Introduction to Evolving (Proto)Language/s

Scholarly opinions vary on what language is, how it evolved, and from where or what it evolved. Long considered uniquely human, today scholars argue for evolutionary continuity between human language and animal communication systems. But while it is generally recognized that language is an evolving communication system, scholars continue to debate from which species language evolved, and what behavioral and cognitive features are the precursors to human language. To understand the nature of protolanguage, some look for homologs in gene functionality, brain areas, or anatomical structures such as the supralaryngeal vocal tract; others point toward primates, their gestural, vocal, multimodal, and in later evolving hominins also their pantomimic communication systems; and still others draw parallels between the musicality that characterizes language and the pitch found in the numerous sounds produced by animals. Accordingly, protolanguage theories today are multiple and diverse, and protolanguages might have also been diverse. This special issue on Evolving (Proto)Language/s for Lingua bundles several of the protolanguage theories that were put forward at the sixth edition of the Ways to Protolanguage conference series, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, in 2019. Not aimed at surveying all the different ways there are to conceptualize, study, and model protolanguage/s, this issue provides interested readers with good overviews on the role played in current theorizing on protolanguage/s by (paleo)anthropology, genetics, physiology, developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and pragmatic research lines

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Dynamic systems in semiotic development: The transition to reference

Semiotic development involves the development of at least two different kinds of meaning: intersubjective and representational. By attending to these two kinds of meaning we are able to predict one of the major transitions in early childhood: the transition to reference. From a dynamic systems perspective we track essential developments which, when all have reached critical values, prompt the transition to referential word production and/or comprehension in the first half of the second year of life. We present the background of the four variables included in the model: (a) representational play, (b) vocalization ability, (c) gesture, and (d) developments in autonomic vocalization culminating in communicative grunts. We further demonstrate their efficacy in predicting the transition in a longitudinal sample of 10 children. Additional study is needed to confirm the role of these developments and to extend the approach to languages other than English and more advanced levels of semiotic development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Toward and integrated model of semiotic development

In previous work, McCune (1995, 2008) and Zlatev (2007, 2013) recognized the importance of reviving a coherent cross-domain theory of semiotic development. Despite inevitable differences, the two approaches converge on their explanations of development across the first three years. Both recognized representational ability as a critical feature at the transition to language and both emphasized the importance of intersubjectivity. McCune sought a non-linguistic measure of mental representation for comparison with language development in its early phases and operationalized Piaget’s descriptions of play levels through detailed analyses of naturalistic longitudinal and cross-sectional data. Zlatev documented a step-wise development of intersubjectivity over the first three years of life, emphasizing the central role of bodily mimesis (cf. Donald, 1991). Despite varying sources, both models identified five levels/stages of semiotic development that cohere remarkably well. The present chapter presents a comparison of the McCune and Zlatev models, and proposes an integrated account offering a more complete analysis that now recognizes six stages of semiotic development, extending from birth through three years of age. The model is discussed in the context of broader frameworks such as dynamic systems (Thelen and Smith, 1994) and cognitive semiotics (Zlatev, 2012)

On the development of Merge and recursion in the transition from single words to sentences

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The emergence of Merge and recursion in the transition from single words to sentences

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A measure of syntactic complexity in early child productions : maximal syntactic depth

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