1

Question 62

What are the advantages for even later bilingual individuals?

Answer 62

Delays dementia onset, bilinguals have a better cognitive outcome after stroke than monolinguals. Bilingualism serves as a form of ‘cognitive reserve’.

Question 63

What is the summary of the influence on language acquisition of cognitive development?

Answer 63

Language acquisition influences the development of other cognitive domains. Perceptions of colour, space, and time are influenced by the native language and some aspects also depend on the acquisition of that language. Bilingualism likely confers advantages in multiple cognitive domains. They major advantage is being able to speak another language.