Origin of Language (Origins)

by dhw, Sunday, April 05, 2015, 14:15 (3518 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: New support for the idea that language syntax may be innate: -http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331131324.htm
 
 "The hierarchical complexity found in present-day language is likely to have been present in human language since its emergence," says Shigeru Miyagawa, Professor of Linguistics and the Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor in Japanese Language and Culture at MIT, and a co-author of the new paper on the subject.- "To be clear, this is not a universally accepted claim: Many scholars believe that humans first started using a kind of "proto-language" -- a rudimentary, primitive kind of communication with only a gradual development of words and syntax.”-This is truly sensational news. Professor Miyagawa has equalled the world record for the invention of theories for which there is not, never was, and never can be the slightest shred of evidence. I am slightly miffed that MIT have turned down my application for a grant to develop my theories that dinosaurs invented football, there were no apple trees in the Garden of Eden, and Professor Miyagawa has a doppelgänger on planet Z in Universe 24B. 
 
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On a more serious “note”:
 
QUOTE: “Miyagawa has an alternate hypothesis about what created human language: Humans alone, as he has asserted in papers published in recent years, have combined an "expressive" layer of language, as seen in birdsong, with a "lexical" layer, as seen in monkeys who utter isolated sounds with real-world meaning, such as alarm calls. Miyagawa's "integration hypothesis" holds that whatever first caused them, these layers of language blended quickly and successfully.”-He apparently doesn't know that both birds and many animals both sing and utter sounds with real-world meaning, thus combining the expressive with the lexical. Humans are not "alone". He is, however, undoubtedly correct that whatever caused our own languages to develop as they have done was successful in causing our languages to develop as they have done. Whether this happened quickly or slowly might possibly depend on how you define "quickly" and "slowly".