Language BSCS Cognitive psychology Day 3 What is

Language BSCS, Cognitive psychology Day 3 What is language? Evolution of Language How does language affect thought?

Can animals talk? • It always depends on what you call talking… • Talkinganimals movie

• If we are inclined to think that they can, there are (at least) two reasons

Faces on Mars?

• There are two reasons – We like to hear animals talk

• There are two reasons – We like to hear animals talk – Animals like to imitate us

Is human language special in any way?

Natural signs – natural language • Closed ( 30 -40 signs) • Open Lexikon • Arbitrarily changeable • Holistic • Analytic Steven Pinker: grammar = discrete combinatorial system • hierarchy • recursivity • infinite? • Digital • Detached, distanced – sounds, smells, facial expressions • Analogue (crying) • Concrete • inherited • learned

Inherited signs? • Vervet monkeys • Playing them recorded signals – Different shouts : • Eagle • Snake • Leopard hide in bush look under feet run up tree • It takes learning to get them right • Are they in-built measures of fear?

The Vervets again • Ability to cheat! – Want to get rid of bigger male? – Want to hide that you’ve found food? – Just give a leopard cry!

• What makes possible sentences infinite? – Recursion – Diane said that Peter told her that Mary lied that she was at school that day. The mouse that the cat chased ate the cheese. The mouse that the cat chased that the dog barked ate the cheese.

Human language? • Hockett’s principles – Arbtrariness (nonecessary connection between form and meaning) – Abstractness (ability to talk about events distant in time or space) – Duality (from a few meaningless signs an infinite number of configurations created) – Productivity (new linguistic elements can be formed)

What animals don’t do. . • • past future question Lie - cheat

Careful! Der Kluge Hans – Clever Hans – effect (1907 Oskar Pfungst) A trap set by our intentional stance ELIZA: http: //www-ai. ijs. si/eliza. html Argumentation valid for all sentient subjects (H. S. as well) (Rico, the Border Collie)

Two important questions • Nature-nurture (Skinner vs Chomsky) – Species similar to us (apes) – Species adapted to us (dog, cat) • Natural communicative signs - artificial – Animals communicating in their natural habitat – Arbitrary sign taught by human researchers

Irene Pepperberg Alex the African grey parrot Avian Lanuage teaching EXperiment. . BME_evolúcióskurzusevoluc 200607 BMEnyel vevolúcióALexalextheparrot[1]. mov Is it human language? Sentence structure : How many blue blocks? New words coined: „Bannery” All in all 200 words

• Paul Bloom (Yale) • „both a baby and a dog are exposed to language, but only the baby learns to talk (Science)” –PERSPECTIVES BEHAVIOR: Can a Dog Learn a Word? Paul Bloom (11 June 2004) Science 304 (5677), 1605. [DOI: 10. 1126/science. 1099899]) • Children’s word learning – fast mapping

The new chimpanzees • Rico, the Border Collie (video) • Juliane Kaminski, Leipzig • Fast mapping and word learning – „fetch-the-bunny” One word? – can put it in a box as well or give it to someone – Novel item – novel word • Paul Bloom: – „for psychologists, dogs may be the new chimpanzees. ” – „If any child learned words the way Rico did, the parents would run screaming to the nearest neurologist

The new chimpanzees • Questions: – Talent or learning? (nature or nurture) – Dogs are evolutionarily selected for attending to the communicative intentions of humans – Can Rico demonstrate understanding of a word other than by fetching an object? – Could Rico be told not to fetch a specific object (akin to telling a human child "don't touch!")? – Can Rico learn a word for any object that is not small and fetchable? – Can the same results be produced with nonlinguistic sounds?

Monkeys speaking • Maybe they could use a simpler protolanguage? • Ability not used? • 3 methods – Natural speech – ASL- sign language – Lexigram signs

• Spoken language • ASL – American sign Language • lexigrams

Gua (Kellogg & Kellogg, 1933) – Raised as a family member (9 months) – Intimate relationship http: //www. psy. fsu. edu/history/wnk/ape. html

Emotional reactions feeding

Where is your nose? In spite of all this, Gua – Never produced intelligible words – Only understood few

Viki (Hayes, 1951) • Family member • Reinforceent learning • After 7! years – Badly articulated 4 words: mama, papa, up, cup – Only family members understand him – Understands few words

60’s teaching chimps • Complete fiasco • Is the problem physiological? – Lack of fine motor coordination – Movement of tongue – Control of breathing – Voluntary control of emitting sounds

Different physiology Larynx higher -> smaller pharynx and nasal cavity

• Spoken language • ASL – American Sign Language • Lexigrams • Three stars • Washoe (chimpanzee) • Nim Chimpsky (chimpanzee) • Koko (gorilla)

Washoe (Gardner & Gardner, 1960’s) • Captured in Africa • Started to learn at 11 months – teaching during 51 months • Brouht up as a deaf child (games, social activities) • idea – Chimps use gestures as a natural sign in their communication ► ASL, American Sign Language

What did Washoe learn? Lexicon • production: 150 -200 signs • Understood more • More syntactic categories (N, V, Adj, Pro) • differentiating – flower vs. smell • trasfer – He learns one particular object and extends the meaning • Could create new signs (? ) Duck = water + bird

What did Washoe learn? Grammar • Overgeneralization • Answering „WH-word” questions • Sensitivity to word order – You tickle me – I tickle you • Combining signs – – – Washoe sorry Baby down Go in Hug hurry Out open please hurry • Washoe’s step son Louis – Learned signs spontaneously from Washoe – Did Washoe teach the signs (? )

Nim Chimpsky & Herbert Terrace

Nim Chimpsky (Terrace, Petitto, Sanders & Bever, 1979) • Washoe’s family • What does his name remind you of? • ASL: stricter design

What has Nim Chimpsky learned? • Lexicon – 125 signs, BUT stricter criteria would ca 25 • (strict criteiria meaning double-blind studies with signers) • Grammar – A maximum of two combinations→if there is az more, it is usually repetition • banana me eat banana eat – The length of sentences does not grow over time – No relationship between the complexitiy of sentences and their length (rather, he learned that the more he signs, the sooner he gets what he wants…)

Nim Chimpsky • No spontaneous signs • His utterances – 90%: reaction, relates to a „here and now aspect” (eat, play, drink) – 40%: straight repetition • Interrupts the signing of teacher • Does not add new information to the situation ► „You can teach that to a dove with operant conditioning” (Herbert Terrace)

Koko and dr Penny Patterson

. . BME_evolúcióskurz usevoluc 200607 BME nyelvevolúciókokok oko_first 3 signs_56[1]. mov. . BME_evolúcióskurz usevoluc 200607 BME nyelvevolúciókokok oko_sign_history_56[ 1]. mov. . BME_evolúcióskurz usevoluc 200607 BME nyelvevolúciókokom eet_koko_psa_56[1]. mov

Francine Patterson 33 year-old gorilla, learned the language in infancy (ASL) Longest ongoing research: worked together for 33 years Only research involving a gorilla Supposedly knows a 1000 signs and understands written English. Chatted on America Online Could communicate toothache

The chat on America Online PENNY: Hey, Cutie. Penny swivels Koko's chair around so they face each other. PENNY: Let me explain what we're doing. KOKO: Fine. PENNY: We're going to be on the phone with a lot of people who are going to a us questions. . . KOKO: Nipple. (Koko sometimes uses 'nipple' as a 'sounds like' for 'people. ') PENNY: . . . about you and about me. . . Lots of people. KOKO: That red pink. (Indicating Penny's shirt. ) PENNY: That red pink. Yes, right! KOKO: Hurry good. PENNY: This is red—this is pink, exactly. KOKO: Pink. (Koko reaches for Penny's pocket which contains treats. ) PENNY: OK. That's the kind of things they are going to ask. KOKO: Good. PENNY: Questions about colors or how you're feeling. OK? KOKO: That red. (Indicating her own hair. ) PENNY: Honey, this is black. KOKO: XXX. (XXX looks like 'sun'. ) Koko is trying to sign 'black. ' Penny touch prompts 'black'.

The chat on America Online • • • • Koko pulls Penny's phone hand closer. PENNY: OK. She wants to listen. Do you have a question? KOKO: Listen. PENNY: She said 'listen. '. . . AOL: MIny. Kitty asks Koko are you going to have a baby in the future? PENNY: OK, is that for Koko? Koko are you going to have a baby in the future? KOKO: Koko-love eat. . . sip. AOL: Me too! PENNY: What about a baby? You going to have baby? She's just thinking. . . her hands are together. . . KOKO: Unattention. PENNY: Oh poor sweetheart. She said 'unattention. ' She covered her face with her hands. . which means it's not happening, basically, or it hasn't happened yet. . . I don't see it. AOL: That's sad! PENNY: It is responding to the question. In other words, she hasn't had one yet, and she doesn't see a future here. The way the situation is actually with Koko & Ndume, she has 2 males to 1 female which is the reverse of what she needs. I think that is why she said that, because in our current situation, it isn't possible for her to have a baby. She needs several females and one male to have a family.

• Spoken language • ASL – • lexigrams

David and Ann Premack

Savage Rumbaugh

One of the fiascos Mercury. Since he did not learn language at all, he was transferred to do other experiments

Bad news – good news • Matata and her son Kanzi – After 2, 5 years of training Matata still wasn’t very good at lexigrams – they gave up and sent her to a Primate Center – They kept Kanzi – luckily!

Kanzi (Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1990) • A real star (played together with Paul Mc. Cartney-vel + Peter Gabriel) • bonobo: supposed to be more intelligent, social, communicative • Has NEVER been taught, only her mother

Kanzi and Alia (2, 5 ys) • Compared them with a comprehension test, with toys Kanzi has never seen before, only videos and pictures • • Kanzi, make the dog bite the snake Kanzi, tickle Rose with the bunny 500 novel sentences Both Alia and Kanzi were 70% correct Kanzi video: http: //www. iowagreatapes. org/bonobo/meet/kanzi. php#

Conclusion about ape studies ape • Here and now • No syntax • explicit teaching • Does not refuse badly formed sentences • Rarely forms questions • Not using symbols spontaneuosly child • timeline • syntax • No explicit teaching – spontaneous signs with deaf children) • Refuses badly formed sentences • Frequent questions • Referential use of symbols • MLU same • MLU grows and so does complexity • • Banana me me me eat. I am going to eat all the bananas.

Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch

„Human language is an embarrassment for evolutionary theory” David Premack

When? • A. when did language evolve in the history of mankind? – evidence: • Human fossils (speech organs and brain tissue) – 2 million years • tools – 100 thousand years • Art – 30 -35 thousand years • B. Why did it evolve?

Why did language evolve? Two questions: Continuous or discontinuous? (step-by step or saltatory? ) Adaptation or exaptation? 1. Evolutionists • The meteors of Chomsky

Saltatory approach meteors • Noam Chomsky: language could not have evolved by natural selection – Too complex – All the interim forms bring no advantage • Exaptation?

• Step-by-step evolution – Different linguistic levels? Bickerton – evolutionary stable strategy of grammar

Bickerton’s theory – 0. Australopithecus –apes today (categoriese) – 1. Erectus – protolanguage, without syntax – 2. Archaic homo sapiens – symbolic language with syntax – 3. developed language – languages diverging, different language families (Luigi Cavalli-Sforza)

ESS – Evolutionary stable strategies • Think of all the things you might want to talk about • What if you invented a different sound for each? • Solution – categorization – combination

Syntax evolution: the problem

Syntax evolution: the answer

How did language evolve? • Early linguistic theories • Ecolocigal models – hunt • Social explanation – Building social relations • Sexual selection

Egypt – an interesting experiment • Pharaoh Psammeticos (7 th century B. C. ) – Given two babies to a shepherd to raise them without saying a word to them – the most ancient language would be the one they start to speak – Once they happened to say the word „bheccos” – It means bread in phrueg, a language now extinct • Kaiser Franz II. Germo-Roman emperor (10 th A. C. ) – same experiment – no result • Jacob IV Scottish king (XVth A. C. ) – The child started to speak something like Hebrew.

Similarity in onomatopaeia • Afrikaans: miaau! Albanian: mjau! Arabic (Algeria): miau! Bengali: meu-meu! Catalan: meu, meu! Croatian: mijau! Danish: mjav! Dutch: miauw! English: meow! Esperanto: miaŭ! Estonian: näu! Finnish: miau! kurnau! French: miaou! German: miau! Greek: niaou! Hebrew: miyau! Hindi: myaau! myaauu! Hungarian: miau! Icelandic: mjá! • Indonesian: ngeong! Italian: miao! Japanese: nyaa! Korean: (n)ya-ong! Mandarin Chinese: miao! Norwegian: mjau! Polish: miau! Portuguese: miau! Russian: myau! Slovene: mijau! Spanish: miau! Swedish: mjau! Thai: meow! (with high tone) Turkish: miyauv! Ukrainian: myau! Vietnamese: meo-meo!

Otto Jespersen – the reason of the ban in 1886 • Interlingua – International Auxiliary language • Bow-wow theory – Imitating animals - onomatopeia • Pooh-pooh theory – Emotion-laden signs (pain, happiness) • Ding-dong theory – A sort of verbalizing non-verbal communivation • Yo-he-ho theory – Vocalization while working, singing • La-la theory – Love, art, poetry, music

How did language evolve? • Early linguistic theories • Ecolocigal models – Hunt – Toolmaking • Social explanation – Building social relations • Sexual selection

A difference in vocabulary? • Hunter-gatherers: – 5000 -6000 words – Half of them is verb, connected to survival • Modern language: – 50 -60 housand words – 10 -15% verbs • Language had a larger role in this?

What do you need to know to survive? • Places of plants and migration of animals • Today’s hunter-gatherer’s – little evidence, more gestures (max. 1 -2 words) • Talk: basicly gossip – life of people, affairs

Tools and DIY • Constructional ability ~ syntax

• You need – Model of the outside world – Manipulation abilities • Both language and toolmaking are – sequential – hierarchical • Two possibilities – Making tools presupposes abilities that bootsrap language – Making tools needs teaching and cooperation presupposing language

DIY in hunter-gatherers • Rarely do they say instructions – Mostly direct observation • Cathleen Gibson – Division of labour – Social effect – Gibson, K. R. and Ingold, T. eds. Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.

How did language evolve? • Early linguistic theories • Ecolocigal models – hunt • Social explanation – Building social relations • Sexual selection

• Robin Dunbar • grooming: – Hygenic function - originally – Social and emotional bonds – Endogene opiates

A

Grooming time for hominids

• Group size ~ grooming – Reduces agression – Gets social support • Max: 70 (20 -25% of time) • Group size ~ brain size – Cogitive restraint • humans: 147, 8 (150) (42% of time!)

Average size of human tribes

The magic number of 150 • The average size of hunter-gatherer groups • Basic military unit • hutterites – one colony • Gore-Tex fabric Ltd. 150 parking places

And the solution is… • Language – a more efficient way of grooming? – Can groom various persons at a time – The hands are free to manipulate • Trading social information • Indirect experience – learn novel situation • Group identity - dialects

When? • 250 -300 thousand years ago we reached this 70 person limit

The topic – grooming=gossip?

How did language evolve? • Early linguistic theories • Ecolocigal models – hunt • Social explanation – Building social relations • Sexual selection

Geoffrey Miller Univ of New Mexico

• Altruism of speaker – are we giving away information • language_=nothing more than a sexual ornament, a way of wooing

• Name great writers in History • Fitness indicator: • Intelligence correlates with vocabulary 80% • 60% genetically determined • Cyrano effect • Seherzade effect

However • Women are better at verbal intelligence, aren’t they? – Contradictory findings • • • Fluency tests Verbal intelligence test Vocabulary tests – only until the age of 3 -5 The aphasia myth The autism myth – that is actually true…

Supporting evidence • Robbins Burling – In egalitarian societies the chieftain is going to be the person communicating best First onomatopeic sounds First comprehension evolves – then production (look who’s talking now!)

Evolution of human language • Nobody denies that it is a powerful tool • Nobody knows how it came into being

Language and thought

Sapir-Whorf (linguistic relativity) hypothesis • The (grammatical) categories of language influence cognition (perception, memory thought) • Linguistic turn: – Linguistic relativism • importance of language as a structuring agent – Philosophical realism

• Language (with capital L): – the human language capacity – linguistic universals • languages (with small l): – individual languages (e. g. , English, Arabic…) – types of languages (e. g. , Indo-European, Semitic…)

Language – uniformity or diversity • Chomsky and MP – Language can be traced back to universals • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – Presupposes that there is a significant (? ? ? ) differences between languages • Grammatical gender marking – – Hungarian - none on pronouns (Eng) On nouns and adjectives (Neo-latin languages) On verbs (Russian) • Mandarin & Indonesian: optional tense marking • Turkish: marking of the source of knowledge

Various stances • Universalism – Chomsky, Jackendoff, Gleitman • Strong linguistic relativism – Whorf, Levinson – Language influences cognition • Weak linguistic relativism - Slobin – „Thinking for speaking” – it draws our attention to certain differences, creating a difference in cognition • Language as a strategy – Effects of language are present if the task in the experience is linguistic only

Slobin, Dan • Are these differences relevant? To what degree? – – • • Linguistic determinism – strong version Linguistic relativism – weak version If each language is simply an alternative code for the same underlying cognitive processes and states, the diversity of languages can be ignored by cognitive science. • But if linguistic diversity reflects cognitive diversity, individual languages are critical independent variables in cognitive science theory and research.

Experimental data

Tests of the hypothesis • Classical study: words for snow among the Eskimo • Colour words among the Dani (Elizabeth Rosch) • Time metaphors and their effect on thought • Space and thought

The Great Snowball Battle

Franz Boas • Father of American Anthropology • The Central Eskimo (1888) – Is cultural evolution similar to the evolution of language? • 1911 Handbook of American Indian languages – – A sidenote on morphology „snowballed” –. just as English uses derived terms for a variety of forms of water (liquid, lake, river, brook, rain, dew, wave, foam) that might be formed by derivational morphology from a single root meaning 'water' in some other language, so Eskimo uses the apparently distinct roots aput 'snow on the ground', gana 'falling snow', piqsirpoq 'drifting snow', and qimuqsuq 'a snow drift'

Sapir Whorf • By 1940 somehow arrived at the number 7 • Studying the Hopi – the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions or that refer directly to what we call “time”, or to past, present, or future… • Hartford Fire insurance Company – Empty vs full gasoline drums • Nahuatl, maya – minor mistakes • 1956 – Language, Thought, Reality

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis • “We cut up and organize the spread and flow of events as we do largely because, through our mother tongue, we are parties to an agreement to do so, not because nature itself is segmented in exactly that way for all to see. ” • • “From this fact proceeds what I have called the ‘linguistic relativity principle, ’ which means, in informal terms, that users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations … and hence are not equivalent as observers …”

The Truth – so how many? • 2 -4 in Inuit – up to 24 in English • Geoffrey Pullum – The entire question is irrelevant – it would be very surprising if a painter did not know more words for colours than laypersons.

The Colour debate • Paul Kay – universalism – The categorization of the spectrum of wavelength is not arbitrary – There is a hierarchy of colours • Rosch – studies with the Dani – Modern criticisms • Paul Kay and Willet Kempton (1984) – Tarahumara grue studies

Time

With the future behind them • English – Falling behind schedule and looking forward to a brighter future • Mandarin – – Quián – front Hou – back Shang – up – last Xiá – down – next • Priming experiments – Is March earlier than April? – The meeting on Wednesday was put forward 2 days. – People on/off the train/airport experiments.

Language and space

Talmy • Manner and path type languages – categorizing verbs – He went out running of the house. – Salió del edificio corriendo. • Gennari et al video memory experiments. – No memory effects – Conscious similarity effect exists

Bowerman studies • Containment vs support in EU languages – subtle differences in the grammatical markers • Tight/loose fit and attachment – Korean – Bowl (nehta) vs envelope & magnet on a refrigerator (kitta) • Mc. Donough (habituation, looking preference) – adult British subject can’t discriminate tight vs loose fit – Preverbal infants can

The problem • Levinson vs Li and Gleitman – the war is not over yet – Chickens, eggs and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – in other words how many words do YOU know for snow? (oh, and how many for different neurotransmitters. . . ? ) • And now the tricky question: – Raise your left hands, please – And point towards your office in ST • (N. B. if you also murmur Accio coffee, you might even stay awake for the rest of the talk!)

SPACE – the final front in here? Language & Cognition – the easy solution • Language: – Absolute – Intrinsic – Relative • Spatial cognition – (Geocentric) – Allocentric Abolute description: Both Harry and Ginny would – Egocentric agree that the Phoenix is coming from oppositestatue. * Intrinsic description: Both Harry and Ginny would agree that the Phoenix is somewhere in front of the statue. Relative description: Harry would say that the Phoenix is to the left of the statue. Ginny would say that the Phoenix is to the right of the statue. *let us suppose that the statue in this putative case is a fixed reference point, such as „hill” is in Tzeltal.

Spatial reference frames made Well, from here difficult on the North Look Ginny, the Basilisk is to the right of the statue! (=Avada Kedavra…) . Vector Origo The Basilisk is Pole the Basiliskme. under is to the south polar bear. The Basilisk is behind me. Geocentric

Linguistic diversity in Spatial language • Languages differ in the ratio of the use of the different descriptions – Man and tree test by Penelope Brown

Languages and space • Absolute • The Quill is to the south of the Diary. • • Ya koon. A. , I descend B. , I go downhill. C. , I go south.

l. Majid et al. 2004. Can language restructure cognition? The case for space. Trends in Cognition.

Li & Gleitman

Li and Gleitman, 2002

The pointing task deadreckoners

Hypothesis • Speakers of languages using absolute frames of reference will be good dead reckoners – r-statistic close to 1. 00 • • Speakers of languages using relative frames of reference will be poor dead reckoners – r-statistic approaching zero.