27.3298, Review: Anthro Ling; Ling Theories; Syntax; Typology: Progovac (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3298. Wed Aug 17 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3298, Review: Anthro Ling; Ling Theories; Syntax; Typology: Progovac (2015)

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Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2016 10:19:46
From: Hannah Little [hannah at ai.vub.ac.be]
Subject: Evolutionary Syntax

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2802.html

AUTHOR: Ljiljana  Progovac
TITLE: Evolutionary Syntax
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Hannah Little, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY
 
“Evolutionary Syntax” by Ljiljana Progovac outlines a gradualist perspective
on how language could have evolved within the Minimalist Program of syntax
(Chomsky 1995), promoting the evolutionary framework of Pinker and Bloom
(1990) in contrast to the saltationist position proposed by Chomsky himself
(e.g. in Berwick & Chomsky, 2011). Primarily focussing on the ideas of
Jackendoff (1999), the book proposes several incremental steps for syntactic
emergence with reference to the idea of “living fossils” within existing human
language. The book proposes 4 stages for the evolution of “syntactic bond”,
which evolved via biological evolution. The first stage is a one-word stage,
similar to modern utterances such as “Run!” or “Fire!”. The second is a
paratactic stage: utterances with flat structure which have no headedness or
hierarchy, where semantic relationships were instead understood from prosodic
cues. The third stage is proto-coordination: flat structure but with something
similar to Merge. Finally, the fourth stage is a specific functional category
stage: hierarchical structure with movement and recursion, as found in modern
human language. Further, the book proposes possible evolutionary pressures
which might have caused language to evolve from one stage to the next via
selection for communicative usefulness, as well as sexual selection.
 
EVALUATION
 
Though the preface of the book states that the book is meant to be readable by
non-linguists, I found from early on that a background knowledge in minimalism
is quite necessary. Even within the introduction, standard abbreviations from
minimalism are used without glossing (e.g. CP, vP, TP, etc.), though they are
glossed later in the content chapters. I would advise non-syntactician readers
to perhaps brush up on their knowledge of minimalism before getting to grips
with the book. The introduction provides a useful overview of what to expect
in the book. However, it seems unnecessarily long, with summaries of content
under different topic-headings, and then again as a chapter-by-chapter
breakdown, which are of course categorised by topic as well.
 
Progovac uses the concept of linguistic ‘fossils’ throughout the book, having
borrowed the term from Jackendoff (1999). As in Jackendoff, the fossils
Progovac refers to are parts of language which still exist (e.g. pidgins,
home-sign, aphasic language, second language production, and examples from
fully formed natural languages). Of course, some of these “fossils” may well
be evolutionarily relevant. However, how directly relevant this evidence is
varies considerably between types of evidence, and what assumptions about
language and language evolution one has. It is an oversimplification to
conflate all examples of more basic structures from existing languages under
one heading, even as a metaphor. Progovac herself points out that the fossils
she talks about are not the same as fossils in biology: they can’t be because
they still exist in language today, rather than being the remains of something
which no longer exists. However, using this terminology somewhat downplays why
the evolution of language is such a challenging topic. The language evolution
literature talks about a complete lack of fossils, which is what makes
indirect evidence so valuable in language evolution. By treating indirect
evidence in the same way as scientists treat fossils, rather than as nuanced,
complex, non-specific and, indeed, indirect puzzle pieces, Progovac has almost
painted language evolution as something which is simply solved. This illusion
makes for a convincing read, but may not stand up to scrutiny when one starts
questioning the assumptions made to build the narrative.

Progovac explains that her book primarily focuses on reconstructing plausible
syntactic emergence patterns, while giving supporting empirical evidence a
more background role. The self-described strength of this book is the depth
and detail within which it goes into reconstruction using syntactic theory,
rather than the breadth which remains the strength of Jackendoff’s work. The
work also departs from Jackendoff’s (1999) theory in several places, e.g.
instead of agent-first constructions, Progovac proposes more absolutive-like
constructions in her paratactic stage. However, this singular focus, and the
depth of detail offered by Progovac, might alienate the general reader, or
even those in the field who have long given up on such detailed accounts of
linguistic emergence, because of their necessary reliance on so many
assumptions. Obviously, for any account of language evolution one needs to
start with a list of assumptions to work from (in this book, the assumption of
slow emergence and a Chomskian account of syntax), but strength in the field
should not be sought from detail or depth, but instead support from empirical
evidence. Progovac does make an admirable effort to support her account using
evidence throughout, but the scope of the empiricism remains primarily in the
field of linguistics (with examples primarily from English and Serbian). The
book promises multidisciplinary evidence; however, when evidence from
neuroscience or genetics is discussed, it is often evidence which shows that
Progovac’s narrative is possible, rather than probable. Progovac herself makes
sure to say that when she becomes very detailed in her account, she is only
talking in hypotheticals, and that the only reason she has given such a
detailed account is to ensure that she is proposing something that is, at
least, possible. However, one can’t help but think that the possibility of an
account should not be valued over the probability of it, and the more detail
one gives, the less probable an account is to be true because it increases the
number of purely hypothetical details one might be wrong about. 

Progovac cites the findings that FOXP2 increases synaptic plasticity (Vernes
et al. 2007) and argues that FOXP2 might have been a plausible root to more
complex syntax, which makes sense. However, the syntactic theory in which the
entire book is steeped rests on a foundation of Chomskian ideas that language
in the brain is not the result of cognitive plasticity, but something
specialised from birth. If plasticity were the thing which triggered more
complex syntax, one would assume that this must have resulted from general
processes and cultural evolution, rather than the biolinguistic perspective
which the book is pushing. Given this incongruity, and the recent explosion of
research arguing that the emergence of linguistic structure is the result of
very small cognitive biases or more generalised cognitive mechanisms and
functional needs, I’m surprised that there isn’t more extensive discussion in
the book on the role of cultural transmission in the evolution of language.
 
Without recourse to accounts of cultural transmission then, what are the
pressures which drove the transition from one stage to another? Progovac
adopts Pinker and Bloom’s (1990) hypothesis that language has been selected
for enhancing communication. For example, one proposed pressure for one or two
word proto-grammars to have evolved into more complex syntax was to break away
from what Progovac calls the “prison of pragmatics”.  Without any hierarchy
within language, there would be no way to distinguish between subjects and
objects, and so our ancestors would have had to rely on pragmatics to make
these inferences. With the introduction of syntax, people no longer had to
rely on pragmatics to create meaning, and could then also use displacement
(talking about things not present). I agree with this as a functional
argument, but I disagree with the description of pragmatics as a “prison” from
which we must escape. Every single linguistic utterance in modern language is
still only understood because of pragmatics. Pragmatics is the very thing that
makes language so flexible and productive (Scott-Phillips, 2014), rather than
the thing we’re trying to get away from in order to be more rigid and
specific. Progovac also turns to sexual selection as a mechanism that drove
the biological evolution of language, claiming that the ability to create
compound insults (such as “fuck head”) would have been used by men to display
quick-wittedness and deride sexual rivals. However, one of the hallmark
features of a trait which has been evolved through sexual selection is that it
differs between the sexes (Darwin, 1871). And yet  language displays very few
sexually dimorphic features, though Progovac notes a difference in the sexes
between the use of procedural and declarative memory in language, but fails to
make the link between this and the ability to make compounds. Further,
sexually selected traits often only develop at puberty (Gluckman and Hanson,
2006), but language develops in early childhood, including the ability to
create novel compounds to insult people (e.g. “poo head”).
 
CONCLUSION
 
This book is great food for thought for both generative syntacticians and
those interested in evolutionary linguistics. It is especially important, as
it highlights that subscribing to minimalism as a framework for studying
language, does not align you to Chomsky’s views on everything. I’m very
pleased to see a book which invites a more empirical approach to the study of
language evolution within generative linguistics. The breadth of linguistic
examples from across languages is impressive, and I agree with Progovac that
cross-linguistic analyses of patterns in language can reveal insights about
our linguistic origins; however a framework that selects specific examples
rather than looking for bigger trends using statistical methods is on
empirically shaky ground. Still, this book would be interesting to the student
of language evolution or syntax. However, a background knowledge of the bigger
themes in language evolution and syntax would be required in order to put the
book in context.  Knowledge of the traditions which inform the assumptions of
the book is needed in order to give proper appraisal to its theories.   
 
REFERENCES

Berwick, R. C., & Chomsky, N. (2011). The biolinguistic program: The current
state of its development. The biolinguistic enterprise: New perspectives on
the evolution and nature of the human language faculty, 19-41.
 
Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program (Vol. 1765). Cambridge, MA: MIT
press.
 
Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (2
vols.) London: John Murray. 

Gluckman, P. D., & Hanson, M. A. (2006). Evolution, development and timing of
puberty. Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, 17(1), 7-12.

Jackendoff, R. (1999). Possible stages in the evolution of the language
capacity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(7):272—279

Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13. (4): 707-784.

Progovac, L. (2015). Evolutionary Syntax. Oxford University Press.

Scott-Phillips, T. C. (2014). Speaking Our Minds. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Vernes, S. C., Spiteri, E., Nicod, J., Groszer, M., Taylor, J. M., Davies, K.
E., ... & Fisher, S. E. (2007). High-throughput analysis of promoter occupancy
reveals direct neural targets of FOXP2, a gene mutated in speech and language
disorders. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 81(6), 1232-1250.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Hannah Little is a PhD candidate supervised by Bart de Boer in the Artificial
Intelligence lab at the VUB. She is using cultural learning, communication and
signal creation experiments to explore the emergence of combinatorial
structure in speech-like signals. Previously, she did an MSc in the Evolution
of Language and Cognition from the Language Evolution and Computation unit
(LEC) at the University of Edinburgh. She blogs about evolutionary linguistics
at replicatedtypo.com.





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