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The Social Instinct

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The Social Instinct OPINION THE BIG IDEA The social instinct The cultural foundations of human language is a story very much in the making, says Daniel Everett, because it must first challenge the claim that language is innate NOTHING sets Homo sapiens apart from other I must admit I am puzzled by the continued species more clearly than the possession of popularity of nativism. For decades, research language and culture. Using features of supported the idea that language is formed by language unique to our species we can a number of independent factors, leaving communicate almost anything that pops into little, if any, work for a “universal grammar” or our heads. This capacity enables us to learn “language instinct” to do. Some researchers go from and elaborate on the lessons of previous so far as to argue that universal grammar is generations: we use values acquired earlier, nothing more than tautology: humans have plus trial and error, to improve our lives. The language because humans have language. unbeatable combination of language and It may be that nativism persists because it culture has made us lords of the Earth. seems hard to falsify. However, according to The question for anthropologists and Philip Lieberman, a cognitive scientist at linguists, however, is not why language and Brown University, Rhode Island, it makes one culture are so great, but what makes them testable, if paradoxical, prediction. According possible in the first place. p to universal grammar, not all features of We know that these two cognitive-social language would in fact be universal. Under tools are related: the burning issue is to nativism, we would expect that some humans understand the nature of this relationship. are incapable of learning some human Since Aristotle and Plato, there have been two languages others can learn. If we could find a main approaches. From the Platonic tradition population of humans who could learn one comes the “nativist” idea that language is type of language but not another, we would predetermined, having one immutable shape have striking support for nativism. dictated by the genes (or the gods). It is a one- How so? The potential inability of some process by drawing on innate grammatical way street: language facilitates culture but humans to learn some languages follows from information specific to their cultural niche. culture’s influence on language is minimal. nativism because cultures can affect genes. So nativism predicts that some populations Aristotelian ideas, however, argue that much Genes always vary within a population due, will be unable to learn all human languages. of language is set by cultural conventions and among other reasons, to mutations. Culture, For example, a population might be unable to that it serves our peculiar “social instinct”. as part of the environment, exerts pressures learn, say, Spanish, where the subject may be For the past 50 years or so, the dominant that can favour one genotype over another. freely omitted in most sentences. Spanish is theory followed Plato, asserting that language For example, genes for oxygen processing in likely to have inherited this characteristic is an innate capacity of the human brain – and some Tibetan populations have changed from Indo-European languages, which would culture is at best peripheral to understanding greatly in only the past 3000 years. If culture mean the feature is at least 6000 years old – the faculty of language. Throughout the exerts selection pressure that favours some well within the time period of known genetic 20th century, theorists such as Roman Jakobson genes over others, it is unlikely that evolution changes. Yet this prediction is not only false and Noam Chomsky developed the hypothesis would preserve an unvarying innate grammar for all humans ever tested, it also seems highly in extremely interesting ways. In Chomsky’s across all populations when it would be much unlikely that any normal human would not be version, individual languages are elaborations less costly for people to learn their local able to learn any particular human language. on a computational system (grammar) languages more easily by simply shutting off Some early American linguists such as provided by the human genome. Culture is other options from their genotype. People Edward Sapir avoided the nativist pitfalls, irrelevant for the core aspects of this system. could avoid the bulk of the language-learning arguing human language is a cultural artefact: 32 | NewScientist | 10 March 2012 32 01/03/2012 18:44:36 For more opinion articles and to add your comments, visit newscientist.com/opinion language, it has one of the smallest sets of phonemes known – eight consonants and three vowels for men and seven consonants and three vowels for women. That’s right, women have one fewer consonant than men. Where men have the phonemes “s” and “h”, women have only the phoneme “h” (though some women use “s” in certain contexts). Cultural sanction Not only do Pirahã men have more phonemes than women, they have more culturally sanctioned “space” in which to form their sounds. Male pronunciation uses a more extensive articulatory space, with an unconstricted pharynx (in the upper throat area, sitting above the larynx or “voice box”) and the tongue making contact with the roof of the mouth closer to the teeth. Women constrict their pharyngeal walls for the beginning closure of their “pharyngeal stop”, resulting in a more guttural sound, and their tongues block the flow of air for “t” and “n” – their only tongue-articulated consonants – farther back from their teeth. The result is Pirahã women use fewer phonemes within a smaller articulatory space than men. There is no linguistic reason for the contrast between men’s speech and women’s speech in Pirahã: it emerges from Pirahã values and culture, just as the speech of English-speaking men and women differs in many ways. For example, women often use different colour T terms and descriptive phrases than men. The US G U A sentence: “I love that lavender top on you” R/ E LL would almost certainly have been uttered by a hoe woman. Men use non-standard forms, so a SC tin man might say: “I went walkin’ ”, while a R A M woman might say: “I went walking.” Similarly, Pirahã culture distinguishes between men and an outgrowth of the interaction between ” The Pirahãs decided women’s pronunciation because it “wants to”. intelligence and values, communicative need, Another of the myriad ways culture and tradition and conventions. In Language: the they’d like to learn to read grammar interact lies in what seems to be the cultural tool, I have tried to develop a fuller and write their own culturally unique lack of recursive structure in account of the effects of culture on the form the Pirahã syntax. Recursion was claimed to be and meanings of human languages. For me, language… but it turned the innate core of human language in a language is a good solution to the problem of out that they did not allow famous Science paper published by Marc human communication, the need to satisfy Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and Tecumseh Fitch our “social instinct” and establish meaningful literacy into their culture” in 2002, “The faculty of language: what is it, relations with others. who has it, and how did it evolve?”. The Pirahã language of the Brazilian A recursive process is a process that applies Amazon is just one of the world’s 7000 to its own output: it can make sentences non- languages, all of which show cultural effects finitely long, its hallmark being grammatical on grammar. But Pirahã, which I studied for units of one type embedded in another of the nearly 30 years, is very interesting because it same type, such as noun phrases within noun contains much that is unusual for speakers of phrases (“John’s brother’s friend’s wife’s western languages. For example, while Pirahã sister”), or sentences within sentences (“Peter has consonants and vowels just like any other said that Mary said that John said that > 10 March 2012 | NewScientist | 33 33 01/03/2012 18:44:36 OPINION THE BIG IDEA Mortimer would be here tomorrow”). (the goal). It is not strictly grammatical in A language without recursion would be a ” Pirahã represents a solid English to say only “John gave” or “John gave counter example, and this I claim for Pirahã. counterexample to the book.” Outside literature, you have to give Such a language would falsify the recursion all three arguments (or more) each time. claim even when, as with the Pirahãs, its the idea that recursion Pirahã is like this except that unlike English, speakers can learn recursion in other is the principle genetic Pirahã’s cultural requirement on evidence languages or show evidence of thinking allows only three arguments. To say: “John’s recursively. If one language can exist without facilitator of human sister’s best friend gave Bill’s father-in-law’s recursion then, in principle, all can. This is languages” buddy a book” would leave “sister’s” and irreconcilable with the claim that recursion is “father-in-law’s” unwarranted because they the sine qua non of human communication. are not found in the verb’s three arguments The claim that Pirahã lacks recursion has (giver, given, goal). In my book, I explain in recently been corroborated by cognitive more detail how this cultural requirement for scientists at Tufts University in Medford, evidence rules out recursion in Pirahã. Massachusetts. And other studies are This restriction on Pirahã’s grammar and underway at the brain and cognitive sciences the grammar’s peculiar form is cultural. So department of the Massachusetts Institute of Pirahã represents a solid counter example to Technology,.
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