Origin of Language (Origins)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 05, 2015, 15:42 (3520 days ago) @ dhw


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> dhw: On a more serious “note”:
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> 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.”
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> 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".-However and whenever, language syntax seems to e universal throughout the very many human languages and built in at birth. Up to age 8-10 children can sop them up like a sponge and without an accent appearing. It allows us to think in word concepts and express the most complex of ideas, and only we humans have it. It involved many changes in tongue muscles, changing the shape of the palate and throat, dropping the larynx so inhaling food became a problem, requiring the development of a trap door over the main airway that closes it off as we swallow. It requires short clipped bursts of air carefully produced to express the sounds. Grunts and bellows and barks are not like it at all.This is a major example as to why I cannot accept unguided and unplanned evolution.