Ewolucja języka: horyzont metodologiczny

Ewolucja języka jest polem badawczym przeżywającym w ostatnich latach niezwykle dynamiczny rozwój. Stan ów jest efektem działania dwóch głównych przyczyn. Z jednej strony jest to pewne ogólne zwiększenie zainteresowania wyjaśnieniami ewolucyjnymi w nauce, którego jesteśmy obecnie świadkami. Jednocześnie mamy do czynienia z olbrzymim postępem wewnątrz dyscyplin szczegółowych związanych z ewolucją języka, takich jak choćby prymatologia (nauka o naczelnych innych, niż człowiek, zwłaszcza małpach), czy neurobiologia, oraz ich integracją w ramach dynamicznie rozwijających się nauk kognitywnych, w ich szerokim rozumieniu. Niniejszy artykuł jest próbą ‘przeglądu sił’ w zmaganiach z trudnym zagadnieniem, a jego zadania są następujące: określenie jak należy (a jak nie należy) rozumieć ewolucję języka, krótkie omówienie perspektyw oraz metod badawczych i zasygnalizowanie ich ograniczeń, zwrócenie uwagi na szereg podstawowych niebezpieczeństw i potencjalnych pułapek, które niosą ze sobą intuicyjnie atrakcyjne wyjaśnienia ewolucji języka, przedstawienie krótkiej charakterystyki przedmiotów konsensusu

Multidisciplinary approaches in evolutionary linguistics

Studying language evolution has become resurgent in modern scientific research. In this revival field, approaches from a number of disciplines other than linguistics, including (paleo)anthropology and archaeology, animal behaviors, genetics, neuroscience, computer simulation, and psychological experimentation, have been adopted, and a wide scope of topics have been examined in one way or another, covering not only world languages, but also human behaviors, brains and cultural products, as well as nonhuman primates and other species remote to humans. In this paper, together with a survey of recent findings based on these many approaches, we evaluate how this multidisciplinary perspective yields important insights into a comprehensive understanding of language, its evolution, and human cognition.postprin

Evolutionary scenarios for the emergence of recursion

As we have seen, the evolution of language cannot be addressed from the perspective of a single discipline; others, such as genetics or archaeology, also have a say on this issue. There is still a lot of research needed regarding Neanderthal cognition, an issue that deserves more attention also by biolinguistics. Although there are reasons to think so, the available data do not allow us to exclude recursion either from the cognition of H. neanderthalensis or starlings. Thus, what can be called special in humans or in language? The last part of the next quotation may summarize almost perfectly our own hypothesis about the role of recursion in language and in the whole cerebral architecture related to linguistic and non-linguistic activity

Evolution of the human tongue and emergence of speech biomechanics

The tongue is one of the organs most central to human speech. Here, the evolution and species-unique properties of the human tongue is traced, via reference to the apparent articulatory behavior of extant non-human great apes, and fossil findings from early hominids – from a point of view of articulatory phonetics, the science of human speech production. Increased lingual flexibility provided the possibility of mapping of articulatory targets, possibly via exaptation of manual-gestural mapping capacities evident in extant great apes. The emergence of the human-specific tongue, its properties, and morphology were crucial to the evolution of human articulate speech

Origin and Development of Language in South Asia: Phylogeny Versus Epigenetics?

This presentation begins with a brief overview of opinions on the origin of human language and the controversial question of Neanderthal speech. Moving from the language of the "African Eve" to the specific ones of the subcontinent, a brief overview is given of the prehistoric and current South Asian language families as well as their development over the past c. 5000 years. The equivalents of phylogeny and epigenetics in linguistics are then dealt with, that is, the successful Darwinian-style phylogenetic reconstruction of language families (as "trees"), which is interfered with by the separate wave-like spread of certain features across linguistic boundaries, even across language families. A combination of both features leads to the emergence of the current South Asian linguistic area (sprachbund). This development has made the structure of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian or Munda similar to each other but it could not eliminate most of their individual characteristics.Sanskrit and Indian Studie

A Biolinguistic Approach to the Vocalizations of H. Neanderthalensis and the Genus Homo

This paper revisits the old question about the possibilities and aptitudes H. neanderthalensis had for vocalization. New evidence will be discussed that moves the discussion beyond traditional interest in the presence and inter-pretation of the fossil record and its comparison with the closest species to H. sapiens, like chimpanzees and gorillas. An interdisciplinary perspective on the analysis coupled with information gathered from neuropsychology, genetics, and comparative psychology will prove useful for obtaining a new vision in biolinguistics, so that neurocognitive activity becomes important thanks, above all, to the comparison with other species. Finally, it will be argued that it is still plausible to accept the hypothesis on the formation of a vocal capacity prior to the cognitive faculty of language, and independent of it, so that Neandertals were probably able of vocalizing voluntarily, with communicative intentions and in a sophisticated way

Studing audition in fossil hominins: a new approach to the evolution of language?

The evolution of human language is one of the oldest questions inpaleoanthropology. Nevertheless, many previous attempts to approachthis question have not yielded informative results since they are oftenbased on anatomical features whose role in speech production in modernhumans is unclear or whose functional implications in fossil specimensare difficult to assess. We take a new approach to this question bystudying the evolution of audition. Human hearing differs from that ofchimpanzees and other primate taxa in maintaining a widened bandwidthof heightened sensitivity between 1-8 kHz, a region that contains relevantacoustic information in spoken language. Comparative analysis ofprimate audiograms suggests that this represents a unique derived featurein modern humans. Knowledge of the auditory capacities in our fossilhuman ancestors could greatly enhance the understanding of when thishuman pattern emerged during the course of our evolutionary history.Here we present a comprehensive approach to this question, onlyrarely addressed in human evolutionary studies. We have analyzed theauditory capacities in five fossil human specimens from the MiddlePleistocene site of the Sima de los Huesos (SH) in the Sierra deAtapuerca of Spain. The results demonstrate that the Atapuerca (SH)hominins resemble modern humans in showing a widened bandwidth ofheightened sensitivity between 1-5 kHz, a frequency range whichoverlaps the range of frequencies emitted during spoken language. At thesame time, both modern humans and the Atapuerca (SH) hominins differfrom chimpanzees in showing a heightened sensitivity to the highconsonant area (approximately 3-5 kHz) of the so-called "speechbanana", a frequency range associated with consonant production inhuman spoken language.The presence of a modern human auditory pattern in the Atapuercahominins suggests that these Middle Pleistocene humans alreadypossessed the anatomical features of the outer and middle ear that supportthe perception of human spoken language. Given the intuitive, butdifficult to quantify, link between sound perception and vocal productionin animals, the study of auditory capacities may have implications for theemergence of language in our fossil human ancestors. Although the studyof audition is an indirect approach to the question of speech capacity infossil specimens, the results of the present study are consistent with otherrecent suggestions for the presence of some form of spoken language inthe genus Homo prior to the appearance of our own species, Homosapiens