The Talking Ape in Loving Memory of Anne Hvenekilde

The Talking Ape In loving memory of Anne Hvenekilde. Min beste venn. The Talking Ape how language evolved Robbins Burling 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Robbins Burling 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 0-19-927940-3 978-0-19-927940-1 10987654321 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix 1.In the beginning 1 2.Smiles, winks, and words 23 3.Truths and lies 48 4.The mind and language 65 5.Signs and symbols 92 6.Icons gained and icons lost 105 7.From a few sounds to many words 122 8.Syntax: wired and learned 145 9.Step-by-step to grammar 164 10.Power, gossip, and seduction 181 11.What has language done to us? 210 Notes 234 Glossary 246 Bibliography 251 Index 269 v Publisher’s note This is the Wfth book to appear in the Oxford University Press series Studies in the Evolution of Language, whose editors are Professor James R. Hurford of the University of Edinburgh and Professor Frederick J. Newmeyer of the University of Washington. Preface My fascination with language origins goes back at least to the 1980s when some students and faculty members from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan used to get together periodically for very informal evening seminars on topics of human evolution. More than once, archeologists turned to me, the only linguist in the group, and asked ‘‘When did language begin?’’ I could do nothing except look blank and say ‘‘I dunno,’’ but the question prodded me into thinking about how it all might have started. This book is the result of that thinking. Over the years, many friends, colleagues, and correspondents oVered their wise counsel as I worked on various articles on the subject (some of which form the basis of sections in the book and are listed in the Acknowledgements below) and I must again give my thanks to A. L. Becker, Derek Bickerton, Paul Bloom, Loring Brace, William Croft, Iain Davidson, Penelope Eckert, Mark V. Flinn, Allan Gibbard, Virginia Guilford, Barbara King, Chris Knight, Frank Livingstone, Bruce Mann- heim, John Mitani, Thomas Moylan, Emanuel Polioudakis, Ernst Pulgram, Roy Rappaport, Robert Seyfarth, Michael Tomasello, Vir- ginia Vitzthum, Ron Wallace, and Richard Wrangham. Some of these same people, and many others as well, have helped in one way or another with the book itself. I will never overcome my astonishment at the generosity of scholars, several of whom I know only through e-mail, who have responded to my pleas for help. Simon Kirby and Jim Hurford have on several occasions done their best to help me understand work on the computer simulation of language evolution. Judy Kegl not only answered my questions and sent me papers, but sent me a stunning tape about young Nicaraguan signers. Another stunning tape, this one about bonobos, was sent by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. Adam Kendon helped me to understand the diVer- ences between various kinds of gestures. William Irons brought me up to date on the relation between status and reproductive success, and Judith Irvine did the same for the relation between status and valued vii Preface forms of language. Ruth Lesser educated me about aphasia. Karin Schmidt helped me with the relationship between human and animal gestures. Simon Frasier did his best to untangle my confusion about the FOXP2 gene. Bruce Richman guided my reading on music. Judith Becker instructed me about the rhythm and metrics of both music and language. Paula Berwanger guided my reading on sign language. Over the years, Barbara King has cheerfully responded to numerous queries on matters primatological. Iain Davidson has sent me countless e-mail messages, hoping to straighten out my notions of prehistory and much else. For two decades, Milford WolpoV has never stopped arguing with me, always hoping to educate me. Among many other acts of generosity, he supplied the data from which Illustration 7 was constructed. Anne Hvenekilde was able to read early drafts of two chapters and, as always, she made sharp criticism even while encouraging me to continue. Allan Gibbard and Robert Whallon read and oVered helpful comments about parts of the manuscript at later stages. Three good friends read the whole thing. Thomas Trautmann was the Wrst of these and, along with numerous astute criticisms and suggestions, he gave me the conWdence to continue. Sheila Procter and Derek Brereton read later drafts and both helped me in all sorts of ways toward both good sense and clarity. Recruited by OUP, Frederick Newmeyer reviewed the penultimate draft. He not only saved me from several embarrassing errors but pushed me to clear up some of my more murky prose. These thoughtful friends did their best to set me straight. Where I have failed to learn from them, blame me. Robbins Burling Ann Arbor, Michigan March 2005 viii Acknowledgements Several of the chapters in the book grew, in part, from earlier articles. I Wrst suggested that we should pay more attention to comprehension in an article called ‘‘Comprehension, Production and Conventionali- zation in the Origins of Language’’ in The Evolutionary Emergence of Language, edited by Chris Knight, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, and James R. Hurford and published by Cambridge University Press in 2000. This is reXected most closely in Chapter 1, but this entire book is, in a sense, an expansion of that article. Parts of Chapters 2 and 3 appeared in a rather diVerent form in ‘‘Primate Calls, Human Lan- guage, and Nonverbal Communication’’ in 1993 in volume 14 of Cur- rent Anthropology, pages 25–37, and published by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. A Wrst attempt to organize the ideas in Chapter 4 appeared in 1999 in volume 10, section 32 of the electronic journal Psycoloquy as ‘‘The cognitive prerequisites for language’’. Parts of Chapters 5 and 6 are adapted from ‘‘Motivation, Arbitrariness, and Conventionality’’ that appeared in 1999 in The Origins of Language: What Nonhuman Primates Can Tell Us, edited by Barbara J. King and published by the School of American Research, Santa Fe. The Wrst half of Chapter 10, is based on ‘‘The selective advantage of complex language,’’ which appeared in 1986 in pages 1–16 of volume 7 of Ethology and Sociobiology, published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co. Inc. ix This page intentionally left blank 1 In the beginning Few topics about which scholars have puzzled can be quite so intri- guing and so tantalizing, but at the same time so frustrating, as the evolution of the human capacity for language. Nothing so decisively sets us apart from our primate cousins as our constant chatter. It is no exaggeration to credit language for the very humanity that distin- guishes us from the beasts from which we sprang. If we are even a tiny bit curious about our own origins, we have to be curious about the origins of language. This is why it so frustrating to have no direct evidence for the language of our early ancestors. Fading as soon as it is uttered, spoken language leaves no trace. A few of our remote forebears left their bones in places where we could Wnd them, and as more and more of these bones have been moved to museums, we have gained a clearer under- standing of the several million years of evolution during which our bodies diverged from those of chimpanzees. The tools that early humans knocked from stones have survived in their thousands, and they tell us a good deal about early technology. But it was only after writing was invented, a mere Wve or six thousand years ago, that earlier languages could leave any trace. By then, the human capacity for spoken language had already had a very long history. Not even the earliest writing can tell us anything about the far more ancient periods when people Wrst began to talk. The lack of direct evidence for such a crucial part of our heritage has left the topic open to speculation, some of it reasonable, some that might be called ‘‘imaginative,’’ and some downright crazy, and this has 1 In the beginning brought the subject a certain disrepute.

Load more