Method and evidence: Gesture and iconicity in the evolution of language

The aim of this paper is to mount a challenge to gesture-first hypotheses about the evolution of language by identifying constraints on the emergence of symbol use. Current debates focus on a range of pre-conditions for the emergence of language, including co-operation and related mentalising capacities, imitation and tool use, episodic memory, and vocal physiology, but little specifically on the ability to learn and understand symbols. It is argued here that such a focus raises new questions about the plausibility of gesture-first hypotheses, and so about the evolution of language in general. After a brief review of the methodology used in the paper, it is argued that existing uses of gesture in hominid communities may have prohibited the emergence of symbol use, rather than ‘bootstrapped’ symbolic capacities as is usually assumed, and that the vocal channel offers other advantages in both learning and using language. In this case, the vocal channel offers a more promising platform for the evolution of language than is often assumed

Origin of symbol-using systems: speech, but not sign, without the semantic urge

Natural language—spoken and signed—is a multichannel phenomenon, involving facial and body expression, and voice and visual intonation that is often used in the service of a social urge to communicate meaning. Given that iconicity seems easier and less abstract than making arbitrary connections between sound and meaning, iconicity and gesture have often been invoked in the origin of language alongside the urge to convey meaning. To get a fresh perspective, we critically distinguish the origin of a system capable of evolution from the subsequent evolution that system becomes capable of. Human language arose on a substrate of a system already capable of Darwinian evolution; the genetically supported uniquely human ability to learn a language reflects a key contact point between Darwinian evolution and language. Though implemented in brains generated by DNA symbols coding for protein meaning, the second higher-level symbol-using system of language now operates in a world mostly decoupled from Darwinian evolutionary constraints. Examination of Darwinian evolution of vocal learning in other animals suggests that the initial fixation of a key prerequisite to language into the human genome may actually have required initially side-stepping not only iconicity, but the urge to mean itself. If sign languages came later, they would not have faced this constraint

A comparison of voice and gesture across the first two years of life

This dissertation compared gestural and vocal communication in the development of language in early infancy/childhood. The work also has implications regarding the evolution of language. Since language is primarily vocal it might be assumed vocalization is the predominant communication in infancy and that the evolution of language also depended primarily on the evolution of vocal capabilities. But the primary literature actually favors primarily gestural language origins. The present work contradicts the primary literature. Study 1 examined rates of gesture and speech-like vocalizations, or “protophones”, in the first year of life. Infant protophones occurred more than 5 times more often than gestures. Gaze direction toward a possible receiver was rare for both vocalization and gesture, but vocalizations occurred more frequently with directed gaze than gestures. The results thus contradict the widespread belief that early language is founded primarily in gesture, and the gaze directivity data add to the contradiction. Gesture is useless as communication if no one is looking. Yet vocalization, which can communicate without listeners watching, was significantly more often accompanied by gaze directed to caregivers than gesture was. It appeared, therefore, that a greater proportion of vocalizations than gestures in the first year may have been intended as communications. Study 2 evaluated how often children produced gestures and vocalizations (i.e., protophones and words) in the second year of life (at 13, 16 and 20 months). As with Study 1, the results suggested vocalization played a much more important role in language learning than gesture. Gestural activity occurred much more often in the second year than in the first, but vocalization still exceeded gestural acts by more than a factor of two. More importantly, the vast majority of gestures were confined to Universal acts that are not symbolic, but rather constitute deictic indicators (pointing and reaching) that can serve no other communicative functions. In contrast, words or signs can reference abstract categories and can serve a vast array of communicative functions. Words, however, outnumbered signs by a factor greater than 11 across the data at all ages and by a factor of 21 at 20 months

The Metaphorization of Practical Action and Everyday Life Experience in the Words, Emblems, and Coverbal Gestures of Spoken Language

This paper focuses on the impact of practical action and experience on all aspects of oral language, segmental and suprasegmental, verbal and visual (i.e. gestural). It is based on observations of emblems and coverbal gestures in synergy with the words of spoken language over a number of years annotating and studying visual and verboacoustic manifestations in videotaped oral interactions. Facial expressions, postures, gestures, and body movement in general visually manifest the close semiotic interweaving of movement, space, and words in human thought and consequently in human oral expression. The important part of this interweaving results from the metaphorization or analogical converging of two notions that share one or more features but otherwise belong to different categories. Thinking and speaking are experienced as just another form of activity such as the practical actions of walking, running, handling objects, only transposed into the virtual world of cognitive and linguistic reality. Thus, when speaking, we are handling concepts by using gestures and words as if they were the objects experienced in the outside material reality. The etymology of words expressing abstract ideas often hide the metaphorical source domain of a concrete phenomenon in our practical life. For example, not only is the Latin word comprehendere, equivalent in meaning to the English words catch, get, grasp, or comprehend; the French saisir or comprendre; and the Croatian shvatiti, but all of these words also share the same underlying metaphor: Understanding is catching. The coverbal metaphorical hand gesture of grasping an imaginary object seems to visually revitalize in the gesture space the metaphor, which had become ´dead´ in the linguistic system. The correspondences in the verbal and gestural structure of metaphorical mappings in a given language are possible because words and gestures are parts of a single framework. They developed out of practical action and everyday life experience and stay deeply embedded in it. This paper was presented at the 4th Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies: Gesture, Brain and Evolution, 25-30 July 2010, University of Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder, Germany

Iconicity and ape gesture.

Iconic gestures are hypothesized to be c rucial to the evolution of language. Yet the important question of whether apes produce iconic gestures is the subject of considerable debate. This paper presents the current state of research on iconicity in ape gesture. In particular, it describes some of the empirical evidence suggesting that apes produce three different kinds of iconic gestures; it compares the iconicity hypothesis to other major hypotheses of ape gesture; and finally, it offers some directions for future ape gesture researc

Visible movements of the orofacial area: evidence for gestural or multimodal theories of language evolution?

The age-old debate between the proponents of the gesture-first and speech-first positions has returned to occupy a central place in current language evolution theorizing. The gestural scenarios, suffering from the problem known as “modality transition” (why a gestural system would have changed into a predominantly spoken system), frequently appeal to the gestures of the orofacial area as a platform for this putative transition. Here, we review currently available evidence on the significance of the orofacial area in language evolution. While our review offers some support for orofacial movements as an evolutionary “bridge” between manual gesture and speech, we see the evidence as far more consistent with a multimodal approach. We also suggest that, more generally, the “gestural versus spoken” formulation is limiting and would be better expressed in terms of the relative input and interplay of the visual and vocal-auditory sensory modalities

A Cross-Species Study of Gesture and Its Role in Symbolic Development: Implications for the Gestural Theory of Language Evolution

Using a naturalistic video database, we examined whether gestures scaffold the symbolic development of a language-enculturated chimpanzee, a language-enculturated bonobo, and a human child during the second year of life. These three species constitute a complete clade: species possessing a common immediate ancestor. A basic finding was the functional and formal similarity of many gestures between chimpanzee, bonobo, and human child. The child\u27s symbols were spoken words; the apes\u27 symbols were lexigrams - non-iconic visual signifiers. A developmental pattern in which gestural representation of a referent preceded symbolic representation of the same referent appeared in all three species (but was statistically significant only for the child). Nonetheless, across species, the ratio of symbol to gesture increased significantly with age. But even though their symbol production increased, the apes continued to communicate more frequently by gesture than by symbol. In contrast, by 15-18 months of age, the child used symbols more frequently than gestures. This ontogenetic sequence from gesture to symbol, present across the clade but more pronounced in child than ape, provides support for the role of gesture in language evolution. In all three species, the overwhelming majority of gestures were communicative (i.e., paired with eye contact, vocalization, and/or persistence). However, vocalization was rare for the apes, but accompanied the majority of the child\u27s communicative gestures. This species difference suggests the co-evolution of speech and gesture after the evolutionary divergence of the hominid line. Multimodal expressions of communicative intent (e.g., vocalization plus persistence) were normative for the child, but less common for the apes. This species difference suggests that multimodal expression of communicative intent was also strengthened after hominids diverged from apes

Investigating Natural Word Order via Pantomime: Research Report

Abstract. Inquiry into language evolution has recently focused on the question of the natural word order, i.e. a word order which may be primary in a cognitive and phylogenetic sense (Dryer, 2005; Pagel, 2009; Gell-Mann and Ruhlen, 2011). Some substantial insights into this topic originate in gesture and sign studies. Research by Goldin-Meadow et al. (2008) has inspired scientists to use the silent gesture paradigm, which requires participants to narrate events using their hands. The results of the study revealed that participants tended to produce SOV word orderof a transitive event, regardless of the syntax of their native language. The findingwas corroborated to a degree in later studies; however, some of them shed more light on the issue (Gibson et al., 2013; Hall et al., 2013; Sandler et al., 2005). The aim of our study is to test whether the SOV order is dominant when participants communicate transitive events (verbs) with whole-body pantomime