FUNKNET Digest, Vol 128, Issue 6 Need vs. communicative function

Fri May 16 20:03:00 UTC 2014

Agreed! Specifying the selective advantage of each step in an evolutionary
process is an integral part of the account. But having a selective
advantage is not the same as fulfilling a pre-existing need, which was my
point. This may sound like nitpicking, but talk about "need' is a barrier
to developing functional accounts of linguistic structure. No one would
create a noun gender system if designing a language from scratch; that is,
gender systems don't fulfill a pre-existing need. But it does not follow
that gender systems have no communicative function in the languages that
have them. Once they are in place, their impact on the deployment of other
features of structure creates a synchronic systemic "need" for them that
didn't exist before their development.
      Wallis Reid

On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu>wrote:

> Although I agree that evolution is not teleologically driven, one still
> has to provide some account of the evolutionary pressures that led to
> language development. There are many proposals (and I go into these at
> length in a book in progress for WW Norton). One that I discuss in
> Language: The Cultural Tool is what Aristotle called the "social instinct"
> (raised in the context as "Aristotle's Answer," a response to what some
> linguists call "Plato's Problem" - also see work by many folks on the
> related "Interactional Instinct" - though I do not really think that there
> is much evidence for behavioral instincts, including language, of any
> kind). The need for community, uniquely strong in the genus Homo, would
> have exerted strong selectional pressure on the development of more and
> more complex communication systems, of which language is the most complex
> we know. But, as I say, there are many proposals out there. What all of
> these proposals share, though, is an attempt to understand the
> non-teleological forces exerted on language evolution. Boyd and Richerson
> provide in a number of works a lot of good ideas plus the math necessary to
> understand cultural evolution and cultural pressures on different solutions
> to different kinds of problems.
>
> -- Dan
>
>
> On May 14, 2014, at 8:53 AM, Wallis Reid <wallis.reid at gse.rutgers.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > A reply to Johanna Rubba
> >   As I have always understood the mechanism of evolution, it is not
> > teleologically-driven, so nothing ever evolves so at to meet a
> pre-existing
> > need.  It's the reverse. Things become needed as the result of having
> > evolved. So, for instance, creatures didn't evolve eyes because they
> needed
> > to see; we now need to see because we evolved eyes. Or to put it in a
> less
> > paradoxical way, the evolution of eyes led to countless other changes in
> > behavior, ecological niche, feeding, social relations etc. that took
> > advantage of sight, with the result that sight became crucial to our
> > survival. The same would apply to language. It didn't evolve because
> people
> > needed it; it is now needed because its evolution radically changed how
> > people lived, related and perhaps thought.
> > Wallis Reid
> >
> >>>> Johanna Rubba <jrubba at calpoly.edu> 2014/05/09 06:50 PM >>>
> > Fundamentally, if language (as opposed to gesture) isn't at all necessary
> > to communication, why did it evolve?  It is a pretty elaborate system to
> > have evolved in the absence of a need for it.
> >
> >
> > On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 1:00 PM, <funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu>
> wrote:
> >
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> >>
> >> Today's Topics:
> >>
> >>   1. Re: Review of research on gesture (Tahir Wood)
> >>   2. Re: Review of research on gesture (Tahir Wood)
> >>   3. Re: Review of research on gesture (Mike Morgan)
> >>
> >>
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Message: 1
> >> Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 09:53:33 +0200
> >> From: "Tahir Wood" <twood at uwc.ac.za>
> >> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Review of research on gesture
> >> To: <FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu>
> >> Message-ID: <53709A1D020000690011723A at uwc.ac.za>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >>
> >>>>> Johanna Rubba <jrubba at calpoly.edu> 2014/05/09 06:50 PM >>>
> >> Fundamentally, if language (as opposed to gesture) isn't at all
> necessary
> >> to communication, why did it evolve?  It is a pretty elaborate system to
> >> have evolved in the absence of a need for it.
> >>
> >> There is another view regarding evolution, and that is that language
> >> emerged first as a mute system of inner modeling (Sebeok et al) and only
> >> later "exapted" for communication. Obviously language would have made a
> >> huge difference in the potentials for communication, which itself would
> >> have reflected back into enhanced thought processes again. Explaining it
> >> this way does have the merit of avoiding the mechanistic view, in which
> >> humans initially had thoughts just as we do and so they developed
> language
> >> "in order to express" those thoughts (!)
> >> Tahir
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------
> >>
> >> Message: 2
> >> Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 09:57:11 +0200
> >> From: "Tahir Wood" <twood at uwc.ac.za>
> >> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Review of research on gesture
> >> To: <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> >> Message-ID: <53709AF70200006900117240 at uwc.ac.za>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >>
> >>>>> Johanna Rubba <jrubba at calpoly.edu> 2014/05/09 06:50 PM >>>
> >> Fundamentally, if language (as opposed to gesture) isn't at all
> necessary
> >> to communication, why did it evolve?  It is a pretty elaborate system to
> >> have evolved in the absence of a need for it.
> >>
> >> There is another view regarding evolution, and that is that language
> >> emerged first as a mute system of inner modeling (Sebeok et al) and only
> >> later "exapted" for communication. Obviously language would have made a
> >> huge difference in the potentials for communication, which itself would
> >> have reflected back into enhanced thought processes again. Explaining it
> >> this way does have the merit of avoiding the mechanistic view, in which
> >> humans initially had thoughts just as we do and so they developed
> language
> >> "in order to express" those thoughts (!)
> >> Tahir
> >>
> >> ------------------------------
> >>
> >> Message: 3
> >> Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 15:12:53 +0545
> >> From: Mike Morgan <mwmbombay at gmail.com>
> >> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Review of research on gesture
> >> To: Funknet List <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> >> Message-ID:
> >>        <CADLEbUfH2Ui8GLkq12HxmmSnwwVmBJrfFA=
> >> uQmSLP4iucB9RsQ at mail.gmail.com>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> >>
> >> Namaskar to all, from hot and sunny Kathmandu!
> >>
> >> Okay, I hope nobody minds if I put in my 18 rupees worth (at current
> >> exchange rates, US 2 cents)...
> >>
> >> First, to be honest, I haven't (yet!) read Dan's review article which
> >> started this thread... i WILL, but it is number 17 on my "to read list"
> >>
> >> Second, for the sake of full disclosure (and because it SEEMS to
> influence
> >> the regard which some people give comments), I am a sign language
> linguist.
> >> BUT I wasn't always one (just as i wasn't always an Asian); I started
> out
> >> as an Indo-Euorpeanist and got into sign languages by kismet. Because
> of my
> >> background and interests, I do a lot of comparative and typological
> stuff
> >> (I am a fluent signer of 7 sign languages, belonging, by conservative
> >> estimates, to 3 different sign language families), but I mostly publish
> on
> >> morpho-syntax (and specifically morpho-syntax IN discourse).
> >>
> >> I agree that gesture research IS becoming more and more familiar to
> >> linguists at large ... IN THE WEST (and am not sure, MAYBE I include
> Japan
> >> in that West). For the rest of the world (or at least the broad swathes
> of
> >> Asia and Africa where I have been living and working for years) that is
> NOT
> >> the case. AND, alas, sign languages also are seen as closer to gesture
> than
> >> they are to spoken languages (even the Linguistic Society of Nepal,
> which,
> >> by Asian standards, is a fairly linguistically sophisticated group,
> always
> >> schedules sign language presentations at their annual conference in
> >> sessions with presentations on gesture ... and other miscellanea!). I
> >> haven't lived in the West for decades, but I suspect that despite
> gradual
> >> inroads among certain groups (functional and cognitive linguists?),
> gesture
> >> is still NOT something the average Western linguist thinks of when s/he
> >> talks about language structure. i.e. gesture is a beast apart, separate
> >> form language ... and, I suspect, if pushed to take a side, most
> linguists
> >> would say it was  "a lesser beast".
> >>
> >> I got into sign languages, as I said, by (fortunate) accident... and the
> >> first topic I chose was something I have done off and on since:
> structure
> >> of natural discourse. This was in the early 90s, and Sign Linguistics
> had
> >> been around for decades, and so I could read a wide(ish) variety of
> papers
> >> (though rather limited pickings on sign language discourse at that
> time).
> >> And so I had a list of what kinds of things to look at (and look for)...
> >> but fortunately I think in the long run, I decided to IGNORE that list,
> and
> >> just to transcribe EVERYTHING (visual) that was being done by the signer
> >> that seemed even remotely to have potential for communicative goals
> >> (ignoring of course that communication is but ONE use of language)...
> or at
> >> least I would transcribe everything I could pick up on. I suspected
> that a
> >> lot of that extra transcribing would turn out to be "wasted time", but I
> >> also suspected that if i didn't transcribe EVERTHING i saw -- or if I
> just
> >> followed the list taken from works done on other (western) sign
> languages
> >> -- I would MISS a lot of important stuff as well. (And indeed, among
> other
> >> discoveries, this is how I discovered that sideways head-tilt in
> Japanese
> >> Sign Language was an evidential marker.)
> >>
> >> ANYWAYS, so as not to make this too much of a story, over the years I
> have
> >> decided -- as Dan seems to have decided -- that linguistics (and
> linguists
> >> .. though of course NOT the linguist of THIS august group) have drawn a
> >> false line in the sand .. based on the limitations of their experience.
> >> Spoken language linguists (except for the enlightened few?) draw the
> line
> >> thus: if it comes out of your mouth, it is language; if it doesn't come
> out
> >> of your mouth, it is NOT (and CANNOT BE) language (i.e. it is MERE
> >> gesture). They may not actually say it in these words, but in DEED that
> is
> >> how they analyse language. Even many sign language linguists seem to
> get ti
> >> wrong when they put sign languages as a beats apart (albeit, to us a
> >> SUPERIOR beast!) .. and I point out in a review of *Markus Steinbach*
> and
> >> *Annika* Herrmann (eds), Nonmanuals in Sign Language for e-Language
> which I
> >> don't think has yet hit cyberspace, where in the introduction the
> editors
> >> make such a categorical statement about spoken languages : that gesture
> >> CANNOT be linguistic, that there is something about the visual modality
> of
> >> gestures versus the oral modality of spoken languages that keeps them
> >> forever and always in separate categories.
> >>
> >> BUT, I don't think this is true. or at least not NECESSARILY true. And
> >> because of the possibilities that gesture (or at least SOME gesture) not
> >> only interacts with gesture in what I refer to as the Communicative
> >> Semiotic, but in fact (some) gesture might in fact BE language. (My
> mental
> >> picture of what the relationship is between the Communicative Semiotic
> and
> >> the Linguistic Semiotic still has the latter inside the former, Venn
> >> diagram style, but the size of the latter is growing and the boundary is
> >> becoming more and more porous.)
> >>
> >> SEEMS to me that choosing to ignore the potential of gesture IN
> language is
> >> like choosing to ignore tone when describing a Himalayan Tibeto-Burman
> >> language;YES, it is POSSIBLE that tone is not significant ... but based
> on
> >> experience, this is NOT likely.
> >>
> >>
> >> ok, think maybe I gave a bit more than 18 rupees-worth... apologies if
> >> apologies are needed!
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 1:42 PM, Tahir Wood <twood at uwc.ac.za> wrote:
> >>
> >>>>>> Johanna Rubba <jrubba at calpoly.edu> 2014/05/09 06:50 PM >>>
> >>> Fundamentally, if language (as opposed to gesture) isn't at all
> necessary
> >>> to communication, why did it evolve?  It is a pretty elaborate system
> to
> >>> have evolved in the absence of a need for it.
> >>>
> >>> There is another view regarding evolution, and that is that language
> >>> emerged first as a mute system of inner modeling (Sebeok et al) and
> only
> >>> later "exapted" for communication. Obviously language would have made a
> >>> huge difference in the potentials for communication, which itself would
> >>> have reflected back into enhanced thought processes again. Explaining
> it
> >>> this way does have the merit of avoiding the mechanistic view, in which
> >>> humans initially had thoughts just as we do and so they developed
> >> language
> >>> "in order to express" those thoughts (!)
> >>> Tahir
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> mwm || *U*C> || mike || ???? || ???? || ???? || ???? ||  ???? ||???? ||
> >> ??????
> >> (aka Dr Michael W Morgan)
> >> sign language linguist / linguistic typologist
> >> academic adviser, Nepal Sign Language Training and Research
> >> NDFN, Kathmandu, Nepal
> >>
> >>
> >> End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 128, Issue 6
> >> ***************************************
> >>
>
>