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7/22/2019 On the Human- Rethinking the Natural Selection of Human Language by Terrence W. Deacon
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On The Human: Rethinking The Natural
Selection Of Human Language
by: Terrence W. Deacon
February 14th, 2010
Introduction
Since Darwins time, the human language capacity has been a perennially cited paragon of extreme
complexity that defies the explanatory powers of natural selection. And it is not just critics of
Darwinism who have argued that this most distinctive human capacity is problematic. Alfred Russel
Wallacethe co-discoverer of natural selection theory and in many ways more of an ultra-Darwinian
than Darwin himselffamously argued that the human intellectual capacity which makes languagepossible, is developed to a level of complexity that far exceeds what is achievable through natural
selection alone. While fiercely defending natural selection theory with respect to the traits of other
species, he argued that in the case of humans, natural selection could only have endowed the
savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape. (p. 392) And Charles Lyellwho personally
promoted Darwins work and generally supported the evolutionary perspectivealso worried that
language was just too complex to have evolved by natural means. Not only are the vast vocabulary
and baroquely structured grammar and syntax of even the most simple of natural languages orders of
magnitude more complex than any other species communication system, but the capacity this all
provides for expressing esoteric concepts and conveying aesthetic experiences seems far removed from
anything with direct adaptive consequence.
Darwin himself fretted over the possibility that natural selection alone might be incapable of
accounting for exaggerated functional complexity in nature. In a letter he wrote to Asa Gray shortly
after the publication of On the Origin of Species, he admits that The sight of a feather in a peacocks
tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me feel sick! Despite the spectacular and elaborately formed details
of this adornment, it was a burden that negatively impacted health and survival and so could not have
been the subject to natural selection with respect to the environment. But it was the extravagance of
traits such as this, despite their lack of utility, that suggested to Darwin an approach to the challenge
of explaining human mental capacities.
In the case of the peacock tail, and other similar traits, Darwin realized that, indeed, something other
than natural selection with respect to environmental conditions was responsible. Recognizing that
reproduction rather than individual survival was the critical factor in evolution, he argued that
competition with respect to reproductive access (sexual selection) could result in runaway selection on
certain traits, independent of their environmental suitability. Darwin argued that a display feature or
fighting ability that led an individual to out-compete others in gaining access to mates would also
favor proliferation and evolutionary exaggeration of these traits, even at some cost to individual
health and survival. Analogously, he postulated that selection with respect to sex might also explain
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such extravagant and highly divergent traits as human language. In his book The Descent of Man and
Selection in Relation to Sexwhich is typically referred to by only the first half of its titlehe argues
that language and other human traits that appear exaggerated beyond survival value, can be explained
as consequences of sexual selection. So, for example, he imagines that language might have evolved
from something akin to bird song, used as a means to attract mates, and that the ability to produce
highly elaborate vocal behaviors was progressively exaggerated by a kind of arms-race competition forthe most complex vocal display.
Unfortunately, there are strong reasons for doubting the relevance of sexual selection to this most
distinctive of human traits. This is because sexual selection inevitably produces complementary
divergence of male and female traits, as is exemplified by peacock tails and moose antlers, which are
exhibited only by males. While there are indeed a few highly divergent traits distinguishing women
from men (e.g. patterns of fat deposition in breasts and hips, etc.), the sexes differ only very subtly in
their intellectual and language abilities. Thus accounting for the extravagant complexity of language in
terms of sexual selection requires explaining why it lacks this otherwise ubiquitous mark of extreme
sexual dimorphism. To explain the origin of the highly structured human-unique adaptation inevitably
requires addressing Wallaces challenge concerning the complexity and apparent non-adaptive aspects
of these features.
Long evolution in an artificial niche
In my work I use the phrase, symbolic species, quite literally, to argue that symbols have literally
changed the kind of biological organism we are. I believe that we think and behave in many ways that
are quite odd compared to other species because of the way that language has changed us. In many
respects symbolic language has become a major part of the environment to which we have had to
adapt in order to flourish. In the same way that our ancestors bodies evolved in the context of the
demands posed by bipedal foraging with stone tools and incorporating meat into the diet, their brains
evolved in the context of a rich fabric of symbolic cultural communication. As it became increasingly
important to be able to enter into the social web of protolinguistic and other early forms of symbolic
social communication in order to survive and reproduce, the demands imposed by this artificial niche
would have selectively favored mental capacities that guaranteed successful access to this essential
resource. So rather than merely intelligent or wise (sapient) creatures, we are creatures whose social
and mental capacities have been quite literally shaped by the special demands of communicating with
symbols. And this doesnt just mean that we are adapted for language use, but also for all the many
ancillary mental biases that support reliable access and use of this social resource.
But this claim depends on language-like communication being a long-time feature of hominid
evolution. Theories suggesting that human language is a very recent and suddenly evolvedphenomenon would not make this prediction. To them language is almost epiphenomenal. This is
particularly true if the claim is that language appeared suddenly due to some marvelous accidental
mutation that transformed dumb (but large brained) brutes into articulate speakers. This sort of
scenario has become commonplace in recent years, though the evidence supporting it is mostly very
indirect (e.g. archeological evidence of representational forms and objects for adornment, appearing in
the Upper Paleolithic). I think that it is mostly a reflection of a caricatured view of the human/animal
distinction and a sort of hero metaphor imposed upon the fossil evidence. The way that modern
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human brains accommodate language can be used as a clue to how old language is.
If language is a comparatively recent feature of human social interaction, that is if it is only, say, a
hundred thousand years old or so, then we should expect that it had little effect on human brains. Any
structural tweaks of brain architecture that evolved to support it would have had to be either minimal
or else major but dependent on comparatively few genetic changes. A recent origin of language wouldgive it little opportunity to impose selection pressure on human brains, so language function would not
be supported by any widespread and well integrated neurological changes. This would predict that
language abilities are essentially an evolutionary after-thought, inserted unsystematically into an
otherwise typical (if enlarged) ape brain. With l ittle time for the genetic fixation of many supportive
traits to occur, this adaptation would likely depend on only a few key genetic and neurological
changes. As a consequence, language function should be poorly integrated with other cognitive
functions, relatively fragile if faced with impoverished learning contexts, susceptible to catastrophic
breakdown as a result of certain small but critical genetic defects, and severely affected by congenital
mental impairment.
None of these seems to be the case.
On the other hand, if language has been around for a good deal of our evolutionary past, say a million
years or so, that amount of time would have been adequate for the demands of language to have
affected brain evolution more broadly. A large network of subtle gene changes and neurological
adjustments would be involved, and as a result it should be a remarkably well integrated and robust
neurological function. Indeed, there is ample evidence to suggest that language is both well-integrated
into almost every aspect of our cognitive and social lives, that it utilizes a significant fraction of the
forebrain, and is acquired robustly under even quite difficult social circumstances and neurological
impairment. It is far from fragile.
The co-evolutionary interaction goes both ways. Languages also have to adapt to brains. Since thelanguage one learns has to be passed from generation to generation, the more learnable its structures,
and fitted to human limitations, the more effective its reproduction in each generation. Languages and
brains will evolve in tandem, converging towards each other, though not symmetrically. But brain
evolution is a ponderously slow and unyielding process in comparison to the more facile evolution of
languages. So we should expect that languages are more modified for brains than brains are for
language. Nevertheless, if we have been evolving in a symbolic niche for a million years or more, we
should expect that human brains will have been tweaked in many different ways to aid life in this
virtual world.
The world of symbols is an artificial niche. Its ecology is radically different than the biological niche we
also find ourselves in (or at least our ancestors found themselves in). In the same way that beaver dam
building has created an aquatic niche to which beaver bodies have adapted over their evolutionary
history, our cognitive capacities have adapted to our self-constructed niche: a symbolic niche. This is
not a new idea. Indeed the anthropologist Clifford Geertz suggested something like this many decades
ago. I think that today we may be at a point in our evolutionary theorizing and our understanding of
brains to begin to explore exactly what this might mean.
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The most intense and unusual demands of this niche should be reflected in the ways that human
cognition diverges from patterns more typical of other species. Although it has long been popular to
think of the human difference in terms of general intelligence, I think this bias may have misled us into
ignoring what may be a more important constellation of more subtle differences. These likely included
differences in social cognition (e.g. joint attention, empathy, the ability to anticipate anothers intended
actions), differences in how we learn (e.g. superior transfer learning, a predisposition to assume thatassociations are bidirectionalknown as stimulus equivalence, a comparative ease at mimicking) or
even just unusual motor capacities (e.g. unprecedented articulatory and vocal control). These are
members of a widely distributed and diverse set of adaptations that fractionally and collectively
contribute to our language abilities.
With respect to the brain, we need to confront another mystery. How could these many diverse brain
traits have become so functionally intertwined and interdependent as to provide such a novel means of
communication? This is particularly challenging to explain because language is in effect an emergent
function, not some prior function just requiring fine-tuning. Our various inherited vocalizations, such
as laughter, shrieks of fright, and cries of anguish, are comparatively localized in their neurological
control (mostly subcortical) as are other modes of communication in animals. In comparison, language
depends on a widely dispersed constellation of cortical systems, each of which can be found in other
primate brains, but evolved for very different functions. These brain systems have become collectively
recruited for language only because their previously evolved functions overlapped significantly with
some processing demand necessitated by language, though evolved for quite different functions
altogether. Indeed, the neural structures and circuits involved in the production and comprehension of
language are homologous to structures found ubiquitously in most monkey and ape brains: old
structures performing unprecedented new tricks.
A related mystery concerns the extent to which this dominant form of communication depends on
information maintained by social transmission. Even for theories postulating an innate universalgrammar, the vast quantity and high fidelity of the information constituting even a typical vocabulary
stands out as exceedingly anomalous from a biological point of view. How did such a large fraction of
our communicative capacity wind up offloaded onto social transmission? And what explains the
remarkable reliability of this process?
Relaxed selection and complexity
Perhaps the most surprising and controversial point to be made follows from the realization of the
importance of relaxed selection. The higher-order synergy of systems that contribute to language
requires the cooperative functioning of component brain systems. But it appears to paradoxically
require that this synergy among diverse systems must already be in place in order for selection to havehoned it for language.
The co-evolutionary niche construction scenario sketched above still does not account for the
generation of the novel functional synergy between neural systems that language processing requires.
The discontinuities between call control systems and speech and language control systems of the brain
suggest that a co-evolutionary logic alone is insufficient to explain the shift in substrate. Recent
investigation of a parallel shift in both complexity and neural substrate in birdsong may be able to
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shed some light on this.
In a comparative study of a long-domesticated bird, the Bengalese Finch, and its feral cousin, the
White-Rump Munia, it was discovered that the domesticated lineage was a far more facile song-learner
with a much more complex and flexible song than its wild cousin. This was despite the fact that the
Bengalese Finch was bred in captivity for coloration, not singing (Okanoya, 2004). The domestic/feraldifference of song complexity and song learning in these close finch breeds parallels what is found in
comparisons between species that are song-learners and non-learners. This difference also correlates
with a much more extensive neural control of song in birds that learn a complex and variable song.
The fact that this behavioral and neural complexity can arise spontaneously without specific breeding
for singing is a surprising finding since it is generally assumed that song complexity evolves under the
influence of intense sexual selection. This was, however, blocked by domestication. One intriguing
interpretation is that the relaxation of natural and sexual selection on singing paradoxically was
responsible for its elaboration in this example. In brief, with song becoming irrelevant to species
identification, territorial defense, mate attraction, predator avoidance, and so on, degrading mutations
and existing deleterious alleles affecting the specification of the stereotypic song would not have beenweeded out. The result appears to have been the reduction of innate biases controlling song
production. The domestic song could thus be described as both less constrained and more variable
because it is subject to more kinds of perturbations. But with the specification of song structure no
longer strictly controlled by the primary forebrain motor center (called nucleus RA), other linked brain
systems can begin to play a biasing role. With innate motor biases weakened, auditory experience,
social context, learning biases, and attentional factors could all begin to influence singing. The result is
that the domestic song became more variable, more complicated, and more influenced by social
experience. The usual consequence of relaxed selection is genetic driftincreasing the genetic and
phenotypic variety of a population by allowing random reassortment of allelesbut neurologically,
drift in the genetic control of neural functions should cause constraints to become less specific,generating increased behavioral flexibility and greater conditional sensitivity to other neurological and
contextual factors.
This is relevant to the human case, because a number of features of the human language adaptation
also appear to involve a relaxation of innate constraints allowing multiple other influences besides
fixed links to emotion and immediate context to affect vocalization. Probably the clearest evidence for
this is infant babbling. This unprecedented tendency to freely play with vocal sound production occurs
with minimal innate constraint on what sound can follow what (except for physical constraints on vocal
sound generation). Babbling occurs also in contexts of comparatively low arousal state, whereas
laughter, crying, or shrieking are each produced in comparatively specific high arousal states and with
specific contextual associations. This reduction of innate arousal and contextual constraint on soundproduction, opens the door for numerous other influences to begin to play a role. Like the
domesticated bird, this allows many more brain systems to influence vocal behavior, including socially
acquired auditory experience. In fact, this freedom from constraint is an essential precondition for
being able to correlate learned vocal behaviors with the wide diversity of objects, events, properties,
and relationships language is capable of referring to. It is also a plausible answer to the combinatorial
synergy problem (above) because it demonstrates an evolutionary mechanism that would
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spontaneously result in the emergence of multi-system coordination of neural control over vocal
behavior.
But although an evolutionary de-differentiation process may be a part of the story for human language
adaptation, it is clearly not the whole story. This increased flexibility and conditionality likely exposed
many previously irrelevant interrelationships between brain systems to selection for the newfunctional associations that have emerged. Most of these adaptations remain to be identified.
However, if such a dedifferentiation effect has been involved in our evolution, then scenarios
hypothesizing selection for increased innateness or extrapolation from innate referential calls to words
become less plausible.
Some concluding speculations
In closing, I would like to reflect on some of the more esoteric features of humanness that may be
illuminated by the paired processes of symbolic niche construction effects and relaxed selection.
For example, I think it makes sense to think of ourselves as symbolic savants, unable to suppress the
many predispositions evolved to aid in symbol acquisition, use, and transmission. In order to be so
accomplished at this strange cognitive task, we almost certainly have evolved a predisposition to see
things as symbols, whether they are or not. This is probably manifest in the make-believe of young
children, the way we find meaning in coincidental events, see faces in clouds, are fascinated by art,
charmed by music, and run our lives with respect to dictates presumed to originate from an invisible
spirit world. Like the flight play of birds, the manipulation of objects by monkeys, the attraction of
cats to small feathered toys, our special adaptation is the lens through which we see the world. With it
comes an irrepressible predisposition to seek for a cryptic meaning hiding beneath the surface of
appearances. Almost certainly many of our most distinctive social capacities and biasese.g.
tendencies to conformity and interest in copying the speech we hear as infantsare also reflections of
this adaptation to an ecosystem of symbolic relationships. And of course there is literature and theater.How effortlessly we project ourselves into the experiences of someone else, feeling the joys and
sorrows almost as intensely as our own.
Relaxation of selection, on the other hand, may have contributed to another suite of distinctively
human traits. Widely distributed dedifferentiation at the genetic and epigenetic level would have
increased flexibility of a variety of once phylogenetically constrained cognitive and motivational
systems. Perhaps the most striking feature of humans is their flexibility and cultural variety. Consider
the incredible diversity of marital and kinship organizations. Most species have fairly predictable
patterns of sexual association, kin association, and offspring care, and although they are somewhat
flexible, this variety is mediated almost entirely by individual motivational systems. In contrast,
despite the evolutionary importance of reproduction, human mating and reproduction are largely
controlled by symbolically mediated social negotiations. This offloading of one of the most
fundamental biological functions onto social-symbolic mechanisms is perhaps the signature feature of
being a symbolic species. Thus, because of symbols and with the aid of symbols, Homo sapiens has
been self-domesticated and adapted to a niche unlike any other that ever has existed. We have been
made in the image of the word.
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References
Darwin C (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life(John Murray, London), 1st Ed.
Darwin C (1860) Letter 2743 Darwin, C. R. to Gray, Asa, 3 Apr 1860. Source: http://
www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2743.
Darwin C (1871) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (John Murray, London).
Deacon TW (1997) The Symbolic Species: the Coevolution of Language and the Brain(W. W. Norton & Co.,
New York).
Deacon TW (2009) Relaxed selection and the role of epigenesis in the evolution of language. Oxford
Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscienceeds Blumberg MS, Freeman JH, Robinson SR (Oxford
University Press; New York) pp 730-752.
Lyell C (1863) Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man(John Murray, London).
Okanoya K (2004) The Bengalese Finch: A window on the behavioral neurobiology of birdsong syntax . Annals
NY Acad Sci 1016:724735.
Wallace AR (1869) Sir Charles Lyell on Geological Climates and the Origin of Species. Quarterly Review,
April, cxxvi: 359-94.
30 comments to On the Human: Rethinking the natural
selection of human language
Mark Turner
February 15th, 2010 at 3:17 am
Terry Deacon hits the nail on the head in urging us to reconsider the interaction between natural
selection and human language. His emphasis on long evolution is apt. His focus on relaxed
selection in an artificial niche is original, potentially seminal. He offers here a major extension
of his proposals in The Symbolic Specieswhich I reviewed favorably when it was first published
(see http://ssrn.com/author=1058129 ).My disagreement with Deacon is captured in his title: The Natural Selection of Human
Language. There was no natural selection of human language per se, independent of other
advanced abilities. Rather, the basic mental capacity for conceptual integration, otherwise known
as blending, has been evolving since the mammalian line. Human beings evolved a more
advanced ability for blending. This advance made it possible for several related behaviors to
arise as a suite of coordinated and mutually-supporting products of blending. Human language
was one of them. Gilles Fauconnier and I made this proposal in The Way We Think(Basic Books,
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2002; see http://markturner.org/wwt.html).
Evolutionary accounts often take their cue from a rough-and-ready list of advanced human
behaviors we see all about usadvanced music, advanced social cognition, culture, religion, sign
systems, gesture, language, art, science, advanced dance, fashion, advanced tool use, math, . . .
and then, considering them metaphorically as independent traits, seek an evolutionary story for
each, regardless of the others. What most needs to be reconsidered is that impulse. To the extentthat we are able to interrogate the archeological record, these behaviors seem to be recent and to
have come up in concert. To the extent that we are able to study these behaviors in living human
beings, they appear to develop in concert. Blending theory proposes that these behaviors
cooperate because they are siblings, drawing on the same mental source.
Consider surfing. Its an amazing behavior, highly complicated, creative, demanding. Its
Polynesian invention is, evolutionarily speaking, very recent, and its development and
proliferation have occurred mostly in my lifetime. (Fins are a recent invention; the leash was
invented when I was in college.) No one imagines that there has been natural selection for this
behavior per se. Pushing the timeframe back a little, consider writing. Writing is at most 8000
years old. Writing as we know it is at most only a few thousand years old, and writing as acommon activity is at most only a few hundred years old. No one imagines that there has been
natural selection for this behavior per se. Push this back to fifty, sixty, seventy thousand years or
so. I propose that instead of remarkably simultaneous independent evolution or coevolution of
all these different advanced behaviors, there was long evolution of the enabling mental ability,
which reached a crucial tipping point. From that tipping point, all these products arose and
coevolved. The suite was highly adaptive, and the result was cognitively modern human beings.
Derek BickertonFebruary 15th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Both Terry Deacon and Mark Taylor focus on how language evolved once it had appeared, but
they have little to say about its initial emergence. (Marks remark that Human beings evolved a
more advanced ability for blending leaves a host of questions unansweredhow did it evolve;
why did it evolve in the way it did in humans; why, if it was so common, didnt it evolve in the
same way in other species; and on and on.) Relaxed selection is a good ideaI already pointed
out in Adams Tongue that language could not emerge until communication had broken its link
with fitnessbut it can only apply AFTER a trait is present; after all, Bengal finches could sing
even before domestication. What nobody in the field of language evolution (or in evolution
generally) seems to realize is the extent to which the very notion of being able to use an arbitrarysign to symbolize entities or actions in the real world is totally alien to the way other animals
think. No explanation of how language evolved can be viable unless it first faces this problem
and then explains how it was overcome.
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Mark TurnerFebruary 16th, 2010 at 3:21 am
Derek: Blending theory addresses directly the initial emergence of language. Chapter-
length arguments by Fauconnier and Turner are available in The Way We Think:
Conceptual Blending and the Minds Hidden Complexities, Basic Books, 2002; and The
Origin of Language as a Product of the Evolution of Modern Cognition in Laks,Bernard, et al., editors, Origin and Evolution of Languages: Approaches, Models,
Paradigms. London: Equinox, 2008. There is also a very brief 2008 Fauconnier & Turner
BBS commentary, The Origin of Language as a Product of the Evolution of Double-
Scope Blending.
Alf Hornborg
February 16th, 2010 at 7:24 am
Deacons reasoning beautifully transcends the dichotomy of human versus natural sciences by
accounting for both the multiplicity of human experience and its biological conditions. I am in
complete sympathy with the argument as a whole, but would like to add a few suggestions on
how it could be expanded. First, the distinction between artificial and biological niche may not be
as significant as Deacon proposes, if we accept Uexklls conclusion that all species inhabit
subjective worlds defined by their particular capacities to process signs. Not only do different
species navigate environments defined by their specific perspectives (a circumstance recognized
by many indigenous peoples and reported by anthropologists from Hallowell to Viveiros de
Castro), but the same of course applies to human cultures. As Sahlins and others have shown,
there is no unmediated, objective world accessible to humans. Even for our ancestors, any
biological niche would have been ethno-biological, whether linguistically codified or not. Second,
the proposal that the relaxation of natural and sexual selection has been conducive to linguistic
and cultural diversity wonderfully harmonizes with ecological theories on the creative
proliferation associated with biological colonization of new and less competitive habitats. The
relaxation of constraints appears to encourage creativity in both contexts. Finally, having spent
years trying to grasp the significance of kin terminologies, I think Deacons argument could more
explicitly make the point that the operation of such terminologies, in defining potential spouses,
is not only a reflection of cultural diversity unleashed by the relaxation of selective constraints
but recursively also a source of such relaxation. In the co-evolutionary process that he has
identified, language has relaxed selective pressures by delegating reproductive success to social
conventions. If the relaxation of selection is an explanation of language, the opposite is equallytrue.
Derek BickertonFebruary 17th, 2010 at 2:41 am
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Mark, none of your chapters seem to be available on the web, so I cant comment specifically on
your proposal within the time-frame of this discussion. For now Ill just say that my position is
diametrically opposed to yours, since I believe that enhanced cognition comes from language,
rather than vice versa. I take it that your position excludes any task-specific mental mechanisms
for language, a position which my own work on creole languages renders implausible (although
please note I do NOT endorse Chomskys version, or versions). However, I would reallywelcome a chance to pursue this discussion (I am not among those who automatically rule out
any opinion contrary to their own), so if you have available electronic versions of any of the
three articles you cite, could you send them to me at ?
Lorenzo MagnaniFebruary 17th, 2010 at 5:26 am
I would like to add a few suggestions on how to extend this wonderful analysis of language as a
cognitive niche given by Deacon. It would be interesting taking advantage of this framework
to address the problem of the intertwining between language and cooperation, to increase
knowledge about an important topic: violence. Here the example of fallacies. The hypotheses
generated by the so-called fallacies in a dialectic interplay (but also when addressed to a non-
interactive audience) are certainly conflict-makers but they do not have to be conceived
absolutely as a priori deal-breakers and dialogue-breakers. I would contend that the
potential deceptive and uncooperative aim of fallacies can be intertwined with pieces of both
information and disinformation, logical valid and invalid inferences, other typical mistakes of
reasoning like perceptual errors, faulty memories and misinterpreted or wrongly transmitted
evidence, but fallacious argumentations still can be at first sight paradoxically civil ways/
conventions for negotiating. That is, sending a so-called deceptive fallacy to a listener is much
less violent than sending a bullet, even if it can enter as violent linguistic behavior a further
causal chain of possibly more violent results. Also in the case of potentially deceptive/
uncooperative fallacious argumentation addressed to a non-interactive audience, the listener is
in principle in the condition to disagree with and reject what is proposed (as in the case of
deceptive and fallacious advertising or political and religious propaganda). In summary,
language is possibly a tool exactly like a knife, as Ren Thom already contended some decades
ago.
Terrence DeaconFebruary 18th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
On the Mark Turner / Derek Bickerton debate:
I am in sympathy with Derek Bickerton in treating the capacity to use conventional symbolic
reference as a more fundamental (and simpler) threshold distinguishing recent hominid
evolution. I have been arguing this point since the early 1990s. Moreover, it should be obvious
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that our ability to utilize symbolic tools has greatly facilitated conceptual blending. But I also
recognize that the notion of conceptual blending may also extend to domains beyond symbolic
processes, though this fact doesnt make this process more basic. But I worry that conceptual
blend theory needs more unpacking. It is too abstract in its current cognitive science incarnation,
and needs to be decomposed into component neural processing dynamics so that it isnt treated
like some monolithic function that is present or absent. In service of this goal I think we needto consider it along side its earlier close cousins: i.e. the related notions of Arthur Koestlers
bisociation Gregory Batesons double description Charles Pierces abduction and
extensive abstraction. I actually think that there could be a useful collective unpacking of all
five concepts to get at some of the underlying process assumptions, on the way to a unified
cognitive neuroscience theory. But the either/or framing of this issue is counter-productive.
These capacities co-evolved. As cognitive supports for each evolved and were socially developed
they reciprocally amplified each other. We are good double-scope blenders because we can tap
into vast symbolic supports and analogues, and we can develop remarkably rich symbolic
systems because we can create complex conceptual synergies via conceptual blending. Again we
need to approach this issue from a synergistic co-evolutionary perspective, which is a coreassumption of the target piece. This view implies that both symbolic-linguistic and blending
capacities evolved in tandem. At an early phase of this evolutionary ratchet I suspect that the two
capacities are not differentiable from one another and so a chicken and egg debate may be
pointless. More to the point, I think that both capacities require similar neurological
augmentation, particularly involving prefrontal cortical functions (e.g. enhancement of transfer
learning, combinatorial working memory, displacement of intrinsic salience/reward effects,
stimulus equivalence bias). These are phylogenetically atypical cognitive capacities. The question I
address here is how this suite of interdependent capacities relevant to language and symbolic
cognition evolved to its present state. Relaxed selection effects are particularly relevant to this
debate. De-differentiation is a prerequisite to both the interaction of the relevant neurological
systems and the ability to juxtapose divergent cognitive processes as required by both symbolic
reference construction and cognitive blending.
Derek BickertonFebruary 18th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
I am grateful to Mark Turner for kindly making available to me electronic versions of two of the
items he cited in his second post on this thread. They made for fascinating reading, and I
certainly wouldnt dream of questioning the centrality of conceptual blending in all aspects ofmodern human cognition, including language. But the centrality of something now does not
automatically entail its centrality then, and from my perspective, conceptual blending does not
explain how language evolved.
Before I start, however, a sincere word of apology to Terry. Much of what I shall say has only an
oblique bearing on Terrys case (although I am here in a sense arguing against him, since I do
believe that natural selection, albeit in a bizarre and indirect way, did cause language to evolve).
Be it noted however, that my thinking on this is and has been for the last few years heavily
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influenced by my (somewhat tardy) acceptance of Terrys contention that symbolism, not syntax,
is the major defining mark of the human species. And I do accept that, once language had begun
to evolve, long evolution in an artificial niche is about as good a capsule description of what
took place as youre likely to get. The question I want to zero in on is, Was natural selection
responsible for starting language?
Marks case in many ways resembles Terrys, but to my great surprise, it is also in many wayssimilar to Chomskys. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but note the following:
1) Neither account makes substantive reference to pre-human evolution..
2) Both accounts root human-prehuman discontinuity in thought rather than behavior.
3) Both accounts implicitly assume that the cognitive/conceptual system of human predecessors
was similar to that of humans.
4) Both accounts assume that the internal revolution that made language possible was fully
completed before the utterance of a single word.
5) Both accounts assume that language emerged quite abruptly and substantially in the form in
which we find it today; in other words, they assume that there was nothing intermediate
between an alingual state and modern human languageno kind of protolanguage that did notalready have all the major properties of modern human language.
In fact, the only significant difference between the two models seems to be that the engines
driving them were in the one case syntactic (the process Merge) and in the other semantic
(conceptual blending).
Reverting to (1), above, although Mark claimed in his first post to this thread that the basic
mental capacity for conceptual integration, otherwise known as blending, has been evolving since
the mammalian line, at the beginning of Chapter 9 of The Way We Think he states that the
considerable efforts of animal psychologists have uncovered no evidence that other species can
reach very far in conceiving of counterfactual scenarios (like those underlying pretense),
metaphors, analogies, or category extension. These statements seem to me flatly contradictory,
and if the second is correct, what caused the explosion of blending capacity in a single mammal?
He asserts (without giving details) that each step of the [blending] capacity would have been
adaptive because each step gives existing cognitive ability to compress, remember, reason,
categorize and analogize. But he gives no evidence of any evolutionary results from this
increased capacity. I agree that the fact that conceptual blending IS so complex and far-reaching
suggests that it must have had some evolutionary history. But this fact is equally consistent with
the view that conceptual blending began (and could only have begun) once the first overt
symbolic units (call them words, proto-words, word-like objects or whatever you want) came
into existence perhaps a couple of million years ago. And the latter view is indeed more
consistent with the large cognitive gap that, as Mark admits, exists between humans and other
animals.
T. Givn
February 19th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Terry Deacon certainly opened a beautiful can of worms, elegantly and provocatively, but it is
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still a can of worms. For what he says to make sense, considerable filling-in is required. Since
brevity is demanded by the venue, I apologize for the extreme compression of what follows.
1. Complexity and relaxed selection: There is an unfortunate tho no-doubt unintended inference
here that a highly complex system, with a lot of cross-modular interaction and co-evolution,
necessarily transcends adaptive selection. Such an inference is dubious in biology, where its most
ardent proponents are the ID crowd. It is equally dubious when it comes to language. Plenty ofrun-of-the-mill cellular, somatic, and neurological systems are highly complex but still
unimpeachably adaptive, selected and genetically coded. By itself, systemic complexity does not
translate into relaxed selection. Rather, it points out to more a complex, interactive, multi-
factored selection. Epiphenomena or spandrels may be one consequence of complex selection,
but they are hardly counter-evidence to it. Human language is a prime example of a highly
complex multi-modular system that is nonetheless adaptive and selected. And the presumed
arbitrariness and extravagance of its spandrels is vastly over-stated.
2. Innateness, variability and selection: In general, the older a system is in bio-evolution, the
more rigidly-programmed (innate) it tends to be in the genome. Older evolved systems exhibit
more within-species uniformity, are more fully automated at birth, and are less sensitive toepigenesis, maturation and learning. In contrast, more recently evolved systems tend to be less
rigidly programmed in the genome, exhibit more phenotypic and behavioral variability, and are
more susceptible to maturation and learning effects. But this flexibility and variability of recently
evolved systems is hardly evidence for relaxed selectional pressures. On the contrary, such
variability and behavioral flexibility are the innovative vanguard of adaptive selection (Mayr
1976, 1982; Fernald & White 2000, West-Eberhard 2003). Through the interaction of niche
construction and genetic assimilation, flexible behavioral experimentation eventually becomes
assimilated into the genome (Baldwin 1898; Waddington 1942, 1953; West-Eberhard 2003). In
principle, phenotypic and behavioral variability in the early stages of evolutionary change is a
highly adaptive phenomenon. It allows for multiple adaptive solutions to compete head on,
before selection pares the multiplicity down to the few that have proven themselves over
multiple generations and contexts. These success stories are then coded more rigidly in the
genome. The progression from old (reptile) brain to mid-brain to cortex is a terrific example of
this evolutionary trend, with decreased genetic specification, increased phenotypic and
behavioral variability, and increased maturation-and-learning sensitivity.
3. Cognition vs. communication: I must confess I find the Turner-Bickerton exchange here rather
unenlightening. On the one hand, the neurological systems that underlie pre-human and pre-
linguistic cognitionof objects-and-events, of somatic sense and motor control, of space-and-time,
of action and agencyare ancient mammalian and pre-mammalian systems (Ungerleider and
Miskin 1982; inter alia). Not only do they predate human communication by a wide margin, they
also serve as the platform upon which the more elaborate cognitive representation system thatunderlies human language was erected. True, language has prompted a great elaboration,
complexity, and increased abstraction of its precursor representational systems. But the core
neurological sub-systems that underlie language processing arose much earlier and still perform
many of their pre-linguistic functions (Amunts et al. 1999; Bookheimer 2002; Badre and Wagner
2007; Kaan 2009; Hagoort 2009; Fiederichi 2009; Friederici & Brauer 2009; Fernndez-Duque 2009;
inter alia).
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On the other hand, to suggestas so-called cognitive linguists are fond of doing that somehow
the communicative apparatus of human language and in particular grammar falls out of the
cognitive representational system is to ignore both what grammar does as an adaptive system
and how uniquely it is structured; as well as to ignore the distinct, complex, multi-modular
neurology of grammar (Friederici 2009, inter alia). Communication is not mental representation.
Rather, it is the transfer of mental representations from one mind to another. It certainlypresupposes mental representation, but does not fall out of it.
4. Diversity vs. universality: Human language, as a relatively recent and highly complex
adaptation (from ca. 1.8 million to ca. 100,00 years ago) bears all the marks of a recently-evolved
biological system: Flexibility, maturation-and-learning dependence, and considerable phenotypic
and behavioral variability. It is too tempting, however, to over-state linguistic variability and
ignore the great amount of universality of language functions, structures and controlling
principles. Just as it is too tempting from the opposite perspective to exaggerate universality and
pooh-pooh variability (Chomsky 1992; Hauser et al. 2002). From my middle-ground vantage
point, I see plenty of universals of both phonological and grammatical structure and function.
Like all good species-specific universals, they surely are genetically coded. Still, such universalallow considerably phenotypic and behavioral variation, and such variation is biologically natural
functionalgiven the complexity and evolutionary recency of human language.
5. The adaptive niche of human language: To understand the difference between pre-human and
human communication, one must begins with two core features of non-human communication: (a)
non-displaced reference; and (b) strictly manipulative speech-acts.
The first feature indeed predicts the second: When communication is only about here-and-now,
you-and-I, this-and-that visible in the shared speech-situation, there is no need for declarative
speech-acts. All relevant information (epistemics) is fully shared. Only manipulation (deontics)
needs to be communicated. Humans are the only species that, overwhelmingly, communicates
about displaced reference by transacting declarative and interrogative speech-acts. The adaptive
niche for human communication must have, therefore, entailed some vital information that is not
available in the here-and-now but rather pertains to there-and-then, and is therefore not shared
equally by speaker and hearer. Several possible niches qualify for this condition: (a) reporting on
and recruitment for cooperative foraging of remote food-sources (big-game hunting, Washburn
& Lancaster 1968; big-game scavenging, Bickerton 2009). (b) reporting on and planning for
migration to a remote new territory; (c) reporting on and planning for hostile engagement
elsewhere. All three ecological niches are unique to the hominid line. All three demand
declarative/interrogative communication about remote referents. Is it an accident that the two
adaptive niches in which honey bees developed their symbolic communication are: (a) reporting
on and recruitment for foraging of a remote food-source; and (b) reporting on and recruitment
for migration to a remote new hive-site (von Frisch 1967; Gould and Towne 1987)?6. Human language as a complex adaptation: Saying that human communication is symbolic is
saying relatively little. The devil is in the extremely complex detail. Human language has two
distinct codesphonology and grammarthat perform different functions and evolved at
different times. Phonologythe sound codeis much more concrete, arbitrary (symbolic) and
easier to get a grip on. It functions primarily to code the lexicon of entities (nouns), events
(verbs) and states (adjectives); that is, to code semantic memory. All the available evidence
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suggests that phonology evolved much earlier, giving rise first to pre-grammatical pidgin (Givn
1979, 2009) or proto-language (Bickerton 1981, 2009). But while seemingly a lexical code, single-
word symbols in actual communication do not code mere lexical information, but rather
propositional speech-acts. Thus the vervet monkeys predator calls (Cheney and Seyfarth 1990)
do not code the merely-lexical eagle, leopard, snake, but rather the propositional speech-acts
hide from the eagle, watch out for the leopard, run from the snake.Grammar evolved much later and gradually, and is much more complex and abstract. Its
adaptive motivation is much harder to understand, due primarily to out-of-context
contemplation of structures detached from their adaptive contexts (Chomsky 1965). Once
grammars adaptive-communicative function is understood, it turns out to be much less arbitrary
than the sound code. Grammar encodes multiple, highly specific communicative functions, most
of them having to do with the speakers assessment of the hearers deontic (intention) and
epistemic (belief) mental states during ongoing communication. It is a highly-automated
instrument for representing other minds (Givn 2005), much more efficient and less error-prone
than pre-grammatical pidgin. Not only is grammar as a whole adaptive, but specific grammatical
construction perform specific communicative functions, in a way that is highly constrained andfar from arbitrary (Haiman ed. 1985; Givn 1995, 2001, 2005). The familiar story of grammar as
an extravagant spandrel (e.g. Hauser et al. 2002) thus needs to be tempered with the
understanding of grammars adaptive function.
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Amunts, K., A. Schleicer, U. Burgel, H. Mohlberg, H.B.M. Uyling and K. Zilles (1999) Brocas
region re-visited: Cytoarchitecture and intersubject variability, J. of Comparative Neurology,
421.1
Badre, D. and A.D. Wagner (2007) The left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the cognitive
control of memory, Neuropsychologia, 45
Baldwin, J.M. (1896) A new factor in evolution, The American Naturalist, 30
Bickerton, D. (1981) Roots of Language, Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma
Bickerton, D. (2009) Adams Tongue, NY: Hill and Wang
Bookheimer, S. (2002) Functional MRI of language: New approaches to understanding the
cortical organization of semantic processing, Annual Review of Neuroscience, 25
Cheney, D. and R. Seyfarth (1990) How Monkeys See the World, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press
Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Chomsky, N. (1992) A minimalist program for linguistic theory, MIT Occasional Papers in
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Gazzaniga (ed. ) The New Cognitive Science, 2nd edition, Cambridge, MA: MIT PressFernndez-Duque, D. (2009) Cognitive and neural underpinnings of syntactic complexity, in T.
Givn and M. Shibatani (eds) Syntactic Complexity, TSL #85, Amsterdam: J. Benjamins
Friederici, A. (2009) Brain circuits of syntax, in D. Bickerton and E. Szathmry (eds) Biological
Foundations and Origin of Syntax, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
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Shibatani (eds) Syntactic Complexity, TSL #85, Amsterdam: J. Benjamins
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Givn, T. (1979) On Understanding Grammar, NY: Academic Press
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Givn, T. (2005) Context as Other Minds, Amsterdam: J. Benjamins
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Gould, J.L. and W. Towne (1987) Evolution of the dance language, The American Naturalist,130.3
Hagoort, P. (2009) Reflections on the neurobiology of syntax, in D. Bickerton and E. Szathmry
(eds) Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
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Hauser, M., N. Chomsky and W.T. Fitch (2002) The faculty of language: What it is, who has it,
how did it evolve? Science, 298
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Bickerton and E. Szathmry (eds) Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax, Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press
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Ungerleider, L.A. and M. Mishkin (1982) Two cortical visual systems, in D.G. Inge, M.A,
Goodale and R.J.Q,. Mansfield (eds) Analysis of Visual Behavior, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
von Frisch, K. (1967) The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press
Waddington, C.H. (1942) Canalization of development and the inheritance of acquired
characters, Nature, 150
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Washburn, S.L. and C. Lancaster (1968) The Evolution of Hunting, in R.B. Lee and I. DeVore,
Man the Hunter, Chicago: Aldine
West-Eberhard, M.J. (2003) Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Derek BickertonFebruary 19th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Terry, when I hear words like bisociation, double description, or abduction, I reach for my
Occams razor. Aside from that, I think were (mostly) on the same page. Both symbolic-
linguistic and blending capacities evolved in tandem. Right on! After that our difference ismerely one of focus. You are, as you say, concerned with their subsequent evolution, while I am
concerned with how they got started in the first place. Which was hen and which was egg, or
was it a third party? Something had to get the whole thing started, but people dont seem to see
that this is the real problemjust about anything can evolve further once its gotten startedso
they either ignore it or give the kind of answer that shows they havent really thought it
through.
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Terrence DeaconFebruary 19th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
At this point, there is far too much in Tom Givons response for me to even contemplateresponding to, except to say to all involved that you shouldnt assume that I have said
everything that I wanted to say about this issue in the 2500 word essay that I have contributed.
In order to stay within the size limitations of this venue I only opened a narrow window on the
relationship between natural selection and language, and even at that I could only hint at the
details. This inevitably has led Tom to conclude that just because I have emphasized one
previously unappreciated aspect of the problem (self-organization effects intrinsic to epigenetic
processes and the way that they are exposed via niche-construction) that I am denying the
importance of the other (natural selection on biological substrates to generate functional
correspondences). Far from it.
For the most part we are in agreement on many points, and perhaps in a later post I can address
a few of the ways we diverge. Here I only comment on the general points made about natural
selection. There is a much larger biological background behind my approach which of necessity
has had to go unmentioned. It traces to my work on brain development and evolution, and more
broadly it borrows from work that currently runs under the banner of evodevo and which has
begun to illuminate once problematic issues in evolutionary genetics, molecular cellular biology,
and epigenesis. My point is not to discount the contributions of natural selection, which I agree is
the final arbiter of functional adaptation, but to bring attention to another unnoticed facet of the
evolutionary process. Natural selection is explicitly NOT the generator of the biological
phenomena that it prunes in the process that leads to increased adaptation. Not only are the
variants of existing organismic subsystems generated irrespective of function (e.g. by genetic
damage) but the expression of these varieties of structure and dynamics depends on generative
processes whose details we tend to hide in generic concepts like epigenesis and reproduction.
New stuff, new structures, and new processes need to be generated so that there is raw material
fed to the engine of natural selection. The second law of thermodynamics has to be locally tamed
in order for this to be possible. And natural selection theory is so widely applicable precisely
because it can be agnostic as to how any of this is achieved, so long as it is. Surprisingly, despite
our many disagreements about innateness, I find some resonance in Noam Chomskys periodic
suggestion that some of the complexity of grammar may have emerged from general laws of
physics analogous to the way that the Fibonacci regularities exemplified in the spirals of
sunflower seed and pine cone facets emerge. Natural selection has found a way to stabilize the
conditions that support the generation of this marvelous regularity of growth because it hasimportant functional advantages. But natural selection didnt generate it in the first place,
geometric regularities that can become amplified due to center-out growth process are the
ultimate source (as has now been demonstrated also in growth-like inorganic processes). I also
agree that flexibility CAN be an adaptive response to a variable and demanding habitat, but not
necessarily. And I hope I have shown that there is another mechanism potentially available to
explain some of the complexity (both neurologically and functionally) and some of the flexibility,
besides natural selection and innate algorithms. In this essay, I am only interested in pointing out
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the importance of processes that have tended to be overlooked by those assuming that only
natural selection in its most basic sense is at work, and that any universals must be assumed to
arise from genetic origin. Just appealing to genetic accident is little better than invoking a
miracle.
Indeed, this is a can of worms, and like Pandoras box, even just opening it a crack runs the risk
of unleashing explosion of linked conceptual problems. Derek (and Mark), dont be too sure thatyou can ignore the various theories related to conceptual blending. I do think that buried in this
mess is an important insight into the crucial transition that we both find so interesting. I am
happy to welcome Occam into the game but I am wary of trying to simplify too soon, and as a
biologist I am constantly confronted with the fact that mother nature doesnt respect this razor.
This goes for restricting our explanations to simplifying assumptions about natural selection,
mechanisms contributing to biological complexity, theories attempting to explain the source of
language universals, and how we account for the neurological teaks that provide us with such a
distinctive capacity.
In response to my remarks suggesting that I am only interested in the subsequent evolution of
language capacities, I meant this only in the context of the present essay. Indeed, Derek and Iagree that explaining the transition from non-symbolic to symbolic communication is ground
zero.
Derek BickertonFebruary 19th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Your last paragraph is well said, Terry, but when it comes to ground zero, what seems to you the
role of natural selection there? After all, any reader faced with your bare title might have
expected to hear something about that.
Terrence DeaconFebruary 20th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Ground zero:
I still stand by the general scenario as sketched in my book The Symbolic Species, in which I
argue that the shift in foraging ecology precipitated by the development of the first stone tool
technology at 2.4 million years ago was the first spark. This was a first niche construction activity,that embedded these early hominids in a radically different ecology and demanded a
fundamental restructuring of social-sexual relationships that only symbolic communication
(because of its displacement of reference) could stabilize. Indeed, I dont believe that stone tool
supported foraging could have been maintained across generations without it. The meager
capacity of great apes to acquire a very small repertoire of symbolic signs (with highly structured
support) suggests to me that the cognitive flexibility of these australopithecine (A. garhi) tool
users was just barely sufficient to achieve this level of symbolization (probably mostly in the form
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of ritualized performances). But this created a complex synergy between tool technology and
communicative technology that could only be sustained by social transmission. This semiotic
niche is the hominid equivalent to a beaver dam. It both relaxed selection on many traits no
longer critical, and shifted selection onto others, specifically those that would support the
stability of this virtual niche. Cognitive flexibility niche construction shifted selection and
relaxed selection shifted cognitive predispositions and increased cognitive flexibility Myanswer to your question, then, is that neither natural selection nor some lucky genetic accident
precipitated this transition. It was cognitive flexibility and the social capacity to acquire novel
behaviors by observation learning.
Derek BickertonFebruary 20th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Terry, I agree with everything you say, but you still arent getting to grips with the real crux of
the matter, which is, how and why were the first symbolic signs created? Ive said it before, Ill
say it again, if it comes to that, YOUVE said itthe idea of using a sound or gesture to symbolize
a concept of some real-world entity is something totally alien to non-human minds. Some kind of
ritual doesnt begin to explain things, because nothing in a ritual necessitates having a concept of
anything. For instance a chimps rain dance could develop into some kind of ritual, getting more
complicated over time, without it symbolizing anythingits just what they do when raindrops
keep falling on their heads. For all the many virtues of The Symbolic Species, it did not, unless
memory fools me, contain any explicit account of how the first words, manual signs or whatever
came to be.
Slawomir Wacewicz
February 20th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Full twenty years after the publication of the Pinker-Bloom BBS paper that many see as
foundational for the entire field of evolution of language, it is very interesting to see a text by
Prof. Deacon on the same general topic the role of natural selection but reaching a novel and
provocative conclusion. When Pinker and Bloom argued for a specific role of natural selection in
designing subsystems of the human language faculty, Deacon points to the possible role of the
relaxation of selection pressures in (phylogenetic) language development. However, the textstarts with alluding to many important points regarding the evolution of language let me start
from enumerating these points (of, I hope, consensus) because they are well worth re-
emphasizing:
1. Language itself must have been a selection pressure humans as a species (thus, their
cognition) show clear signs of having been selected for efficient language use.
2. The language-brain coevolution, as suggested by the name, is CO-evolution, so it works in
both directions: language evolves to adapt to its environment, i.e. the human brain/mind. This
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idea has been especially prominent in the works of M. Christiansen.
3. Before there was full language there must have been a simpler communication system, but
already distinguished by the use of arbitrary and conventional signs, > symbols. This of course
is a development on D. Bickertons seminal idea of protolanguage.
4. Language (or protolanguage) couldnt have developed from nothing as it were, bare ape
cognition but instead must have been built upon a rich collection of cognitive preadaptationsfor language, such as Theory of Mind (further subdivisible into joint attention, empathy, etc.),
mimesis, and many others. Prof. Bickerton comments on this in discussion.
5. Language, or at least protolanguage, is something phylogenetically old. 50kY [50,000 year]
theories of language origin are deeply problematic. It is symptomatic that the idea of a very
recent emergence of language seems to be popular with very many researchers with a passing
interest in this field, but only very few researchers with more that a passing knowledge (e.g.
seasoned Evolang delegates). For many years Deacon has been consistent in his criticisms of the
50kY theories.
I can offer little in the way of commenting on the novel argument concerning the possible effect
of the relaxation of selection pressures, but I would like to venture two questions.1. One important (indeed, crucial, but often neglected) feature is missing from the explanation
and that is the transfer of honest information (already alluded to by Prof. Givn). What language
accomplishes is essentially *altruistic* transfer of honest information to nonrelatives how could
an altruistic form of behaviour have evolved certainly is non-obvious and requires an
explanation.
Could your account perhaps be made compatible with some particular explanation of the
emergence of altruism/cooperation as manifested in linguistic communication?
2. As it stands, relaxation is a rather general concept: the removal or subsiding of what *specific*
selection pressures should be subsumed under this term in the present context?
Finally, this is probably a good opportunity for thanking Prof. Deacon for his presentation at the
Protolang conference in Torun last year a big thank you once again!
Slawomir Wacewicz
Salikoko S. Mufwene
February 21st, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Terrence Deacon has written a thought-provoking article on the co-evolution of language and the
brain, from the perspective of niche construction. He submits an evolutionary account that
conjures up an adaptive/exaptive perspective that in some ways conflicts with the language thathe uses to explain it, for instance when he says that we are creatures whose social and mental
capacities have been quite literally shaped by the special demands of communicating with
symbols and modern brains accommodate language, as well as by his characterization of the
social niche in which language evolved as artificial. It all sounds as if symbolic and cultural
communication had origins separate from and/or independent of the brain and hominin social
interactions, worst of all an existence that is anterior to the state of the hominin brain that could
use it. Therefore the brain would have been adapting to language rather than language reflecting
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what the brain is capable of. Selection would have operated through the survival, at different
stages of the phylogeny of mankind, of those hominins whose brains could accommodate the
complex structures and functions of then-emergent languages all the way to modern ones.
The scenario as presented sounds contrary to what one would expect to have happened. A
comparison with other animal species suggests that hominins had always been able to
communicate, albeit in less complex ways at earlier stages of our phylogeny; evolution has led usto gradually develop more and more complex systems for communication (based on
predominantly symbolic devices built upon more elemental phonetic/signed units and
combinatorial conventions). Part of the complexity itself must have emerged from the
interactions of modules that produced various strategies at different times. It is thus also
plausible to conceive of languages as emergent phenomena (see below).
I think it is relevant to consider the fact that parrots can imitate speech, though the anatomical
structure they use is different from that of humans. Thus the particular shape of humans bucco-
pharyngeal structure is secondary compared to the role of our minds. The reason why parrots
cannot produce novel utterances that they have never heard before (which characterizes
linguistic competence), thus cannot use speech creatively, is that they are not endowed with thekinds of minds that can behave linguistically in the human style. This appears to be the same
reason why they have not capitalized on their potential to produce phonetic sounds to develop a
human-like communicative system for themselves. It is likewise significant that great apes have
not developed signed languages of their own (though they have forelimbs similar to humans)
nor any complex social cultures comparable to humans, among other things that distinguish them
from mankind. The 2% or so of genetic materials they do not share with humans include the
absence of the kind of mental capacity that modern humans are endowed with.
It seems to me that human languages (spoken and signed) reflect the complexity of the minds
that produced and use them, and in fact have continued to reshape them to date, although
perhaps in respects evolutionarily less significant than those associated with the protracted
emergence of language. An account that sounds plausible would involve hominins adaptive
quest for more and more suitable means of communication as their minds evolved toward
increasingly more complex structures/activities and they produced more and more complex
social life styles and organizations that called for more and more sophisticated modes of
communication. Such a scenario would account for the emergence of symbolic communication
and culture. Even if these evolved rather later in the phylogeny of mankind, they would still
typify humans as a unique symbolic species unlike any other in the animal kingdom.
I think it is important to underscore the fact that communication with any means, apparently in a
form more holistic than combinatorial, occurred much earlier. A challenge we face is to explain
the transition from holistic vocalizations and gestures to compositional speech and signed
language, respectively, with hierarchically-structured discrete units. (Linguists should think hereof double articulation, though reality suggests more levels!) None of this evolution would have
been possible without the emergence, after the separation of the Homo line from the other
primates, of mental structures capable of domesticating the human anatomy to meet new and
more complex communicative needs. Language may have enhanced human cognition, in fact it
facilitates its ontogenetic development (thanks to its world-creating capacity), but comparisons
with other animals suggest that the hominin ability to think and solve problems differently from
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other primates seems to have preceded the emergence of symbolic language itself.
The question of how diversity emerged would be more puzzling if the cradle of mankind had
lain in one single camp or village in East Africa and language had been designed. Linguistic
systems have been so resistant to reductions to a few regularities largely because they consist of
phenomena that emerged at different times in response to specific communicative needs, with the
innovations being only partly constrained by current strategies. In a nutshell, we must bear inmind that any kind of cultural evolution has involved innovators and copiers, with these roles
varying with every feature. If, as I assume, there were different hominin colonies not bound to
meet their communicative needs in identical ways, and if innovators in the same colonies could
produce alternative responses to the same or similar challenges, then the question should be not
why there is variation (both language-internal and cross-linguistic) but why there is not more
typological variation than would be possible. The answers need not lie in the monogenesis of
language. They probably lie in the kinds of species-specific evolutionary factors (physiological
and mental) that constrained the languages (at any evolutionary stage) that different populations
produced. Note that Language is the invention of the scholar, a useful generalization indeed,
but not a phylogenetic singular suggested by the geographical distribution of the availablepaleontological evidence. These considerations lead us to the question of what the language
organ or Universal Grammar proposed in theoretical linguistics means and what it really
consists of, if such a device need be posited.
Leigh Van ValenFebruary 21st, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Yes, interesting, and I look forward to a more fleshed-out version. There is also the possibility of
selection specifically for a relaxation of constraints, not mit einem Schlag but a progressive
loosening of a relatively more closed behavioral system in a prelinguistic or protolinguistic
context of more flexible overall behavior. Ostensive identification or protodefinition would seem
to require such capacity.
Such a process, like relaxation of selection (from what initial state?), gives complexity, and
perhaps a less disordered complexity. Constraints would be relaxed in a way that enhances
function, an outcome that is less expected under the random dissociations that would be
produced by drift under relaxed selection.
Results of active selection along the open-closed continuum are well known in the context of
learning and fixed action patterns. The active selection I suggest here would operate on the same
connections that Deacon envisages.An aside: Language evolution, in recorded cases, often proceeds partly by structural
simplification, making the language easier to learn and the overall trend thus advantageous.
There is then the obvious question of how the earlier complexity arose. This complexity doesnt
follow from the relaxation of constraints, which merely permits it. Many languages with few or
no speakers today are remarkably complex, in different ways. Might the size of isolated small
groups somehow promote complexity? There may be a correlation here, but an actual causal
process seems mysterious.
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Derek Bickerton
February 21st, 2010 at 4:56 pmSlawomir Wacewicz has asked an excellent question, one which every language evolutionist
should be prepared to answer: why should anyone transfer useful information to non-kin (and
why should non-kin believe themthe cheap tokens problem!)? It seems to me that for these
objections to be overcome, at least the following four conditions should hold:
1) Speaker gains an immediate benefit from giving the information (not just some possible future
reciprocity).
2) Speaker can only obtain this benefit if the information is given.
3) Speaker can derive no benefit from giving the information if it is false.
4) Hearer can quickly verify whether the information is false or not.
I know of only one situation in which all these conditions can be met. Around 2 million years
ago, human ancestors began to engage in scavenging megafauna carcasses. In order to exploit
such carcasses and cope with a fearsome array of competitors, those ancestors were obliged to
gather large (> 50) groups. To do so they would have had to inform conspecifics of the nature
and whereabouts of those carcasseswithout adequate numbers, the operation could not be
carried out and no-one would benefit. Note that with this scenario, you solve at one blow the
evolution not just of language but of co-operationthe only other major dimension on which we
differ from our primate kin. For a detailed account, see chapters 4-8 of Adams Tongue.
Derek BickertonFebruary 21st, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Leigh van Valens aside: Lee, Im afraid youre confusing language evolution with linguistic
change. Since modern homo, languages have been cycling around within the relatively narrow
search space provided by the mature language faculty. If a language is used by a small
homogeneous community for a long time undisturbed, it will accrete complexities like a ship
accretes barnacles. If a language undergoes severe social disturbances or gets to be used by large
numbers of people, it will shed those complexities. I think thats one of the few things few
linguists would quarrel about.
Sara WallerFebruary 23rd, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Thanks so much for this enlightening discussion, and thanks to Mark Turner especially for letting
me know about it. I think Ive missed the deadline for a response any chance for an extension
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of continuation? It would be fun to talk more about animal communication, language, and human
thought.
Gary Comstock
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:56 pm
While the discussion will remain open until Terry posts his final reply, we cannot guarantee
that he will have seen comments posted after Feb. 24.
Sue Savage-RumbaughFebruary 24th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
The exchanges in this dialogue are fueled by a desire to understand how language could have
evolved from something that appears to be not language, and by a firm belief that language sets
humanity apart from other living beings on the planet. Most of the participants agree that only
human beings possess language, and most agree with Terry that symboling (not grammar) is the
key event in hominid evolution the Ground Zero. Some continue to view the gestures and
vocalizations of other animals as symbolic but holistic in nature. Some continue to assert that
combining symbols is a truly unique human innovation and that Terrys emphasis on symbols is
misguided. I would like to set that debate aside for now, due to lack of space. For those who
wish to know, my view is that true symboling and grammar are inextricably intertwined. It is
fundamentally impossible to have one without the other and previous attempts to view them as
separable has misled humanity in its search for a solution to the origins of language.More important for the current debate however, is the fact that this debate began before science
achieved the ability to rapidly sequence the entire genome and to follow genes across
generations. Such new data is challenging the ground rules of evolutionary theory at its core. We
no longer need infer that genes have changed, because anatomy and behavior have changed. We
can look and see if genes have changed and what genes have changed. We now know the
following things.
a) The biggest genetic differences between apes and human beings lie in genes that code for
immunity not those that code for intelligence or language in any simple sense, or anatomy. Apes
and humans are true sibling species.
b) The onset of FLUENT speech could indeed have been a sudden genetic event. This is differentfrom the onset of speech itself, or the linkage of speech to a wide array of complex cognitive
processes.
c) Epigenetic markers are more likely than genes themselves to account for the behavioral
changes we associate with language, thus making the ape to human transition more of a cultural
transformation than a biological transformation.
d) Genetic activation profiles during prenatal and postnatal development, as a function of culture,
can manifest differently in different environments, with major life changing consequences.
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The basic question of whether evolutionary theory can account for language must now be
understood on the basis of this new knowledge.
Ape rearing requires clinging, human rearing does not. Thus the ape and human developmental
trajectories that are built from birth forward, produce different kinds of beings and very
different epigenetic profiles. This one difference, clinging, affects the tendency toward
bipedalism, toward free vocalization, and toward object use and manufacture.When bonobo infants are reared in an environment which decreases or eliminates the constant
need to cling to the mother, their hands and eyes become free from birth to engage in a variety
of object manipulatory activities. This allows the brain to construct eye/hand/mouth/object
manipulatory systems that are co-ordinated in ways that follow the pattern of human infants.
The need to cling inhibits this and channels the neurological development of eye/hand
coordination in a non-relaxed developmental manner. This phenomenon is analogous to
Deacons relaxation hypothesis, but it is the culture which is the relaxing constraint, not the
genes. Not only do patterns of eye/hand coordination change in striking ways with human
rearing, the vocal system becomes relaxed as well. This is not because it becomes free of any
genetic constraint. It is freed because of a decrease in the risk of predation. Humans infantsliving in stable dwellings are far less likely to be attacked than bonobo infants. When an bonobo
infant, in an arboreal a world, gets very far away, makes very much noise or gets interested in
playing with objects rather than watching its mother and rushing to her before she moves, its
chances of survival decrease markedly. If a bonobo mother puts a very young baby down, it is
immediately subject to predation. Human reared bonobo infants face no such pressure and are
free, because of human culture, to follow the developmental trajectory of the human infant.
As they do so the plasticity of their nervous systems allows them to process and comprehend
human speech, both symbols and syntax. Thus it becomes clear that the ground zero question
does not apply to whether apes have language ability they do. The question is what is the
cultural trajectory required to facilitate a human language. The answer is that the required
cultural trajectory is obviously a human one. Were a human child to be reared along an ape
cultural trajectory, even though it had a human brain, it would not manifest a human language,
even though it possessed a human brain and would, like free-ranging apes, manifest the ability to
communicate symbolic meaning with intentionality.
While some linguists continue to quibble about whether what Kanzi has demonstrated is really
exactly human language, this debate is really no longer relevant. Kanzi clearly has acquired
sufficient language ability to indicate that the human rearing trajectory is the key ingredient in
the emergence of human language. In this vein, it is essential to note that Kanzi did not have a
uniquely human rearing he was reared in a Pan/Homo culture. Had Kanzi been reared with a
uniquely human trajectory, his human language capacity would perhaps have become sufficiently
well developed that not only would he be producing vocal approximations of human words andsentences, but quite clear ones. (For those readers interested in seeing what Kanzi and family
have accomplished, go to Kanzi.bvu.edu)
Kanzi is a first generation attempt to determine what happens when scientific investigation
p