Assignment: Evolution of Language Report Essay
Assignment: Evolution of Language Report Essay
Assignment: Evolution of Language Report Essay
Description
Write a report/summary on a scientific study related to the course content.
Order of Topics
Introduction and foundations
Introduction to the problem: biological foundation of language and music
How evolution works
The basics of linguistics and linguisticality
The basics of music and musicality
Methods interlude #1: How to study the evolution of behavior
Sims and diffs between language and music
Some cross species comparative data
Can animals do human language?
Can animals do music?
Is our larynx special?
Theories of language and music evolution
A brief history of language evolution theories
Methods interlude #2: Kin selection
Gestural protolanguage
Song protolanguage
Evolution of musicality
Brains and genes
Neuroscience of language & music
Genetics of language & music
Overview and some fun stuff!
Overview of human evolution & its relation to language and music
Quirks of music explained!
The origin of language can be sub-divided according to some underlying assumptions:
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“Continuity theories” build on the idea that language exhibits so much complexity that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form; therefore it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among humans’ primate ancestors.
“Discontinuity theories” take the opposite approach—that language, as a unique trait which cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans, must have appeared fairly suddenly during the course of human evolution.
Some theories consider language mostly as an innate faculty—largely genetically encoded.
Other theories regard language as a mainly cultural system—learned through social interaction.
A majority of linguistic scholars as of 2018 favour continuity-based theories, but they vary in how they hypothesize language development. Among those who consider language as mostly innate, some avoid speculating about specific precursors in nonhuman primates, stressing simply that the language faculty must have evolved in the usual gradual way.[7] Others in this intellectual camp—notably Ib Ulbæk[6]—hold that language evolved not from primate communication but from primate cognition, which is significantly more complex.
Those who consider language as learned socially, such as Michael Tomasello, consider it developing from the cognitively controlled aspects of primate communication, these being mostly gestural as opposed to vocal.[8][9] Where vocal precursors are concerned, many continuity theorists envisage language evolving from early human capacities for song.[10][11][12][13][14]
Noam Chomsky, a proponent of discontinuity theory, argues that a single chance mutation occurred in one individual in the order of 100,000 years ago, installing the language faculty (a hypothetical component of the mid-brain) in “perfect” or “near-perfect” form.[15]
Transcending the continuity-versus-discontinuity divide, some scholars view the emergence of language as the consequence of some kind of social transformation[16] that, by generating unprecedented levels of public trust, liberated a genetic potential for linguistic creativity that had previously lain dormant.[17][18][19] “Ritual/speech coevolution theory” exemplifies this approach.[20][21] Scholars in this intellectual camp point to the fact that even chimpanzees and bonobos have latent symbolic capacities that they rarely—if ever—use in the wild.[22] Objecting to the sudden mutation idea, these authors argue that even if a chance mutation were to install a language organ in an evolving bipedal primate, it would be adaptively useless under all known primate social conditions. A very specific social structure—one capable of upholding unusually high levels of public accountability and trust—must have evolved before or concurrently with language to make reliance on “cheap signals” (words) an evolutionarily stable strategy.
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