From tgivon at uoregon.edu Mon Aug 8 18:42:44 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 11:42:44 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: Dear FUNK people, As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from the physical evidence. Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of evolution". The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more widely attested cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication may appear earlier in evolution. (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to be 'source constructions', may have also evolved earlier. (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have most likely evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, uses. (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded grammaticalization (structure) in evolution. Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and gradual emergence are the norm. I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the only way to go. Best, TG From danielrr at eresmas.net Mon Aug 8 20:09:10 2005 From: danielrr at eresmas.net (Daniel =?iso-8859-1?Q?Ria=F1o?=) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 22:09:10 +0200 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42F7A7A3.D7DCD675@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: >The full reference is: S. >McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revolution that wasn't: A new >interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human >Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. and the link you're looking for is http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/files/mcbrearty.pdf From macw at mac.com Mon Aug 8 20:17:28 2005 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 16:17:28 -0400 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42F7A7A3.D7DCD675@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Dear Tom et al., The McBrearty and Brooks paper is truly excellent, as Tom notes. Let me also recommend two other related papers. One is a lovely Scientific American article from June this year by Kate Wong based in large part on McBrearty and Brooks but integrating other material too. Great pictures. Another is Eswaran, V., Harpending, H., & Rogers, A. (2005). Genomics refutes an exclusively African origin of humans. Journal of Human Evolution, 49, 1-18. The idea of a sudden saltatory evolution looks less necessary when we see the archeological precursors in Africa going back at least to 70,000 in Blombos Cave near the Cape and even further in some regards in other locales. Of course, the ochre markings in that cave do not have the artistic scope of the European caves, but they are clearly planned markings. What I found important in the Eswaran et al. article was the way in which it allows us to understand the evidence for an evolutionary bottleneck at about 70,000 years ago not in terms of a sudden jump, but a wave of diffusion. Moreover, the people at the front of this wave were subject to additional interesting evolutionary pressures. This analysis allows us to believe that something unique did indeed happen in the late Pleistocene, but that it happened across a period of perhaps 30,000 years as a part of a gradualist, coevolutionary process. --Brian MacWhinney From dan.everett at manchester.ac.uk Tue Aug 9 04:34:13 2005 From: dan.everett at manchester.ac.uk (Professor D.L. Everett) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 23:34:13 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <138B8E05-D0FF-428B-868D-5A258E90BAC8@manchester.ac.uk> Message-ID: > On language evolution, I would also recommend to all the book (that > many of you probably already know) by Herbert Simon, The Sciences > of the Artificial, by MIT Press. Among other things, Simon argues > (this goes back to 1962) that complexity is usually in the world > rather than symbolic systems per se and that one common organizing > characteristic of complex systems is tree-structured hierarchies > (i.e. the Chomskyan UG makes no contribution because its two major > contributions, tree-structure and structure-dependent rules [which > of course predate it by quite a bit anyway] are found throughout > nature and thus the bulk of linguistic structure proper is not > unique to language and needs no special mechanisms to account for it). > > > Also, my forthcoming main article in the next issue of Current > Anthropology, based on Piraha, argues that some languages give > clear evidence of having followed different evolutionary paths and, > again, that UG is therefore not useful (a fortiori useless are > concepts like 'Language Organs'). There are comments on that > article by Tomasello, Berlin, Kay, Wierzbicka, Levinson, Pawley, > Goncalves, and Surralles, followed by my final reply. Some of the > comments are pretty heated, so all will at least find that > entertaining. > > DLE > > > On 8 Aug 2005, at 15:17, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > > > >> Dear Tom et al., >> The McBrearty and Brooks paper is truly excellent, as Tom >> notes. Let me also recommend two other related papers. One is a >> lovely Scientific American article from June this year by Kate >> Wong based in large part on McBrearty and Brooks but integrating >> other material too. Great pictures. Another is >> Eswaran, V., Harpending, H., & Rogers, A. (2005). Genomics refutes >> an exclusively African origin of humans. Journal of Human >> Evolution, 49, 1-18. >> >> The idea of a sudden saltatory evolution looks less necessary when >> we see the archeological precursors in Africa going back at least >> to 70,000 in Blombos Cave near the Cape and even further in some >> regards in other locales. Of course, the ochre markings in that >> cave do not have the artistic scope of the European caves, but >> they are clearly planned markings. What I found important in the >> Eswaran et al. article was the way in which it allows us to >> understand the evidence for an evolutionary bottleneck at about >> 70,000 years ago not in terms of a sudden jump, but a wave of >> diffusion. Moreover, the people at the front of this wave were >> subject to additional interesting evolutionary pressures. This >> analysis allows us to believe that something unique did indeed >> happen in the late Pleistocene, but that it happened across a >> period of perhaps 30,000 years as a part of a gradualist, >> coevolutionary process. >> >> --Brian MacWhinney >> >> >> > > > From Mike_Cahill at sil.org Tue Aug 9 13:05:52 2005 From: Mike_Cahill at sil.org (Mike_Cahill at sil.org) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 08:05:52 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42F7A7A3.D7DCD675@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more widely attested cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication may appear earlier in evolution. (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to be 'source constructions', may have also evolved earlier. (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have most likely evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, uses. (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded grammaticalization (structure) in evolution." These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how valuable are they? Mike Cahill Tom Givon Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu 08/08/2005 01:42 PM Dear FUNK people, As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from the physical evidence. Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of evolution". The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more widely attested cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication may appear earlier in evolution. (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to be 'source constructions', may have also evolved earlier. (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have most likely evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, uses. (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded grammaticalization (structure) in evolution. Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and gradual emergence are the norm. I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the only way to go. Best, TG From tgivon at uoregon.edu Tue Aug 9 15:07:39 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 08:07:39 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language evolution, we are honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. Being an incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we will be able to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly of the same kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make about 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already manipulate both mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never will be able to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then inferences, and I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) we might be able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede we are at the hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make predictions. If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, behavior and cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most difficult. So the odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. And since when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG ================ Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: > A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: > > "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication > may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to > be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution." > > These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a > hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that > we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before > writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how > valuable are they? > > Mike Cahill > > Tom Givon > Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > > 08/08/2005 01:42 PM > > Dear FUNK people, > > As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. > So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper > on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great > interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but > also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual > undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. > McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new > interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human > Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented > re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human > Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that > 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human > behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, > organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated > hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language > as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without > apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological > evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and > Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from > the physical evidence. > > Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of > 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is > attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in > the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa > migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was > not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of > many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as > elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go > hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. > many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was > no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) > evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of > evolution". > > The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of > language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the > Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical > and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a > gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical > article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of > Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same > volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data > accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some > possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These > inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and > Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more > possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. > Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live > communication may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend > to be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution. > > Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a > matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and > discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, > graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. > This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the > biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and > gradual emergence are the norm. > > I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up > with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a > developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the > only way to go. > > Best, TG From nrude at Ballangrud.com Tue Aug 9 21:37:10 2005 From: nrude at Ballangrud.com (Noel Rude) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 14:37:10 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: Right on--agree! Also ... real scientists are always optimists, as Sheldon Glashow eloquently argues in a book I have--that is, scientists who actually construct great theories always know instinctively, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that things are knowable and that beauty is a guide to the right theory. I count you as one of those real scientists. But thinkers need critics and so let me affirm my skepticism with the following four points: 1) Anthropic Phenomena--as many physicists are now coming to see and as Martin Rees (as good an atheist as any) points out in "Just Six Numbers", anyone who believes that the laws of physics are contingent (not Platonic) has only two choices: Design or Many Worlds. My physicist son-in-law jokes that he sees the day coming when the teacher will say, "Now, Johnny, you can doubt Many Worlds privately, but the Supreme Court has ruled that we may not question the theory in physics class." 2) Origin of Life--need I say anything here? 3) Origin of Species--Darwin's theory was offered as a materialistic explanation of evolution (which was discovered by creationists), but he as most who have followed tend to argue that evolution has occurred and therefore the theory is vindicated. Many of us who doubt Darwin have no problem with the age of the earth, the geologic record, genetics, microbiology, or evolution. We simply have profound doubts that the chance and necessity of the Darwinists is adequate for the job. As you know, it isn't just the despised fundamentalists who share this view. Quite a few mathematicians have ruled it impossible, as at the Wistar Institute back (if I remember correctly) in the late Sixties. A fun critic is the agnostic (and thus no adherent of Intelligent Design) David Berlinski. 4) The Mind--so far there simply are no credible theories of mind. The best we can do is declare that free will and consciousness are illusions, or that they somehow "emerge" or "supervene" on a complex computational or stimulus-response mechanism. As Jacques Monod clarified in the 1960s, epistimological materialism admits only chance (as in quantum uncertainty or random mutations) and necessity (physical law, natural selection) as explanatory. The age old explanation of design must be rejected a priori. But how long must we go with no credible theory of consciousness/free will before we are allowed to invoke agency as elemental? All scientific theory hangs on metaphysical premises or "sky-hooks". Design was one of these until the Deists of the Enlightenment ruled it out of the cosmos and Darwin proposed his theory. A good argmnent can be made that it isn't logic and empirical evidence that drives Darwinism but rather a profound fear of the Religious Right. Nevertheless I suspect that as more and more bright thinkers come to accept design (and it is hard to deny that this isn't in the works--otherwise why the hysterics?) we will see great breakthroughs across many disciplines in science. But I rattle on rather irritatingly, I'm sure. Y'all take care and don't dispair, Noel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Givon" To: Cc: "Orbell, John" ; ; "Heine, Bernd" ; ; "Bickerton, Derek" Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:07 AM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language evolution, we are honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. Being an incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we will be able to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly of the same kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make about 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already manipulate both mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never will be able to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then inferences, and I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) we might be able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede we are at the hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make predictions. If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, behavior and cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most difficult. So the odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. And since when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG ================ Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: > A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: > > "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication > may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to > be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution." > > These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a > hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that > we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before > writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how > valuable are they? > > Mike Cahill > > Tom Givon > Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > > 08/08/2005 01:42 PM > > Dear FUNK people, > > As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. > So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper > on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great > interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but > also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual > undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. > McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new > interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human > Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented > re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human > Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that > 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human > behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, > organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated > hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language > as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without > apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological > evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and > Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from > the physical evidence. > > Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of > 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is > attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in > the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa > migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was > not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of > many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as > elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go > hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. > many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was > no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) > evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of > evolution". > > The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of > language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the > Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical > and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a > gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical > article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of > Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same > volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data > accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some > possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These > inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and > Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more > possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. > Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live > communication may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend > to be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution. > > Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a > matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and > discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, > graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. > This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the > biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and > gradual emergence are the norm. > > I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up > with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a > developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the > only way to go. > > Best, TG From Salinas17 at aol.com Wed Aug 10 01:44:22 2005 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 21:44:22 EDT Subject: A Super Paper on Human Evolution (2) Message-ID: In a message dated 8/8/05 2:24:43 PM, tgivon at uoregon.edu writes: << According to that 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human behavioral traits...' Some of the main conclusions drawn [in the McBrearty] are: (1) the development of 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is attested there as early as 300,000 BC. >> TOM - I'd suggest to you that the conclusions with regard to language that you've found in the McBrearty paper may not be entirely justified. I'll get to that in a different post. But what I'd like to emphasize here is that the dating of the emergence of "modern" human behaviour in the late Pleistocene has always owed its main force to rather impressive European cave art. If you go to the Leakey Foundation web site and go to their timeline of discoveries page (http://www.leakeyfoundation.org/discoveries/d2_1.jsp) you'll see that aside from tool assemblages and bones, the featured landmark discoveries in Paleoanthropology are cave art (e.g., Altamira, Lascaux). The standard explanation, of course, was that this level of "symbolic art" would have been a great leap in differentiating human behaviour. The idea would be that "thinking" symbolically was evidenced in the drawings in a way that was not present in earlier human remains. There are those of us (including the late Stephen Jay Gould) who thought this was like saying that before Parisian fashion, nobody had an idea of how to dress right. Some of the cave art is truly impressive, but the best of it sure seemed to express some kind of culmination of a long developing technique, rather than a sudden mutation that yielded either a Picasso gene or the emergence of modern humans. It's fashionable nowadays to say that the use of tools can no longer be used to differentiate humans from other primates because it's been shown that other primates use tools. But the fact is that no other primates MAKE tools like hominids did, make stone tools with flaking techniques that are handed down generation after generation, or -- most relevantly -- make tools knapped out of undefined stone that are plainly designed for a specific purpose. When you look at the tools that were produced by, say homo erectus, you see axes, scrappers, knives, projectile points that do not show up in any "primate assemblage" -- if such a thing could be said to exist. These tools in archaeology are diagnostically hominid -- not just primate. And they are far older than "homo sapiens." But do these tools qualify as symbolic thought or any such threshold marker of "modern human behaviour?" The answer is I think in recreating the entire process it took to carefully remove flakes from a stone in a way for example that was not only angled symmetrically but also designed in that way to optimize flight and penetration. If by chance anyone thinks it is brainlessly obvious, just try making one. The making of these tools took anticipation, foresight, planning and a "mind model" of not just the tool but how it should be made to acheive those optimizations. This is new stuff in the biological world. Of course, these techniques do not involve using something like ochre to create some kind of "representation." But perhaps these folks did not have the leisure time to engage in the art scene. And perhaps the consistent reproduction of axes and points do reflect a recurring "representation" that was copied again and again in a very practical artistic tradition. My bet is that as time goes on we are going to find that the "mental capabilities" of modern humans go back much further than hominid anatomical differences would admit. Anatomical differences -- brain size, particularly -- are not going to be enough to explain the massive difference between the modern world humans have built and the world of, for example, erectus. Sally McBrearty's and Kate Wong's papers are a good sign, because they help break down superficial comparisons to some degree. But perhaps they don't go far enough. You see my hypothesis is that the big difference between 4-200,000ybp (or even earlier) and today is not in the end going to be mainly in anatomy or genes. The big difference is going to be in the development of human culture. Tom, consider this quote from the McBrearty piece: "Rather than applying arbitrary criteria for modernity, one could take the position that behavioral innovation drove the morphological changes that are observed in early modern human anatomy." Think for a moment about what door this opens. Does McBrearty really mean "behavioral innovation?" Behaviour is a singular event, of little consequence unless it is repeated. What McBrearty is actually saying is that recurring practices, over generations drove morphological changes. And what those recurring practices over generations are IS HUMAN CULTURE. What McBrearty is actually saying is that human culture drove morphological changes. And should we be surprised? Human culture has taken charge of biological evolution in the past and promises to do so in the future. How else did the wolf evolve into morphologies as diverse as the Chihuhua and the Great Dane -- and proliferate despite reduced survival advantage in the wild -- in little over 12,000 years? And following this path with regard to human evolution, it was human culture in the form of language that evolved a more facile human larynx and not the other way around. We won't be able to track this development of course if we continue to jumble human biological evolution with the qualitatively different force of human culture. There is undoubtably overlap -- but unless the two are distinguished, it will muddy the history of what really happened between then and now. Regards, Steve Long From Mike_Cahill at sil.org Wed Aug 10 14:10:28 2005 From: Mike_Cahill at sil.org (Mike_Cahill at sil.org) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:10:28 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <001601c59d53$0d031780$0a00a8c0@OURBEDROOM> Message-ID: I'm fascinated by people's thinking processes on ID and natural selection (we call it NS so it doesn't suffer from acronym envy?) and theories in general. Bickerton said, inter alia, ID is just like the old God of the Gaps, doomed to do a similar vanishing number. So natural selection may not be the answer. I could live with that, if someone would show me a theory that explained all that NS explains plus some more. That's how "bright thinkers" go from one theory to the next. They don't jump out of a leaky lifeboat just because a rotten plank floats by. They see if the leaks can be mended or if someone can bring on a more seaworthy vessel. No testable theory has ever existed that didn't have flaws in it here and there. That's called "science". The rest is religion. Bottom line: ID is BS. The assumption here is that one needs to have a theory to hold on to, otherwise you (metaphorically) drown. And that's how people usually act. But what about a position that says "Here are some theories, but we know that none of them is adequate."? That would seem to be more of an intellectually honest position, and (extending his metaphor) you have your feet on solid ground rather than being asea. (This point would hold for linguistic theories as well as biological and physical ones - we may eventually get back to linguistics here...) I commend a very interesting and accessible book, The Great Evolution Mystery (Harper & Row) by Gordon Taylor, an evolutionist, who nonetheless amasses arguments and evidence that the process of natural selection is not adequate to explain what actually exists in nature. If he (and others) are right, could we live with an agnostic position that says "Natural selection isn't adequate, and I don't know what the mechanism is."? I am glad that the "hysteria over ID" that Rude mentions has not hit Bickerton, but there is definitely a reaction that is attributable to more than just a clash of ideas, but goes much deeper, to a difference in worldviews. When I merely mentioned ID to one linguist at LSA this January, his voice raised, he got red in the face, and he started calling ID names. When it gets to the stage of name-calling, it's difficult to have any useful discussion. Cheerfully yours, Mike Cahill P.S. It's a rabbit trail , but I just can't resist a comment on the "God of the Gaps" phrase. In practice, something very similar is invoked by evolutionists. Examples: 1) It is assumed that feathers developed from reptilian scales, but no fossil transitions have been found, and no detailed mechanism for the gradual genetic changes has been proposed. 2) Reptiles are cold-blooded, birds are warm-blooded. The assumed change from reptiles to birds involves an incredible host of changes of metabolic strategy, but again, no intermediates have been found (for some time the assumption was that there should be living intermediates, but no dice) and no detailed mechanisms proposed (such as what COULD an intermediate system be like?). These cases could be multiplied into the hundreds. The point - in such cases, evolutionists wave their hands and say "We don't know how, but Evolution just did it." Evolution of the gaps... It's a tie... From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Aug 10 16:55:04 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:55:04 -0700 Subject: [Fwd: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution] Message-ID: From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Aug 10 17:12:42 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 10:12:42 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: I think the argument is really not about ID, nor about evolution. It is about science. And having heard an earful about ID I cannot, try as I might, differentgiate it from the general, concerted, well finance attack on science in this country (US). This attack is not only on science, but on the Enlightenment's rational methods of inquiry in general. And makes, on occasion, for some strage bedfellows: Fundamentalist Christians, rabid Jihadis, relativist-humanist academics; and occasionally, sad to see, scientists who may know some or even many facts but don't understand the method by which, over time, laboriously, haltingly and never infallibly, hypotheses gradually acquire the firmer staus of 'facts'. In science nothing is in principle forever. But repeated failures to falsify is what makes facts, like 'this table' or my 'left-hand's thumb', appear solid. Y'all be good y'hear. TG ==================== Noel Rude wrote: > Right on--agree! > > Also ... real scientists are always optimists, as Sheldon Glashow eloquently > argues in a book I have--that is, scientists who actually construct great > theories always know instinctively, in spite of all evidence to the > contrary, that things are knowable and that beauty is a guide to the right > theory. I count you as one of those real scientists. But thinkers need > critics and so let me affirm my skepticism with the following four points: > > 1) Anthropic Phenomena--as many physicists are now coming to see and as > Martin Rees (as good an atheist as any) points out in "Just Six Numbers", > anyone who believes that the laws of physics are contingent (not Platonic) > has only two choices: Design or Many Worlds. My physicist son-in-law jokes > that he sees the day coming when the teacher will say, "Now, Johnny, you can > doubt Many Worlds privately, but the Supreme Court has ruled that we may not > question the theory in physics class." > > 2) Origin of Life--need I say anything here? > > 3) Origin of Species--Darwin's theory was offered as a materialistic > explanation of evolution (which was discovered by creationists), but he as > most who have followed tend to argue that evolution has occurred and > therefore the theory is vindicated. Many of us who doubt Darwin have no > problem with the age of the earth, the geologic record, genetics, > microbiology, or evolution. We simply have profound doubts that the chance > and necessity of the Darwinists is adequate for the job. As you know, it > isn't just the despised fundamentalists who share this view. Quite a few > mathematicians have ruled it impossible, as at the Wistar Institute back (if > I remember correctly) in the late Sixties. A fun critic is the agnostic > (and thus no adherent of Intelligent Design) David Berlinski. > > 4) The Mind--so far there simply are no credible theories of mind. The best > we can do is declare that free will and consciousness are illusions, or that > they somehow "emerge" or "supervene" on a complex computational or > stimulus-response mechanism. As Jacques Monod clarified in the 1960s, > epistimological materialism admits only chance (as in quantum uncertainty or > random mutations) and necessity (physical law, natural selection) as > explanatory. The age old explanation of design must be rejected a priori. > But how long must we go with no credible theory of consciousness/free will > before we are allowed to invoke agency as elemental? All scientific theory > hangs on metaphysical premises or "sky-hooks". Design was one of these > until the Deists of the Enlightenment ruled it out of the cosmos and Darwin > proposed his theory. A good argmnent can be made that it isn't logic and > empirical evidence that drives Darwinism but rather a profound fear of the > Religious Right. > > Nevertheless I suspect that as more and more bright thinkers come to accept > design (and it is hard to deny that this isn't in the works--otherwise why > the hysterics?) we will see great breakthroughs across many disciplines in > science. > > But I rattle on rather irritatingly, I'm sure. Y'all take care and don't > dispair, > > Noel > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Tom Givon" > To: > Cc: "Orbell, John" ; ; > "Heine, Bernd" ; > ; "Bickerton, Derek" > > Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:07 AM > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution > > Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language evolution, we are > honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the > moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. Being an > incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we will be > able > to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly of the > same > kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make about > 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already manipulate both > mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never will be > able > to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then inferences, > and > I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) we might > be > able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede we are at > the > hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make predictions. > If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, behavior and > cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most > interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most difficult. So the > odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. And since > when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG > > ================ > > Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: > > > A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: > > > > "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > > widely attested > > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication > > may > > appear earlier in evolution. > > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to > > be 'source > > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > > most likely > > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > > uses. > > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > > grammaticalization > > (structure) in evolution." > > > > These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a > > hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that > > we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before > > writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how > > valuable are they? > > > > Mike Cahill > > > > Tom Givon > > Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > > > > 08/08/2005 01:42 PM > > > > Dear FUNK people, > > > > As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. > > So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper > > on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great > > interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but > > also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual > > undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. > > McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new > > interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human > > Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented > > re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human > > Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that > > 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human > > behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, > > organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated > > hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language > > as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without > > apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological > > evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and > > Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from > > the physical evidence. > > > > Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of > > 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is > > attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in > > the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa > > migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was > > not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of > > many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as > > elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go > > hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. > > many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was > > no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) > > evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of > > evolution". > > > > The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of > > language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the > > Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical > > and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a > > gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical > > article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of > > Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same > > volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data > > accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some > > possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These > > inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and > > Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more > > possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. > > Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > > widely attested > > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live > > communication may > > appear earlier in evolution. > > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend > > to be 'source > > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > > most likely > > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > > uses. > > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > > grammaticalization > > (structure) in evolution. > > > > Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a > > matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and > > discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, > > graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. > > This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the > > biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and > > gradual emergence are the norm. > > > > I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up > > with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a > > developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the > > only way to go. > > > > Best, TG From mark at polymathix.com Wed Aug 10 19:10:55 2005 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:10:55 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42FA358A.36E74CB3@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Tom Givon wrote: > > I think the argument is really not about ID, nor about evolution. It is > about science. And having heard an earful about ID I cannot, try as I > might, differentiate it from the general, concerted, well financed attack > on science in this country (US). This attack is not only on science, but > on the Enlightenment's rational methods of inquiry in general. Absolutely. The argument generally goes as follows: (a) Scientific theories are always dependent on metaphysical postulates. (b) There are no scientific theories that are perfectly adequate. (c) My metaphysical postulates are just as good as anybody else's. --- (d) Ergo, my non-scientific theory based on my metaphysical postulates is just as good as any scientific theory. The two obvious problems with this argument, of course, are (1) It can be shown that premise (a) is false. (van Fraassen) (2) Conclusion (d) suffers from presupposition failure (a non-scientific theory cannot be evaluated one way or another as a scientific theory). Conclusion (d) is equivalent to the usually unstated conclusion (e): (e) Ergo, my non-scientific theory based on my metaphysical postulates is just as good as any plate of spaghetti carbonara. So, the simple fact of the matter remains that purveyors of non-scientific theory have no recourse but to accept with all consequences that they're not doing science. NB: Please note that I do not intend "non-scientific" to imply "religious": not all non-scientific theory is necessarily grounded in any kind of religious doctrine. For example, I consider Chomskyan linguistics to belong to (non-scientific) philosophy of language, not (scientific) linguistics, because the philosophical method is ubiquitous there while the scientific method is nowhere to be seen. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From lise.menn at colorado.edu Wed Aug 10 22:08:25 2005 From: lise.menn at colorado.edu (Lise Menn) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:08:25 -0600 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42FA358A.36E74CB3@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: I think a major reason for the failure of people to 'not understand the methods' of science is that science teachers up until graduate school (and even then) - that is, the overwhelming amount of teaching received by the population - teach students about the FACTS - which is what they will be tested on - and pay at most a little lip service to how those 'facts' were discovered and how they came to be accepted as facts. We (that is, Funkfolk) all know how roughly far the earth is from the sun, but I for one have never read anything about how that number, or rather range of numbers, was established, whether people argued about the methods, whether the first person who proposed that it was about 93 million miles was expelled from his professional society (or if it was a woman, what happened when she tried to get that number taken seriously) and so on... So if science (including our own) is generally taught by tacit appeal to authority, how could anyone not in the game see a real difference between science and professions of faith? Lise Menn On Aug 10, 2005, at 11:12 AM, Tom Givon wrote: > > I think the argument is really not about ID, nor about evolution. > It is about > science. And having heard an earful about ID I cannot, try as I might, > differentgiate it from the general, concerted, well finance attack > on science in > this country (US). This attack is not only on science, but on the > Enlightenment's rational methods of inquiry in general. And makes, > on occasion, > for some strage bedfellows: Fundamentalist Christians, rabid Jihadis, > relativist-humanist academics; and occasionally, sad to see, > scientists who may > know some or even many facts but don't understand the method by > which, over > time, laboriously, haltingly and never infallibly, hypotheses > gradually acquire > the firmer staus of 'facts'. In science nothing is in principle > forever. But > repeated failures to falsify is what makes facts, like 'this table' > or my > 'left-hand's thumb', appear solid. Y'all be good y'hear. TG > > ==================== > > Noel Rude wrote: > > >> Right on--agree! >> >> Also ... real scientists are always optimists, as Sheldon Glashow >> eloquently >> argues in a book I have--that is, scientists who actually >> construct great >> theories always know instinctively, in spite of all evidence to the >> contrary, that things are knowable and that beauty is a guide to >> the right >> theory. I count you as one of those real scientists. But >> thinkers need >> critics and so let me affirm my skepticism with the following four >> points: >> >> 1) Anthropic Phenomena--as many physicists are now coming to see >> and as >> Martin Rees (as good an atheist as any) points out in "Just Six >> Numbers", >> anyone who believes that the laws of physics are contingent (not >> Platonic) >> has only two choices: Design or Many Worlds. My physicist son-in- >> law jokes >> that he sees the day coming when the teacher will say, "Now, >> Johnny, you can >> doubt Many Worlds privately, but the Supreme Court has ruled that >> we may not >> question the theory in physics class." >> >> 2) Origin of Life--need I say anything here? >> >> 3) Origin of Species--Darwin's theory was offered as a materialistic >> explanation of evolution (which was discovered by creationists), >> but he as >> most who have followed tend to argue that evolution has occurred and >> therefore the theory is vindicated. Many of us who doubt Darwin >> have no >> problem with the age of the earth, the geologic record, genetics, >> microbiology, or evolution. We simply have profound doubts that >> the chance >> and necessity of the Darwinists is adequate for the job. As you >> know, it >> isn't just the despised fundamentalists who share this view. >> Quite a few >> mathematicians have ruled it impossible, as at the Wistar >> Institute back (if >> I remember correctly) in the late Sixties. A fun critic is the >> agnostic >> (and thus no adherent of Intelligent Design) David Berlinski. >> >> 4) The Mind--so far there simply are no credible theories of >> mind. The best >> we can do is declare that free will and consciousness are >> illusions, or that >> they somehow "emerge" or "supervene" on a complex computational or >> stimulus-response mechanism. As Jacques Monod clarified in the >> 1960s, >> epistimological materialism admits only chance (as in quantum >> uncertainty or >> random mutations) and necessity (physical law, natural selection) as >> explanatory. The age old explanation of design must be rejected a >> priori. >> But how long must we go with no credible theory of consciousness/ >> free will >> before we are allowed to invoke agency as elemental? All >> scientific theory >> hangs on metaphysical premises or "sky-hooks". Design was one of >> these >> until the Deists of the Enlightenment ruled it out of the cosmos >> and Darwin >> proposed his theory. A good argmnent can be made that it isn't >> logic and >> empirical evidence that drives Darwinism but rather a profound >> fear of the >> Religious Right. >> >> Nevertheless I suspect that as more and more bright thinkers come >> to accept >> design (and it is hard to deny that this isn't in the works-- >> otherwise why >> the hysterics?) we will see great breakthroughs across many >> disciplines in >> science. >> >> But I rattle on rather irritatingly, I'm sure. Y'all take care >> and don't >> dispair, >> >> Noel >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Tom Givon" >> To: >> Cc: "Orbell, John" ; ; >> "Heine, Bernd" ; >> ; "Bickerton, Derek" >> >> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:07 AM >> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution >> >> Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language >> evolution, we are >> honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the >> moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. >> Being an >> incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we >> will be >> able >> to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly >> of the >> same >> kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make >> about >> 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already >> manipulate both >> mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never >> will be >> able >> to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then >> inferences, >> and >> I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) >> we might >> be >> able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede >> we are at >> the >> hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make >> predictions. >> If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, >> behavior and >> cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most >> interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most >> difficult. So the >> odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. >> And since >> when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG >> >> ================ >> >> Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: >> >> >>> A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: >>> >>> "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: >>> (i) All other things being equal, typological features that >>> are more >>> widely attested >>> cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. >>> (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live >>> communication >>> may >>> appear earlier in evolution. >>> (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those >>> that tend to >>> be 'source >>> constructions', may have also evolved earlier. >>> (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical >>> senses have >>> most likely >>> evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or >>> grammatical, >>> uses. >>> (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded >>> grammaticalization >>> (structure) in evolution." >>> >>> These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a >>> hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, >>> given that >>> we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose >>> before >>> writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how >>> valuable are they? >>> >>> Mike Cahill >>> >>> Tom Givon >>> Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu >>> >>> 08/08/2005 01:42 PM >>> >>> Dear FUNK people, >>> >>> As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the >>> boonies. >>> So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) >>> paper >>> on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of >>> great >>> interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), >>> but >>> also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual >>> undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. >>> McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new >>> interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human >>> Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively- >>> documented >>> re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human >>> Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that >>> 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern >>> human >>> behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social >>> structure, >>> organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated >>> hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference >>> "language >>> as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) >>> without >>> apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological >>> evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in >>> Africa and >>> Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn >>> from >>> the physical evidence. >>> >>> Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of >>> 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is >>> attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent >>> discontinuity in >>> the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa >>> migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The >>> graduality was >>> not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the >>> existence of >>> many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as >>> elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go >>> hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural >>> evolution (cf. >>> many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), >>> there was >>> no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral >>> (cultural) >>> evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the >>> pacemaker of >>> evolution". >>> >>> The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of >>> language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the >>> Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both >>> lexical >>> and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a >>> gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see >>> critical >>> article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of >>> Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in >>> the same >>> volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental >>> data >>> accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some >>> possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. >>> These >>> inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon >>> (1979) and >>> Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more >>> possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & >>> responsibly. >>> Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: >>> (i) All other things being equal, typological features that >>> are more >>> widely attested >>> cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. >>> (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live >>> communication may >>> appear earlier in evolution. >>> (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those >>> that tend >>> to be 'source >>> constructions', may have also evolved earlier. >>> (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical >>> senses have >>> most likely >>> evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or >>> grammatical, >>> uses. >>> (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded >>> grammaticalization >>> (structure) in evolution. >>> >>> Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar >>> are a >>> matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and >>> discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi- >>> dimentional, >>> graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably >>> the norm. >>> This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the >>> biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral >>> exploration and >>> gradual emergence are the norm. >>> >>> I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to >>> come up >>> with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a >>> developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to >>> me, the >>> only way to go. >>> >>> Best, TG >>> > > Lise Menn Office: 303-492-1609 Linguistics Dept. Fax 303-413-0017 295 UCB University of Colorado Boulder CO 80309-0295 lise.menn at colorado.edu From Mike_Cahill at sil.org Thu Aug 11 14:16:46 2005 From: Mike_Cahill at sil.org (Mike_Cahill at sil.org) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:16:46 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <001501c59e1f$2769b120$0a00a8c0@OURBEDROOM> Message-ID: Perhaps we are closer together than it appears. I certainly don't want to ditch theories wholesale! I probably should have written "Here are some theories ABOUT X, but we know each one has some shortcomings." I don't know of a theory (well, at least in my subfield of phonology) that covers everything perfectly (e.g. no phonological theory explains partial nasal place assimilation to labial-velar stops). But different ones are useful for different types of investigations, and theories help you integrate facts that would otherwise be random. I do NOT think one theory is as good as another, but they are useful only as they have explanatory power. And we shouldn't claim a theory is "true" when we know there are defects. My undergrad degree was in biochemistry, so I've also had the opportunity to see how theory applies in the physical sciences. There's similarities and differences between evidence and support for a linguistic theory and a theory of, say, atomic structures (which would be worth someone's dissertation), but it is interesting that theories in the physical sciences are always claims about reality, what is "really there." Theories in linguistics are less likely to make such claims. As for biology, well, maybe we've had enough discussion on what's supposed to be a linguistics discussion forum. There is a place for butterfly collecting, but right, it doesn't take you very far. Mike Cahill ====================================================== Mike Cahill wrote (8/10/05) > The assumption here is that one needs to have a theory to hold on to, > otherwise you (metaphorically) drown. Sorry. You assumed that, not me. And indeed if to you science is just a spectator sport, you surely can indeed say > "Here are some theories, but we know > that none of them is adequate." But if you're going to do anything in science beyond butterfly collecting, you have to have a theory. If you think you don't, that means you have an implicit theory but don't know what it is. Without a theoretical framework to fit into, facts are meaningless. So what you have to do is pick the best theory and try to improve on it. Or come up with something that explains all that the best theory explained and then some. So, > could we live with > an agnostic position that says "Natural selection isn't adequate, and I > don't know what the mechanism is."? I don't think so. Spectate, sure, but not do serious science. You have to have a hypothesis about the mechanism, period. Niche construction theory is a case in point. It doesn't say "NS isn't working, so junk it." NS obviously does work--up to a point. So keep it but introduce additional factors that might interact with it. Not sink into a "Well, one theory is as good as another" quagmire, still less lreap aboard something that just junks NS and has nothing to put in its place. Best to all, Derek From mark at polymathix.com Thu Aug 11 15:09:49 2005 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 10:09:49 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <4D3C11D8-149B-4F4C-863E-CD64662F8FD7@colorado.edu> Message-ID: Lise Menn wrote: > I think a major reason for the failure of people to 'not understand > the methods' of science is that science teachers up until graduate > school (and even then) - that is, the overwhelming amount of teaching > received by the population - teach students about the FACTS - which > is what they will be tested on - and pay at most a little lip > service to how those 'facts' were discovered and how they came to be > accepted as facts. Interestingly and unfortunately, there are numerous well-accepted facts (or 'facts', as the case may be) whose origins even many scientists would be hard-pressed to explain: - how do we *know* that HIV causes AIDS? - how do we *know* that the average global temperature is rising? - how do we *know* that electrons can move backwards through time? - how do we *know* that the mind supervenes on the brain? - how do we *know* that there is a class of constructions in English that are best referred to as "raising"? To my mind, it's far worse for an M.D. not to know the answer to the first question above than it is for a stockbroker not to know how distance to the sun was measured. (It's also pretty bad for linguists not to reflect on the answers to the last two questions above...) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Fri Aug 12 13:55:31 2005 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Anggarrgoon) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 09:55:31 -0400 Subject: call for papers: complex verb constructions Message-ID: Call for papers [Apologies for cross-posting] Intertheoretical approaches to complex verb constructions Eleventh Rice Biennial Symposium Date: March 16th-18th, 2006 Rice University's Linguistics Department will be hosting its Eleventh Linguistic Symposium in March 2006. The aim of the symposium is to draw together different theoretical approaches to the various types of complex predicates found in the languages of the world. Emphasis is on drawing together work on different language families and in different linguistic frameworks. The current confirmed speakers are: Andrew Garrett (UC Berkeley) Talmy Givon (Oregon) Alice Harris (SUNY Stony Brook) Martin Hilpert and Christian Koops (Rice) Simin Karimi (U Arizona) Andrew Pawley (Australian National University) Kingkarn Thepkanjana (Chulalongkorn University) Keren Rice (U Toronto) Eva Schultze-Berndt (Karl-Franzens-Universitaet Graz) Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice) We would like to invite expressions of interest for additional papers directed towards the symposium theme; we anticipate having space for approximately three more speakers. Talks will be 45 minutes, with 15 minutes for questions. While there will be no formal position paper, speakers will be asked to keep in mind a general set of questions which will form the main issues for discussion at the symposium. It is anticipated that a collection of papers from the volume will be published following the symposium. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please send an article you have written on this general topic, along with a brief biographical statement, by email to Anne-Marie Hartenstein (anneh at rice dt edu) or Claire Bowern (bowern at rice dt edu) or by snail mail to Rice University Linguistics Symposium Attn: Claire Bowern Department of Linguistics, MS-23 PO Box 1892 Houston, TX, 77251-1892. by 1st October, 2005. If you wish to be kept up to date on announcements for the workshop, please go to http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lingsymp/ and fill out the online web form. From vyv.evans at sussex.ac.uk Wed Aug 17 12:12:56 2005 From: vyv.evans at sussex.ac.uk (Vyv Evans) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:12:56 +0100 Subject: Cognitive Linguistics conference--reminder Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, This is a reminder that the pre-conference registration deadline for the 'New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics' conference, taking place at the University of Sussex in October is fast approaching. The deadline is Sept. 19th. Details of how to register (whether presenting or attending only) are available from the conference website: www.cogling.org.uk [click on 'Registration']. The most recent version of the conference schedule has just been posted on the website and is available here: This promises to be an extremely exciting event, not to be missed, which in addition to founding a new national UK Cognitive Linguistics association is playing host to a large number of cognitive linguists and cognitive scientists from around the world who will be talking and presenting on a wide range of topics. The conference also features 7 plenary speakers: Paul Chilton, 'Dimensions of Discourse' William Croft, 'Toward a Social Cognitive Linguistics' Ronald Langacker, 'Constructions and Constructional Meaning' Brigitte Nerlich, 'Cognitive Linguistics: A Tale of Two Cultures?' Chris Sinha, 'Mind, Brain, Society: Language as Vehicle and Language as Window' Mark Turner, 'Blending and Compression' Jordan Zlatev, 'Intersubjectivity, Bodily Mimesis, and the Grounding of Language' The conference additionally features three invited theme sessions involving leading scholars both from within and outside cognitive linguistics. The theme sessions are: Cognitive approaches to lexical semantics Approaches to Conceptual Projection Making Sense of Embodiment There is also a satellite event, a tutorial on 'Frame semantics, corpora, and lexicography' being run by two leading experts: Sue Atkins and Adam Kilgarriff, [click on 'Satellite event' for details] . We hope to see you in Brighton in October! Vyv Chair, NDCL Conference Organising Committee www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/vyv/ From paul at benjamins.com Thu Aug 18 15:55:05 2005 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 08:55:05 -0700 Subject: New Book Givón: Context as Other Mi nds Message-ID: BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT John Benjamins Publishing Co. announces the publication of T. Givón's new book Context as Other Minds: The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition and Communication. In this book, Prof. Givón proposes to re-cast pragmatics - most conspicuously the pragmatics of sociality and communication - in a neuro-cognitive, bio-adaptive, evolutionary framework. The fact that context, or framing, the core notion of pragmatics, is a mental construct undertaken on the fly through judgment of relevance, has been well know since Aristotle, Kant and Peirce. But the context that is relevant to sociality, culture and communication is a highly specific mental construct - the mental model of the current, rapidly shifting belief-and-intention states of one's interlocutor. That is, the context most relevant for social interaction and communication is the mental representation of other minds. The book has ten chapters. Chapter 1 is a condensed intellectual history of pragmatics. The next two chapters deal with the construction of generic (lexical-semantic) mental categories, thus primarily with the framing of 'external' reality (1st-order framing). Chapter 2 treats the formation of generic mental categories, what cognitive psychologists know as Semantic Memory. The prototype-like nature of mental categories is shown to be an adaptive compromise between two conflicting but equally valid adaptive imperatives: rapid uniform processing of the predictable bulk, and contextual flexibility in dealing with exceptional high-relevance cases. Chapter 3 highlights the network (nodes-and-connection) structure of semantic memory. Within this framework, the metaphoric extension of meaning is revisited, and the contextual-adaptive basis for metaphoric language use is reaffirmed. Chapter 4 outlines the core of the book: the interpretation of communicative context as a systematic on-line construction of mental models of the interlocutor's rapidly-shifting states of belief and intention. In this framework, grammar is shown to be a pivotal instrument for automated, streamlined information processing. Mental models of the interlocutor's epistemic and deontic states are constructed rapidly on-line during grammar-coded human communication. The theoretical underpinnings of this approach to grammar, the so-called Theories of Mind tradition, is discussed from an evolutionary perspective. Three subsequent chapters flesh out this adaptive approach to grammar, ranging over the three major foci of grammatical structure: The grammar of referential coherence (ch. 5), the grammar verbal modalities (ch. 6), and the grammar of clause-chaining (ch. 7). The last three chapters extend pragmatics somewhat beyond its traditional bounds. Chapter 8 sketches out the close parallels between the pragmatics of individual cognition (epistemology) and the pragmatics of organized inquiry (philosophy of science). In the latter, the relevant interlocutor whose mind is to be anticipated turns out to be the community of scholars. Chapter 9 contrasts two extreme theories of the self - one contextual-pragmatic wherein the self is an unstable de-centralized multiple; the other of an invariant, centralized, controller self. Two well-known mental disturbances, schizophrenia and autism, are identified as the respective clinical expressions of the two extreme poles of the self. The neurological basis for the two disturbances, it turns out, is to be found at two distinct loci within the attentional network. An unimpaired self, it is suggested, must accommodate both extremes, and is thus - much like mental categories - a classical adaptive compromise. Chapter 10, lastly, deals with the contextual pragmatics of a traditional martial art, Tai Chi Chuan, as a stand-in for social interaction. Whether in hostile or cooperative interaction, one's every move is transacted in the context of the opponent's putative current states of belief and intention. The grammar of social interaction thus turns out to recapitulate the grammar of inter-personal communication; or perhaps vice versa. Full title information: Context as Other Minds. The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition and Communication T.Givón University of Oregon 2005. xvi, 283 pp. Hardbound 1 58811 592 5 / USD 138.00 90 272 3226 1 / EUR 115.00 Paperback 1 58811 593 3 / USD 46.95 90 272 3227 X / EUR 39.00 Direct link to home page and ordering : www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=Z%20130 PhoneOrder: US & Canada 800-562-5666 Rest of world: +31 20 630 47 47 Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) 763 North 24th St Ph: 215-769-3444 Philadelphia PA 19130 Fax: 215-769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From mshimotani at wisc.edu Sat Aug 20 15:56:24 2005 From: mshimotani at wisc.edu (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCMjxDKxsoQiAbJEJLYzUtGyhC?=) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 10:56:24 -0500 Subject: Announcement for The 15th JK conference Message-ID: Dear all, The 15th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference will be held at University of Wisconsin-Madison on schedule: Date: OCTOBER 7th-9th, 2005. Place: The Pyle Center at UW-Madison Conference website: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JK15index.htm The conference program and the presentation abstracts are now available at the JK15 website: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JKprogram.htm In conjunction with the 15th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference, we are also holding the PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP as sheduled below: Date: Thursday, October 6th, 2005 Time: 1:30 - 5:00 p.m. For more details about the pre-conference workshop, please see: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JKpreworksop.htm The due for EARLY REGISTRATION is approaching! It is SEPTEMBER 1st. To register for the conference and the pre-conference workshop, please see: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JKregistration.htm For accommodation, 35 rooms have been blocked at the Lowell Center for JK15 participants. And, 9 rooms are still available at this time of Friday, 8/19. However, please note that unoccupied rooms will be RELEASED to the public on Thursday, SEPTEMBER 8th (8:00 a.m) at Madison time. We hope that as many of you as possible can attend the JK15 conference and the pre-conference workshop and share your ideas with us about the two languages. We are also very much looking forward to seeing you all at JK15 in October in Madison, Wisconsin. Maki Shimotani *************************** Maki Shimotani Ph.D. program in Japanese Linguistics Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literature University of Wisconsin-Madison 1269 Van Hise Hall 1220 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706 TEL: (608)262-9217 (office) Email: mshimotani at wisc.edu From tgivon at uoregon.edu Mon Aug 8 18:42:44 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 11:42:44 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: Dear FUNK people, As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from the physical evidence. Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of evolution". The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more widely attested cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication may appear earlier in evolution. (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to be 'source constructions', may have also evolved earlier. (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have most likely evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, uses. (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded grammaticalization (structure) in evolution. Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and gradual emergence are the norm. I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the only way to go. Best, TG From danielrr at eresmas.net Mon Aug 8 20:09:10 2005 From: danielrr at eresmas.net (Daniel =?iso-8859-1?Q?Ria=F1o?=) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 22:09:10 +0200 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42F7A7A3.D7DCD675@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: >The full reference is: S. >McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revolution that wasn't: A new >interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human >Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. and the link you're looking for is http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/files/mcbrearty.pdf From macw at mac.com Mon Aug 8 20:17:28 2005 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 16:17:28 -0400 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42F7A7A3.D7DCD675@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Dear Tom et al., The McBrearty and Brooks paper is truly excellent, as Tom notes. Let me also recommend two other related papers. One is a lovely Scientific American article from June this year by Kate Wong based in large part on McBrearty and Brooks but integrating other material too. Great pictures. Another is Eswaran, V., Harpending, H., & Rogers, A. (2005). Genomics refutes an exclusively African origin of humans. Journal of Human Evolution, 49, 1-18. The idea of a sudden saltatory evolution looks less necessary when we see the archeological precursors in Africa going back at least to 70,000 in Blombos Cave near the Cape and even further in some regards in other locales. Of course, the ochre markings in that cave do not have the artistic scope of the European caves, but they are clearly planned markings. What I found important in the Eswaran et al. article was the way in which it allows us to understand the evidence for an evolutionary bottleneck at about 70,000 years ago not in terms of a sudden jump, but a wave of diffusion. Moreover, the people at the front of this wave were subject to additional interesting evolutionary pressures. This analysis allows us to believe that something unique did indeed happen in the late Pleistocene, but that it happened across a period of perhaps 30,000 years as a part of a gradualist, coevolutionary process. --Brian MacWhinney From dan.everett at manchester.ac.uk Tue Aug 9 04:34:13 2005 From: dan.everett at manchester.ac.uk (Professor D.L. Everett) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 23:34:13 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <138B8E05-D0FF-428B-868D-5A258E90BAC8@manchester.ac.uk> Message-ID: > On language evolution, I would also recommend to all the book (that > many of you probably already know) by Herbert Simon, The Sciences > of the Artificial, by MIT Press. Among other things, Simon argues > (this goes back to 1962) that complexity is usually in the world > rather than symbolic systems per se and that one common organizing > characteristic of complex systems is tree-structured hierarchies > (i.e. the Chomskyan UG makes no contribution because its two major > contributions, tree-structure and structure-dependent rules [which > of course predate it by quite a bit anyway] are found throughout > nature and thus the bulk of linguistic structure proper is not > unique to language and needs no special mechanisms to account for it). > > > Also, my forthcoming main article in the next issue of Current > Anthropology, based on Piraha, argues that some languages give > clear evidence of having followed different evolutionary paths and, > again, that UG is therefore not useful (a fortiori useless are > concepts like 'Language Organs'). There are comments on that > article by Tomasello, Berlin, Kay, Wierzbicka, Levinson, Pawley, > Goncalves, and Surralles, followed by my final reply. Some of the > comments are pretty heated, so all will at least find that > entertaining. > > DLE > > > On 8 Aug 2005, at 15:17, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > > > >> Dear Tom et al., >> The McBrearty and Brooks paper is truly excellent, as Tom >> notes. Let me also recommend two other related papers. One is a >> lovely Scientific American article from June this year by Kate >> Wong based in large part on McBrearty and Brooks but integrating >> other material too. Great pictures. Another is >> Eswaran, V., Harpending, H., & Rogers, A. (2005). Genomics refutes >> an exclusively African origin of humans. Journal of Human >> Evolution, 49, 1-18. >> >> The idea of a sudden saltatory evolution looks less necessary when >> we see the archeological precursors in Africa going back at least >> to 70,000 in Blombos Cave near the Cape and even further in some >> regards in other locales. Of course, the ochre markings in that >> cave do not have the artistic scope of the European caves, but >> they are clearly planned markings. What I found important in the >> Eswaran et al. article was the way in which it allows us to >> understand the evidence for an evolutionary bottleneck at about >> 70,000 years ago not in terms of a sudden jump, but a wave of >> diffusion. Moreover, the people at the front of this wave were >> subject to additional interesting evolutionary pressures. This >> analysis allows us to believe that something unique did indeed >> happen in the late Pleistocene, but that it happened across a >> period of perhaps 30,000 years as a part of a gradualist, >> coevolutionary process. >> >> --Brian MacWhinney >> >> >> > > > From Mike_Cahill at sil.org Tue Aug 9 13:05:52 2005 From: Mike_Cahill at sil.org (Mike_Cahill at sil.org) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 08:05:52 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42F7A7A3.D7DCD675@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more widely attested cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication may appear earlier in evolution. (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to be 'source constructions', may have also evolved earlier. (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have most likely evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, uses. (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded grammaticalization (structure) in evolution." These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how valuable are they? Mike Cahill Tom Givon Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu 08/08/2005 01:42 PM Dear FUNK people, As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from the physical evidence. Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of evolution". The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more widely attested cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication may appear earlier in evolution. (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to be 'source constructions', may have also evolved earlier. (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have most likely evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, uses. (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded grammaticalization (structure) in evolution. Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and gradual emergence are the norm. I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the only way to go. Best, TG From tgivon at uoregon.edu Tue Aug 9 15:07:39 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 08:07:39 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language evolution, we are honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. Being an incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we will be able to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly of the same kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make about 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already manipulate both mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never will be able to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then inferences, and I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) we might be able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede we are at the hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make predictions. If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, behavior and cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most difficult. So the odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. And since when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG ================ Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: > A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: > > "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication > may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to > be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution." > > These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a > hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that > we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before > writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how > valuable are they? > > Mike Cahill > > Tom Givon > Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > > 08/08/2005 01:42 PM > > Dear FUNK people, > > As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. > So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper > on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great > interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but > also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual > undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. > McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new > interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human > Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented > re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human > Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that > 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human > behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, > organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated > hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language > as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without > apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological > evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and > Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from > the physical evidence. > > Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of > 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is > attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in > the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa > migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was > not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of > many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as > elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go > hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. > many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was > no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) > evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of > evolution". > > The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of > language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the > Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical > and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a > gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical > article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of > Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same > volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data > accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some > possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These > inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and > Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more > possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. > Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live > communication may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend > to be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution. > > Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a > matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and > discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, > graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. > This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the > biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and > gradual emergence are the norm. > > I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up > with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a > developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the > only way to go. > > Best, TG From nrude at Ballangrud.com Tue Aug 9 21:37:10 2005 From: nrude at Ballangrud.com (Noel Rude) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 14:37:10 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: Right on--agree! Also ... real scientists are always optimists, as Sheldon Glashow eloquently argues in a book I have--that is, scientists who actually construct great theories always know instinctively, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that things are knowable and that beauty is a guide to the right theory. I count you as one of those real scientists. But thinkers need critics and so let me affirm my skepticism with the following four points: 1) Anthropic Phenomena--as many physicists are now coming to see and as Martin Rees (as good an atheist as any) points out in "Just Six Numbers", anyone who believes that the laws of physics are contingent (not Platonic) has only two choices: Design or Many Worlds. My physicist son-in-law jokes that he sees the day coming when the teacher will say, "Now, Johnny, you can doubt Many Worlds privately, but the Supreme Court has ruled that we may not question the theory in physics class." 2) Origin of Life--need I say anything here? 3) Origin of Species--Darwin's theory was offered as a materialistic explanation of evolution (which was discovered by creationists), but he as most who have followed tend to argue that evolution has occurred and therefore the theory is vindicated. Many of us who doubt Darwin have no problem with the age of the earth, the geologic record, genetics, microbiology, or evolution. We simply have profound doubts that the chance and necessity of the Darwinists is adequate for the job. As you know, it isn't just the despised fundamentalists who share this view. Quite a few mathematicians have ruled it impossible, as at the Wistar Institute back (if I remember correctly) in the late Sixties. A fun critic is the agnostic (and thus no adherent of Intelligent Design) David Berlinski. 4) The Mind--so far there simply are no credible theories of mind. The best we can do is declare that free will and consciousness are illusions, or that they somehow "emerge" or "supervene" on a complex computational or stimulus-response mechanism. As Jacques Monod clarified in the 1960s, epistimological materialism admits only chance (as in quantum uncertainty or random mutations) and necessity (physical law, natural selection) as explanatory. The age old explanation of design must be rejected a priori. But how long must we go with no credible theory of consciousness/free will before we are allowed to invoke agency as elemental? All scientific theory hangs on metaphysical premises or "sky-hooks". Design was one of these until the Deists of the Enlightenment ruled it out of the cosmos and Darwin proposed his theory. A good argmnent can be made that it isn't logic and empirical evidence that drives Darwinism but rather a profound fear of the Religious Right. Nevertheless I suspect that as more and more bright thinkers come to accept design (and it is hard to deny that this isn't in the works--otherwise why the hysterics?) we will see great breakthroughs across many disciplines in science. But I rattle on rather irritatingly, I'm sure. Y'all take care and don't dispair, Noel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Givon" To: Cc: "Orbell, John" ; ; "Heine, Bernd" ; ; "Bickerton, Derek" Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:07 AM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language evolution, we are honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. Being an incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we will be able to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly of the same kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make about 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already manipulate both mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never will be able to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then inferences, and I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) we might be able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede we are at the hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make predictions. If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, behavior and cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most difficult. So the odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. And since when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG ================ Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: > A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: > > "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication > may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to > be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution." > > These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a > hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that > we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before > writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how > valuable are they? > > Mike Cahill > > Tom Givon > Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > > 08/08/2005 01:42 PM > > Dear FUNK people, > > As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. > So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper > on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great > interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but > also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual > undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. > McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new > interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human > Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented > re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human > Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that > 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human > behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, > organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated > hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language > as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without > apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological > evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and > Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from > the physical evidence. > > Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of > 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is > attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in > the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa > migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was > not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of > many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as > elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go > hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. > many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was > no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) > evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of > evolution". > > The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of > language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the > Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical > and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a > gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical > article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of > Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same > volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data > accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some > possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These > inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and > Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more > possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. > Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > widely attested > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live > communication may > appear earlier in evolution. > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend > to be 'source > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > most likely > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > uses. > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > grammaticalization > (structure) in evolution. > > Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a > matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and > discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, > graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. > This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the > biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and > gradual emergence are the norm. > > I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up > with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a > developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the > only way to go. > > Best, TG From Salinas17 at aol.com Wed Aug 10 01:44:22 2005 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 21:44:22 EDT Subject: A Super Paper on Human Evolution (2) Message-ID: In a message dated 8/8/05 2:24:43 PM, tgivon at uoregon.edu writes: << According to that 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human behavioral traits...' Some of the main conclusions drawn [in the McBrearty] are: (1) the development of 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is attested there as early as 300,000 BC. >> TOM - I'd suggest to you that the conclusions with regard to language that you've found in the McBrearty paper may not be entirely justified. I'll get to that in a different post. But what I'd like to emphasize here is that the dating of the emergence of "modern" human behaviour in the late Pleistocene has always owed its main force to rather impressive European cave art. If you go to the Leakey Foundation web site and go to their timeline of discoveries page (http://www.leakeyfoundation.org/discoveries/d2_1.jsp) you'll see that aside from tool assemblages and bones, the featured landmark discoveries in Paleoanthropology are cave art (e.g., Altamira, Lascaux). The standard explanation, of course, was that this level of "symbolic art" would have been a great leap in differentiating human behaviour. The idea would be that "thinking" symbolically was evidenced in the drawings in a way that was not present in earlier human remains. There are those of us (including the late Stephen Jay Gould) who thought this was like saying that before Parisian fashion, nobody had an idea of how to dress right. Some of the cave art is truly impressive, but the best of it sure seemed to express some kind of culmination of a long developing technique, rather than a sudden mutation that yielded either a Picasso gene or the emergence of modern humans. It's fashionable nowadays to say that the use of tools can no longer be used to differentiate humans from other primates because it's been shown that other primates use tools. But the fact is that no other primates MAKE tools like hominids did, make stone tools with flaking techniques that are handed down generation after generation, or -- most relevantly -- make tools knapped out of undefined stone that are plainly designed for a specific purpose. When you look at the tools that were produced by, say homo erectus, you see axes, scrappers, knives, projectile points that do not show up in any "primate assemblage" -- if such a thing could be said to exist. These tools in archaeology are diagnostically hominid -- not just primate. And they are far older than "homo sapiens." But do these tools qualify as symbolic thought or any such threshold marker of "modern human behaviour?" The answer is I think in recreating the entire process it took to carefully remove flakes from a stone in a way for example that was not only angled symmetrically but also designed in that way to optimize flight and penetration. If by chance anyone thinks it is brainlessly obvious, just try making one. The making of these tools took anticipation, foresight, planning and a "mind model" of not just the tool but how it should be made to acheive those optimizations. This is new stuff in the biological world. Of course, these techniques do not involve using something like ochre to create some kind of "representation." But perhaps these folks did not have the leisure time to engage in the art scene. And perhaps the consistent reproduction of axes and points do reflect a recurring "representation" that was copied again and again in a very practical artistic tradition. My bet is that as time goes on we are going to find that the "mental capabilities" of modern humans go back much further than hominid anatomical differences would admit. Anatomical differences -- brain size, particularly -- are not going to be enough to explain the massive difference between the modern world humans have built and the world of, for example, erectus. Sally McBrearty's and Kate Wong's papers are a good sign, because they help break down superficial comparisons to some degree. But perhaps they don't go far enough. You see my hypothesis is that the big difference between 4-200,000ybp (or even earlier) and today is not in the end going to be mainly in anatomy or genes. The big difference is going to be in the development of human culture. Tom, consider this quote from the McBrearty piece: "Rather than applying arbitrary criteria for modernity, one could take the position that behavioral innovation drove the morphological changes that are observed in early modern human anatomy." Think for a moment about what door this opens. Does McBrearty really mean "behavioral innovation?" Behaviour is a singular event, of little consequence unless it is repeated. What McBrearty is actually saying is that recurring practices, over generations drove morphological changes. And what those recurring practices over generations are IS HUMAN CULTURE. What McBrearty is actually saying is that human culture drove morphological changes. And should we be surprised? Human culture has taken charge of biological evolution in the past and promises to do so in the future. How else did the wolf evolve into morphologies as diverse as the Chihuhua and the Great Dane -- and proliferate despite reduced survival advantage in the wild -- in little over 12,000 years? And following this path with regard to human evolution, it was human culture in the form of language that evolved a more facile human larynx and not the other way around. We won't be able to track this development of course if we continue to jumble human biological evolution with the qualitatively different force of human culture. There is undoubtably overlap -- but unless the two are distinguished, it will muddy the history of what really happened between then and now. Regards, Steve Long From Mike_Cahill at sil.org Wed Aug 10 14:10:28 2005 From: Mike_Cahill at sil.org (Mike_Cahill at sil.org) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:10:28 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <001601c59d53$0d031780$0a00a8c0@OURBEDROOM> Message-ID: I'm fascinated by people's thinking processes on ID and natural selection (we call it NS so it doesn't suffer from acronym envy?) and theories in general. Bickerton said, inter alia, ID is just like the old God of the Gaps, doomed to do a similar vanishing number. So natural selection may not be the answer. I could live with that, if someone would show me a theory that explained all that NS explains plus some more. That's how "bright thinkers" go from one theory to the next. They don't jump out of a leaky lifeboat just because a rotten plank floats by. They see if the leaks can be mended or if someone can bring on a more seaworthy vessel. No testable theory has ever existed that didn't have flaws in it here and there. That's called "science". The rest is religion. Bottom line: ID is BS. The assumption here is that one needs to have a theory to hold on to, otherwise you (metaphorically) drown. And that's how people usually act. But what about a position that says "Here are some theories, but we know that none of them is adequate."? That would seem to be more of an intellectually honest position, and (extending his metaphor) you have your feet on solid ground rather than being asea. (This point would hold for linguistic theories as well as biological and physical ones - we may eventually get back to linguistics here...) I commend a very interesting and accessible book, The Great Evolution Mystery (Harper & Row) by Gordon Taylor, an evolutionist, who nonetheless amasses arguments and evidence that the process of natural selection is not adequate to explain what actually exists in nature. If he (and others) are right, could we live with an agnostic position that says "Natural selection isn't adequate, and I don't know what the mechanism is."? I am glad that the "hysteria over ID" that Rude mentions has not hit Bickerton, but there is definitely a reaction that is attributable to more than just a clash of ideas, but goes much deeper, to a difference in worldviews. When I merely mentioned ID to one linguist at LSA this January, his voice raised, he got red in the face, and he started calling ID names. When it gets to the stage of name-calling, it's difficult to have any useful discussion. Cheerfully yours, Mike Cahill P.S. It's a rabbit trail , but I just can't resist a comment on the "God of the Gaps" phrase. In practice, something very similar is invoked by evolutionists. Examples: 1) It is assumed that feathers developed from reptilian scales, but no fossil transitions have been found, and no detailed mechanism for the gradual genetic changes has been proposed. 2) Reptiles are cold-blooded, birds are warm-blooded. The assumed change from reptiles to birds involves an incredible host of changes of metabolic strategy, but again, no intermediates have been found (for some time the assumption was that there should be living intermediates, but no dice) and no detailed mechanisms proposed (such as what COULD an intermediate system be like?). These cases could be multiplied into the hundreds. The point - in such cases, evolutionists wave their hands and say "We don't know how, but Evolution just did it." Evolution of the gaps... It's a tie... From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Aug 10 16:55:04 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:55:04 -0700 Subject: [Fwd: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution] Message-ID: From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Aug 10 17:12:42 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 10:12:42 -0700 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution Message-ID: I think the argument is really not about ID, nor about evolution. It is about science. And having heard an earful about ID I cannot, try as I might, differentgiate it from the general, concerted, well finance attack on science in this country (US). This attack is not only on science, but on the Enlightenment's rational methods of inquiry in general. And makes, on occasion, for some strage bedfellows: Fundamentalist Christians, rabid Jihadis, relativist-humanist academics; and occasionally, sad to see, scientists who may know some or even many facts but don't understand the method by which, over time, laboriously, haltingly and never infallibly, hypotheses gradually acquire the firmer staus of 'facts'. In science nothing is in principle forever. But repeated failures to falsify is what makes facts, like 'this table' or my 'left-hand's thumb', appear solid. Y'all be good y'hear. TG ==================== Noel Rude wrote: > Right on--agree! > > Also ... real scientists are always optimists, as Sheldon Glashow eloquently > argues in a book I have--that is, scientists who actually construct great > theories always know instinctively, in spite of all evidence to the > contrary, that things are knowable and that beauty is a guide to the right > theory. I count you as one of those real scientists. But thinkers need > critics and so let me affirm my skepticism with the following four points: > > 1) Anthropic Phenomena--as many physicists are now coming to see and as > Martin Rees (as good an atheist as any) points out in "Just Six Numbers", > anyone who believes that the laws of physics are contingent (not Platonic) > has only two choices: Design or Many Worlds. My physicist son-in-law jokes > that he sees the day coming when the teacher will say, "Now, Johnny, you can > doubt Many Worlds privately, but the Supreme Court has ruled that we may not > question the theory in physics class." > > 2) Origin of Life--need I say anything here? > > 3) Origin of Species--Darwin's theory was offered as a materialistic > explanation of evolution (which was discovered by creationists), but he as > most who have followed tend to argue that evolution has occurred and > therefore the theory is vindicated. Many of us who doubt Darwin have no > problem with the age of the earth, the geologic record, genetics, > microbiology, or evolution. We simply have profound doubts that the chance > and necessity of the Darwinists is adequate for the job. As you know, it > isn't just the despised fundamentalists who share this view. Quite a few > mathematicians have ruled it impossible, as at the Wistar Institute back (if > I remember correctly) in the late Sixties. A fun critic is the agnostic > (and thus no adherent of Intelligent Design) David Berlinski. > > 4) The Mind--so far there simply are no credible theories of mind. The best > we can do is declare that free will and consciousness are illusions, or that > they somehow "emerge" or "supervene" on a complex computational or > stimulus-response mechanism. As Jacques Monod clarified in the 1960s, > epistimological materialism admits only chance (as in quantum uncertainty or > random mutations) and necessity (physical law, natural selection) as > explanatory. The age old explanation of design must be rejected a priori. > But how long must we go with no credible theory of consciousness/free will > before we are allowed to invoke agency as elemental? All scientific theory > hangs on metaphysical premises or "sky-hooks". Design was one of these > until the Deists of the Enlightenment ruled it out of the cosmos and Darwin > proposed his theory. A good argmnent can be made that it isn't logic and > empirical evidence that drives Darwinism but rather a profound fear of the > Religious Right. > > Nevertheless I suspect that as more and more bright thinkers come to accept > design (and it is hard to deny that this isn't in the works--otherwise why > the hysterics?) we will see great breakthroughs across many disciplines in > science. > > But I rattle on rather irritatingly, I'm sure. Y'all take care and don't > dispair, > > Noel > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Tom Givon" > To: > Cc: "Orbell, John" ; ; > "Heine, Bernd" ; > ; "Bickerton, Derek" > > Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:07 AM > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution > > Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language evolution, we are > honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the > moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. Being an > incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we will be > able > to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly of the > same > kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make about > 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already manipulate both > mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never will be > able > to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then inferences, > and > I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) we might > be > able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede we are at > the > hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make predictions. > If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, behavior and > cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most > interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most difficult. So the > odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. And since > when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG > > ================ > > Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: > > > A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: > > > > "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > > widely attested > > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live communication > > may > > appear earlier in evolution. > > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend to > > be 'source > > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > > most likely > > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > > uses. > > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > > grammaticalization > > (structure) in evolution." > > > > These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a > > hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, given that > > we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose before > > writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how > > valuable are they? > > > > Mike Cahill > > > > Tom Givon > > Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > > > > 08/08/2005 01:42 PM > > > > Dear FUNK people, > > > > As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the boonies. > > So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) paper > > on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of great > > interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), but > > also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual > > undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. > > McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new > > interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human > > Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively-documented > > re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human > > Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that > > 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern human > > behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social structure, > > organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated > > hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference "language > > as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) without > > apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological > > evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in Africa and > > Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn from > > the physical evidence. > > > > Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of > > 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is > > attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent discontinuity in > > the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa > > migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The graduality was > > not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the existence of > > many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as > > elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go > > hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural evolution (cf. > > many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), there was > > no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral (cultural) > > evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the pacemaker of > > evolution". > > > > The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of > > language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the > > Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both lexical > > and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a > > gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see critical > > article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of > > Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in the same > > volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental data > > accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some > > possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. These > > inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon (1979) and > > Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more > > possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & responsibly. > > Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: > > (i) All other things being equal, typological features that are more > > widely attested > > cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. > > (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live > > communication may > > appear earlier in evolution. > > (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those that tend > > to be 'source > > constructions', may have also evolved earlier. > > (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have > > most likely > > evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or grammatical, > > uses. > > (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded > > grammaticalization > > (structure) in evolution. > > > > Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar are a > > matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and > > discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi-dimentional, > > graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably the norm. > > This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the > > biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral exploration and > > gradual emergence are the norm. > > > > I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to come up > > with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a > > developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to me, the > > only way to go. > > > > Best, TG From mark at polymathix.com Wed Aug 10 19:10:55 2005 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:10:55 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42FA358A.36E74CB3@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Tom Givon wrote: > > I think the argument is really not about ID, nor about evolution. It is > about science. And having heard an earful about ID I cannot, try as I > might, differentiate it from the general, concerted, well financed attack > on science in this country (US). This attack is not only on science, but > on the Enlightenment's rational methods of inquiry in general. Absolutely. The argument generally goes as follows: (a) Scientific theories are always dependent on metaphysical postulates. (b) There are no scientific theories that are perfectly adequate. (c) My metaphysical postulates are just as good as anybody else's. --- (d) Ergo, my non-scientific theory based on my metaphysical postulates is just as good as any scientific theory. The two obvious problems with this argument, of course, are (1) It can be shown that premise (a) is false. (van Fraassen) (2) Conclusion (d) suffers from presupposition failure (a non-scientific theory cannot be evaluated one way or another as a scientific theory). Conclusion (d) is equivalent to the usually unstated conclusion (e): (e) Ergo, my non-scientific theory based on my metaphysical postulates is just as good as any plate of spaghetti carbonara. So, the simple fact of the matter remains that purveyors of non-scientific theory have no recourse but to accept with all consequences that they're not doing science. NB: Please note that I do not intend "non-scientific" to imply "religious": not all non-scientific theory is necessarily grounded in any kind of religious doctrine. For example, I consider Chomskyan linguistics to belong to (non-scientific) philosophy of language, not (scientific) linguistics, because the philosophical method is ubiquitous there while the scientific method is nowhere to be seen. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From lise.menn at colorado.edu Wed Aug 10 22:08:25 2005 From: lise.menn at colorado.edu (Lise Menn) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:08:25 -0600 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <42FA358A.36E74CB3@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: I think a major reason for the failure of people to 'not understand the methods' of science is that science teachers up until graduate school (and even then) - that is, the overwhelming amount of teaching received by the population - teach students about the FACTS - which is what they will be tested on - and pay at most a little lip service to how those 'facts' were discovered and how they came to be accepted as facts. We (that is, Funkfolk) all know how roughly far the earth is from the sun, but I for one have never read anything about how that number, or rather range of numbers, was established, whether people argued about the methods, whether the first person who proposed that it was about 93 million miles was expelled from his professional society (or if it was a woman, what happened when she tried to get that number taken seriously) and so on... So if science (including our own) is generally taught by tacit appeal to authority, how could anyone not in the game see a real difference between science and professions of faith? Lise Menn On Aug 10, 2005, at 11:12 AM, Tom Givon wrote: > > I think the argument is really not about ID, nor about evolution. > It is about > science. And having heard an earful about ID I cannot, try as I might, > differentgiate it from the general, concerted, well finance attack > on science in > this country (US). This attack is not only on science, but on the > Enlightenment's rational methods of inquiry in general. And makes, > on occasion, > for some strage bedfellows: Fundamentalist Christians, rabid Jihadis, > relativist-humanist academics; and occasionally, sad to see, > scientists who may > know some or even many facts but don't understand the method by > which, over > time, laboriously, haltingly and never infallibly, hypotheses > gradually acquire > the firmer staus of 'facts'. In science nothing is in principle > forever. But > repeated failures to falsify is what makes facts, like 'this table' > or my > 'left-hand's thumb', appear solid. Y'all be good y'hear. TG > > ==================== > > Noel Rude wrote: > > >> Right on--agree! >> >> Also ... real scientists are always optimists, as Sheldon Glashow >> eloquently >> argues in a book I have--that is, scientists who actually >> construct great >> theories always know instinctively, in spite of all evidence to the >> contrary, that things are knowable and that beauty is a guide to >> the right >> theory. I count you as one of those real scientists. But >> thinkers need >> critics and so let me affirm my skepticism with the following four >> points: >> >> 1) Anthropic Phenomena--as many physicists are now coming to see >> and as >> Martin Rees (as good an atheist as any) points out in "Just Six >> Numbers", >> anyone who believes that the laws of physics are contingent (not >> Platonic) >> has only two choices: Design or Many Worlds. My physicist son-in- >> law jokes >> that he sees the day coming when the teacher will say, "Now, >> Johnny, you can >> doubt Many Worlds privately, but the Supreme Court has ruled that >> we may not >> question the theory in physics class." >> >> 2) Origin of Life--need I say anything here? >> >> 3) Origin of Species--Darwin's theory was offered as a materialistic >> explanation of evolution (which was discovered by creationists), >> but he as >> most who have followed tend to argue that evolution has occurred and >> therefore the theory is vindicated. Many of us who doubt Darwin >> have no >> problem with the age of the earth, the geologic record, genetics, >> microbiology, or evolution. We simply have profound doubts that >> the chance >> and necessity of the Darwinists is adequate for the job. As you >> know, it >> isn't just the despised fundamentalists who share this view. >> Quite a few >> mathematicians have ruled it impossible, as at the Wistar >> Institute back (if >> I remember correctly) in the late Sixties. A fun critic is the >> agnostic >> (and thus no adherent of Intelligent Design) David Berlinski. >> >> 4) The Mind--so far there simply are no credible theories of >> mind. The best >> we can do is declare that free will and consciousness are >> illusions, or that >> they somehow "emerge" or "supervene" on a complex computational or >> stimulus-response mechanism. As Jacques Monod clarified in the >> 1960s, >> epistimological materialism admits only chance (as in quantum >> uncertainty or >> random mutations) and necessity (physical law, natural selection) as >> explanatory. The age old explanation of design must be rejected a >> priori. >> But how long must we go with no credible theory of consciousness/ >> free will >> before we are allowed to invoke agency as elemental? All >> scientific theory >> hangs on metaphysical premises or "sky-hooks". Design was one of >> these >> until the Deists of the Enlightenment ruled it out of the cosmos >> and Darwin >> proposed his theory. A good argmnent can be made that it isn't >> logic and >> empirical evidence that drives Darwinism but rather a profound >> fear of the >> Religious Right. >> >> Nevertheless I suspect that as more and more bright thinkers come >> to accept >> design (and it is hard to deny that this isn't in the works-- >> otherwise why >> the hysterics?) we will see great breakthroughs across many >> disciplines in >> science. >> >> But I rattle on rather irritatingly, I'm sure. Y'all take care >> and don't >> dispair, >> >> Noel >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Tom Givon" >> To: >> Cc: "Orbell, John" ; ; >> "Heine, Bernd" ; >> ; "Bickerton, Derek" >> >> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:07 AM >> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] a super(b) paper on human evolution >> >> Mike's question is to the point. When we discuss language >> evolution, we are >> honor-bound to concede that making testable predictions is--at the >> moment--hard to come by, much harder than in physics or biology. >> Being an >> incipient (if well-disguised) optimist, I think that some day we >> will be >> able >> to make testable predictions. But they are not going to be exactly >> of the >> same >> kind (thus, perhaps, alas,validity?) as predictions one can make >> about >> 'hard-wired' bio-evolution. In biology, one can already >> manipulate both >> mutation & selection. In linguistics, one cannot, and maybe never >> will be >> able >> to. But predictions can also involve complex, indirect if-then >> inferences, >> and >> I think some day, with a bit more ingenuity (and a richer theory) >> we might >> be >> able to make test such prediction. At the moment we must concede >> we are at >> the >> hypothesis-formation stage, groping for a theory that WILL make >> predictions. >> If you want to do science in the complex area of culture, >> behavior and >> cognition, you have to be a bit smarter than the physicists. The most >> interesting potential science--of mind--is surely the most >> difficult. So the >> odds of scoring big are lower, but the prize is surely worth it. >> And since >> when is difficulty a reason to quit? Best, TG >> >> ================ >> >> Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote: >> >> >>> A question on Tom's hypotheses, repeated below: >>> >>> "Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: >>> (i) All other things being equal, typological features that >>> are more >>> widely attested >>> cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. >>> (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live >>> communication >>> may >>> appear earlier in evolution. >>> (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those >>> that tend to >>> be 'source >>> constructions', may have also evolved earlier. >>> (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical >>> senses have >>> most likely >>> evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or >>> grammatical, >>> uses. >>> (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded >>> grammaticalization >>> (structure) in evolution." >>> >>> These may be quantifiable (in the sense that one might develop a >>> hypothetical numerical model), but how can they be testable, >>> given that >>> we're talking about the emergence of language features that arose >>> before >>> writing, and are presumably undatable? And if not testable, then how >>> valuable are they? >>> >>> Mike Cahill >>> >>> Tom Givon >>> Sent by: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu >>> >>> 08/08/2005 01:42 PM >>> >>> Dear FUNK people, >>> >>> As some of you may know, I am a slow reader & live out in the >>> boonies. >>> So it took me a while to get to a superb (tho long & complicated) >>> paper >>> on human evolution that I would like to alert y'all to. It is of >>> great >>> interest first in term of general evolution (human or otherwise), >>> but >>> also in terms of its profound implications for an eventual >>> undedrstanding of language evolution. The full reference is: S. >>> McBrearty & A. Brooks (2000) "The revoluition that wasn't: A new >>> interpretation of the origins of modern human behavior", J. of Human >>> Evolution, vol. 39, pp. 453-563. It is a careful, massively- >>> documented >>> re-evaluation of the henceforth prevalent model of a "Modern Human >>> Revolution", reputed to have occurred ca. 40k BC. According to that >>> 'revolutionary' model (see summary in C. Li, 2002), all 'modern >>> human >>> behavioral traits' (complex tool btechnology, complex social >>> structure, >>> organized domestic space, expanded ecological range, sophistacated >>> hunting, trade networks, art, symbolic behavior & by inference >>> "language >>> as we know it now") emerged suddenly, in Europe (Cromagnon Man) >>> without >>> apparent gradual development. The paper reviews the archaoeological >>> evidence--skeletal, ecological, nutritional, artefactual--in >>> Africa and >>> Europe, as well as the behavioral implications that can be drawn >>> from >>> the physical evidence. >>> >>> Some of the main conclusions drawn there are: (1) the development of >>> 'modern human traits' already occured in Africa, gradually, and is >>> attested there as early as 300,000 BC. (2) The apparent >>> discontinuity in >>> the European archaeological records is due to repeated out-of-Africa >>> migrations & subsequent extinctions (glaciation). (3) The >>> graduality was >>> not only a matter of cultural evolution, but also of the >>> existence of >>> many sub-variants of 'early' homo sapiens in Africa. That is--as >>> elsewhere in biology & diachrony--graduality & variation go >>> hand-in-hand. (4) As elsewhere in biological & cultural >>> evolution (cf. >>> many works by E. Mayr & the recent book by Boyd & Richerson), >>> there was >>> no firm boundary between biological (genetic) and behavioral >>> (cultural) >>> evolution. Rather (to paraphrase Mayr), "behavior is the >>> pacemaker of >>> evolution". >>> >>> The implications of the McBrearty/Brooks paper to the evolution of >>> language are many & fairly obvious. (1) Out of the windows goes the >>> Chomsky/Gould revolutionay model of sudden emergence. (2) Both >>> lexical >>> and grammatical development lend themselves quite naturally to a >>> gradualistic model. (3) With a certain amount of caution (see >>> critical >>> article by Dan Slobin in our recent TSL volume "The Evolution of >>> Language out of Pre-Language" [2002] and my response to it in >>> the same >>> volume), one could infer from the non-evolutionary developmental >>> data >>> accessible to us now (child learning, pidginization, diachrony) some >>> possible gradual courses of both vocabulary & grammar evolution. >>> These >>> inference may follow, in the main, suggestions made in Givon >>> (1979) and >>> Bickerton (1981) about the "fossils of language". But there is more >>> possible room for treating gradual evolution seriously & >>> responsibly. >>> Here are some quantifiable hypotheses: >>> (i) All other things being equal, typological features that >>> are more >>> widely attested >>> cross-languages may appear earlier in evolution. >>> (ii) Typological features that are more frequent in live >>> communication may >>> appear earlier in evolution. >>> (iii) In Grammaticalization Chains, earlier stages, those >>> that tend >>> to be 'source >>> constructions', may have also evolved earlier. >>> (iv) Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical >>> senses have >>> most likely >>> evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/or >>> grammatical, >>> uses. >>> (v) Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded >>> grammaticalization >>> (structure) in evolution. >>> >>> Since abstraction and complexity in both vocabulary and grammar >>> are a >>> matter of degree, and since the semantic space (of vocabulary) and >>> discourse-pragmatic space (of grammar) are complex & multi- >>> dimentional, >>> graduality in evolution, acquisition and diachrony is probably >>> the norm. >>> This brings language and culture back into line with the rest of the >>> biologically-based universe, where variation, behavioral >>> exploration and >>> gradual emergence are the norm. >>> >>> I hope this is not too far out for y'all. But if we are ever to >>> come up >>> with a viable theoretical perspective on language, a >>> developmental-diachronic-evolutionary framework is, it seems to >>> me, the >>> only way to go. >>> >>> Best, TG >>> > > Lise Menn Office: 303-492-1609 Linguistics Dept. Fax 303-413-0017 295 UCB University of Colorado Boulder CO 80309-0295 lise.menn at colorado.edu From Mike_Cahill at sil.org Thu Aug 11 14:16:46 2005 From: Mike_Cahill at sil.org (Mike_Cahill at sil.org) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:16:46 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <001501c59e1f$2769b120$0a00a8c0@OURBEDROOM> Message-ID: Perhaps we are closer together than it appears. I certainly don't want to ditch theories wholesale! I probably should have written "Here are some theories ABOUT X, but we know each one has some shortcomings." I don't know of a theory (well, at least in my subfield of phonology) that covers everything perfectly (e.g. no phonological theory explains partial nasal place assimilation to labial-velar stops). But different ones are useful for different types of investigations, and theories help you integrate facts that would otherwise be random. I do NOT think one theory is as good as another, but they are useful only as they have explanatory power. And we shouldn't claim a theory is "true" when we know there are defects. My undergrad degree was in biochemistry, so I've also had the opportunity to see how theory applies in the physical sciences. There's similarities and differences between evidence and support for a linguistic theory and a theory of, say, atomic structures (which would be worth someone's dissertation), but it is interesting that theories in the physical sciences are always claims about reality, what is "really there." Theories in linguistics are less likely to make such claims. As for biology, well, maybe we've had enough discussion on what's supposed to be a linguistics discussion forum. There is a place for butterfly collecting, but right, it doesn't take you very far. Mike Cahill ====================================================== Mike Cahill wrote (8/10/05) > The assumption here is that one needs to have a theory to hold on to, > otherwise you (metaphorically) drown. Sorry. You assumed that, not me. And indeed if to you science is just a spectator sport, you surely can indeed say > "Here are some theories, but we know > that none of them is adequate." But if you're going to do anything in science beyond butterfly collecting, you have to have a theory. If you think you don't, that means you have an implicit theory but don't know what it is. Without a theoretical framework to fit into, facts are meaningless. So what you have to do is pick the best theory and try to improve on it. Or come up with something that explains all that the best theory explained and then some. So, > could we live with > an agnostic position that says "Natural selection isn't adequate, and I > don't know what the mechanism is."? I don't think so. Spectate, sure, but not do serious science. You have to have a hypothesis about the mechanism, period. Niche construction theory is a case in point. It doesn't say "NS isn't working, so junk it." NS obviously does work--up to a point. So keep it but introduce additional factors that might interact with it. Not sink into a "Well, one theory is as good as another" quagmire, still less lreap aboard something that just junks NS and has nothing to put in its place. Best to all, Derek From mark at polymathix.com Thu Aug 11 15:09:49 2005 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 10:09:49 -0500 Subject: a super(b) paper on human evolution In-Reply-To: <4D3C11D8-149B-4F4C-863E-CD64662F8FD7@colorado.edu> Message-ID: Lise Menn wrote: > I think a major reason for the failure of people to 'not understand > the methods' of science is that science teachers up until graduate > school (and even then) - that is, the overwhelming amount of teaching > received by the population - teach students about the FACTS - which > is what they will be tested on - and pay at most a little lip > service to how those 'facts' were discovered and how they came to be > accepted as facts. Interestingly and unfortunately, there are numerous well-accepted facts (or 'facts', as the case may be) whose origins even many scientists would be hard-pressed to explain: - how do we *know* that HIV causes AIDS? - how do we *know* that the average global temperature is rising? - how do we *know* that electrons can move backwards through time? - how do we *know* that the mind supervenes on the brain? - how do we *know* that there is a class of constructions in English that are best referred to as "raising"? To my mind, it's far worse for an M.D. not to know the answer to the first question above than it is for a stockbroker not to know how distance to the sun was measured. (It's also pretty bad for linguists not to reflect on the answers to the last two questions above...) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Fri Aug 12 13:55:31 2005 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Anggarrgoon) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 09:55:31 -0400 Subject: call for papers: complex verb constructions Message-ID: Call for papers [Apologies for cross-posting] Intertheoretical approaches to complex verb constructions Eleventh Rice Biennial Symposium Date: March 16th-18th, 2006 Rice University's Linguistics Department will be hosting its Eleventh Linguistic Symposium in March 2006. The aim of the symposium is to draw together different theoretical approaches to the various types of complex predicates found in the languages of the world. Emphasis is on drawing together work on different language families and in different linguistic frameworks. The current confirmed speakers are: Andrew Garrett (UC Berkeley) Talmy Givon (Oregon) Alice Harris (SUNY Stony Brook) Martin Hilpert and Christian Koops (Rice) Simin Karimi (U Arizona) Andrew Pawley (Australian National University) Kingkarn Thepkanjana (Chulalongkorn University) Keren Rice (U Toronto) Eva Schultze-Berndt (Karl-Franzens-Universitaet Graz) Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice) We would like to invite expressions of interest for additional papers directed towards the symposium theme; we anticipate having space for approximately three more speakers. Talks will be 45 minutes, with 15 minutes for questions. While there will be no formal position paper, speakers will be asked to keep in mind a general set of questions which will form the main issues for discussion at the symposium. It is anticipated that a collection of papers from the volume will be published following the symposium. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please send an article you have written on this general topic, along with a brief biographical statement, by email to Anne-Marie Hartenstein (anneh at rice dt edu) or Claire Bowern (bowern at rice dt edu) or by snail mail to Rice University Linguistics Symposium Attn: Claire Bowern Department of Linguistics, MS-23 PO Box 1892 Houston, TX, 77251-1892. by 1st October, 2005. If you wish to be kept up to date on announcements for the workshop, please go to http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lingsymp/ and fill out the online web form. From vyv.evans at sussex.ac.uk Wed Aug 17 12:12:56 2005 From: vyv.evans at sussex.ac.uk (Vyv Evans) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:12:56 +0100 Subject: Cognitive Linguistics conference--reminder Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, This is a reminder that the pre-conference registration deadline for the 'New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics' conference, taking place at the University of Sussex in October is fast approaching. The deadline is Sept. 19th. Details of how to register (whether presenting or attending only) are available from the conference website: www.cogling.org.uk [click on 'Registration']. The most recent version of the conference schedule has just been posted on the website and is available here: This promises to be an extremely exciting event, not to be missed, which in addition to founding a new national UK Cognitive Linguistics association is playing host to a large number of cognitive linguists and cognitive scientists from around the world who will be talking and presenting on a wide range of topics. The conference also features 7 plenary speakers: Paul Chilton, 'Dimensions of Discourse' William Croft, 'Toward a Social Cognitive Linguistics' Ronald Langacker, 'Constructions and Constructional Meaning' Brigitte Nerlich, 'Cognitive Linguistics: A Tale of Two Cultures?' Chris Sinha, 'Mind, Brain, Society: Language as Vehicle and Language as Window' Mark Turner, 'Blending and Compression' Jordan Zlatev, 'Intersubjectivity, Bodily Mimesis, and the Grounding of Language' The conference additionally features three invited theme sessions involving leading scholars both from within and outside cognitive linguistics. The theme sessions are: Cognitive approaches to lexical semantics Approaches to Conceptual Projection Making Sense of Embodiment There is also a satellite event, a tutorial on 'Frame semantics, corpora, and lexicography' being run by two leading experts: Sue Atkins and Adam Kilgarriff, [click on 'Satellite event' for details] . We hope to see you in Brighton in October! Vyv Chair, NDCL Conference Organising Committee www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/vyv/ From paul at benjamins.com Thu Aug 18 15:55:05 2005 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 08:55:05 -0700 Subject: New Book Givón: Context as Other Mi nds Message-ID: BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT John Benjamins Publishing Co. announces the publication of T. Giv?n's new book Context as Other Minds: The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition and Communication. In this book, Prof. Giv?n proposes to re-cast pragmatics - most conspicuously the pragmatics of sociality and communication - in a neuro-cognitive, bio-adaptive, evolutionary framework. The fact that context, or framing, the core notion of pragmatics, is a mental construct undertaken on the fly through judgment of relevance, has been well know since Aristotle, Kant and Peirce. But the context that is relevant to sociality, culture and communication is a highly specific mental construct - the mental model of the current, rapidly shifting belief-and-intention states of one's interlocutor. That is, the context most relevant for social interaction and communication is the mental representation of other minds. The book has ten chapters. Chapter 1 is a condensed intellectual history of pragmatics. The next two chapters deal with the construction of generic (lexical-semantic) mental categories, thus primarily with the framing of 'external' reality (1st-order framing). Chapter 2 treats the formation of generic mental categories, what cognitive psychologists know as Semantic Memory. The prototype-like nature of mental categories is shown to be an adaptive compromise between two conflicting but equally valid adaptive imperatives: rapid uniform processing of the predictable bulk, and contextual flexibility in dealing with exceptional high-relevance cases. Chapter 3 highlights the network (nodes-and-connection) structure of semantic memory. Within this framework, the metaphoric extension of meaning is revisited, and the contextual-adaptive basis for metaphoric language use is reaffirmed. Chapter 4 outlines the core of the book: the interpretation of communicative context as a systematic on-line construction of mental models of the interlocutor's rapidly-shifting states of belief and intention. In this framework, grammar is shown to be a pivotal instrument for automated, streamlined information processing. Mental models of the interlocutor's epistemic and deontic states are constructed rapidly on-line during grammar-coded human communication. The theoretical underpinnings of this approach to grammar, the so-called Theories of Mind tradition, is discussed from an evolutionary perspective. Three subsequent chapters flesh out this adaptive approach to grammar, ranging over the three major foci of grammatical structure: The grammar of referential coherence (ch. 5), the grammar verbal modalities (ch. 6), and the grammar of clause-chaining (ch. 7). The last three chapters extend pragmatics somewhat beyond its traditional bounds. Chapter 8 sketches out the close parallels between the pragmatics of individual cognition (epistemology) and the pragmatics of organized inquiry (philosophy of science). In the latter, the relevant interlocutor whose mind is to be anticipated turns out to be the community of scholars. Chapter 9 contrasts two extreme theories of the self - one contextual-pragmatic wherein the self is an unstable de-centralized multiple; the other of an invariant, centralized, controller self. Two well-known mental disturbances, schizophrenia and autism, are identified as the respective clinical expressions of the two extreme poles of the self. The neurological basis for the two disturbances, it turns out, is to be found at two distinct loci within the attentional network. An unimpaired self, it is suggested, must accommodate both extremes, and is thus - much like mental categories - a classical adaptive compromise. Chapter 10, lastly, deals with the contextual pragmatics of a traditional martial art, Tai Chi Chuan, as a stand-in for social interaction. Whether in hostile or cooperative interaction, one's every move is transacted in the context of the opponent's putative current states of belief and intention. The grammar of social interaction thus turns out to recapitulate the grammar of inter-personal communication; or perhaps vice versa. Full title information: Context as Other Minds. The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition and Communication T.Giv?n University of Oregon 2005. xvi, 283 pp. Hardbound 1 58811 592 5 / USD 138.00 90 272 3226 1 / EUR 115.00 Paperback 1 58811 593 3 / USD 46.95 90 272 3227 X / EUR 39.00 Direct link to home page and ordering : www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=Z%20130 PhoneOrder: US & Canada 800-562-5666 Rest of world: +31 20 630 47 47 Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) 763 North 24th St Ph: 215-769-3444 Philadelphia PA 19130 Fax: 215-769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From mshimotani at wisc.edu Sat Aug 20 15:56:24 2005 From: mshimotani at wisc.edu (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCMjxDKxsoQiAbJEJLYzUtGyhC?=) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 10:56:24 -0500 Subject: Announcement for The 15th JK conference Message-ID: Dear all, The 15th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference will be held at University of Wisconsin-Madison on schedule: Date: OCTOBER 7th-9th, 2005. Place: The Pyle Center at UW-Madison Conference website: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JK15index.htm The conference program and the presentation abstracts are now available at the JK15 website: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JKprogram.htm In conjunction with the 15th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference, we are also holding the PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP as sheduled below: Date: Thursday, October 6th, 2005 Time: 1:30 - 5:00 p.m. For more details about the pre-conference workshop, please see: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JKpreworksop.htm The due for EARLY REGISTRATION is approaching! It is SEPTEMBER 1st. To register for the conference and the pre-conference workshop, please see: http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/jk15conference/JKregistration.htm For accommodation, 35 rooms have been blocked at the Lowell Center for JK15 participants. And, 9 rooms are still available at this time of Friday, 8/19. However, please note that unoccupied rooms will be RELEASED to the public on Thursday, SEPTEMBER 8th (8:00 a.m) at Madison time. We hope that as many of you as possible can attend the JK15 conference and the pre-conference workshop and share your ideas with us about the two languages. We are also very much looking forward to seeing you all at JK15 in October in Madison, Wisconsin. Maki Shimotani *************************** Maki Shimotani Ph.D. program in Japanese Linguistics Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literature University of Wisconsin-Madison 1269 Van Hise Hall 1220 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706 TEL: (608)262-9217 (office) Email: mshimotani at wisc.edu