Linguistics and LHS (print) issn 1742–2906 LHS (online) issn 1743–1662 the Human Sciences Article What sort of minded being has language? Anticipatory dynamics, arguability and agency in a normatively and recursively self-transforming learning system Part 2 Paul J. Thibault Abstract Part 2 is a direct continuation of Part 1, which was published in Linguistics and the Human Sciences (2005) Volume 1(2). The numbering of the sections and the figures and tables continues directly from Part 1. The two parts should therefore be read as a single overall article. In Part 2, I consider some specific instances of learning systems involving humans and bonobos in relation to the theoretical issues discussed in Part 1. In Part 2, the implications of the systemic-functional theory of language for a unified view of cognition and semiosis as distributed activity on diverse time-scales are further discussed in the light of the issues that are discussed above. Keywords: affordance, agent, anticipatory dynamics, discourse, cognition, distributed activity, learning, metafunction, semiosis, values Affiliation Paul J. Thibault, Professor of Linguistics and Media Communication, Faculty of Humanities, Agder University College, Kristiansand, Norway email: [email protected] LHS vol 1.3 2005 355–401 doi : 10.1558/lhs.2005.1.3.355 ©2005, equinox publishing LONDON 356 linguistics and the human sciences 13 Interpersonal negotiation and anticipatory dynamics in an episode of bonobo-human interaction What can interaction between human caregivers and bonobos such as Kanzi and Panbanisha, who have been co-reared by human caregivers at the Language and Cognition Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, tell us about the anticipa- tory dynamics of interpersonal negotiation and experiential representation? In this Section, I shall discuss an episode that occurred between Janine, a former researcher at the Center, and Kanzi, a resident bonobo. In the episode of bonobo-human interaction to be analysed, Janine telephones the Center from her home. Sue is together with Kanzi in a laboratory at the Center. Sue relays Kanzi’s lexigram sign-making to Janine during the telephone conversation. In the ensuing telephone discussion with Kanzi, who is in the Center’s laboratory along with Sue, Janine undertakes to bring a number of surprises for Kanzi. Four hours later she comes to the Center with the promised surprises in her backpack. A transcript of the episode is presented in Table 3. This transcript presents the first phase of the overall episode, i.e. the telephone conversation prior to Janine’s coming to the Center. The follow-up episode of her arrival at the Center and meeting with Kanzi and Sue is discussed in Thibault (2005a). Action Language 1 Janine: I’m just talking to … Kanzi I want to tell you something (???? on the phone) Kanzi I was going to come see you I’m going to bring a backpack with some surprises would you like some surprises? can you tell me if you’d like some surprises? 2 Kanzi touches lexigram Kanzi: <SURPRISE> 3 Janine: you would Sue: surprise (overlapping with Janine) Janine: ok 4 Sue points to bench Sue: Kanzi come up here top as Kanzi gets down on to floor 5 Kanzi returns to Janine: would you like any food? tell me what food you’d bench top and takes like telephone to ear 6 Kanzi touches lexigram Kanzi: <FOOD – SURPRISE> 7 Janine laughs Janine: some food surprise P. J. Thibault 357 8 Sue: food surprise [excited, rising intonation] 9 Janine: Kanzi would you like some juice or some um M&M’s or some sugar cane? 10 Kanzi: <M&M’s> 11 Sue: [excited voice] M&M’s 12 Janine: you like M&M’s ok Kanzi is there any other food that you would like me to bring in the backpack? 13 Kanzi touches lexigram Kanzi: <BALL> 14 Janine: a ball ok I can bring a ball I’m going to bring them to see you FOUR HOURS LATER JANINE COMES TO THE CENTER Note: in the transcription (???) indicates indecipherable linguistic text Table 3: Transcript of telephone conversation between Janine, Sue, Kanzi, prior to Janine’s visitor to the Center; transcribed from the NHK (Japan) video documentary Kanzi II. Kanzi’s participation in and contribution to the exchange show that he is strongly attracted to its dynamics. By the same token, he is able to influence its development according to his wants and needs. Moreover, the representational resources that the lexigram affords him mean that he can link inner needs and desires to external representational resources that can be taken up, interpreted and negotiated by others in ways that maintain the episodic flow of the activity. His ability to participate in and actively shape episodes such as the following shows an emergent capacity to play out a limited range of social roles as a competent member of the bonobo-human society of which he is a member. In this first instance, Kanzi’s signs seek to fulfil his wants, needs, and gratifi- cations. The values are based on instrumental criteria of pleasure gratification in the here-now. However, Kanzi’s integration of lexigram signs to the activity show a limited representational capacity to go beyond the here-now. They exhibit a limited ability to temporally generalise behavioural expectations. His representations are lifted out of the flow of the activity and functions as signs that can anticipate and shape the flow of the activity (Cowley, 2005; Thibault, 2005a: 113). His representational capacity does not simply express concrete wants and needs, though it certainly does that too. Rather, his interaction with Janine shows that he has temporally generalisable expectations about how the interaction should proceed. His limited capacity for experiential representation 358 linguistics and the human sciences indicates some ability to abstract to actions and their expected outcomes in other times and places. Expectations about actions can be located on a timeline of past, present and future actions and their outcomes. In lifting things out of the flux in this way, representations create episodic units, consisting of events, participants, and outcomes; expectations constitute perspectives on these events. The chunking of experience into episodic units is a kind of proto-experiential meaning. Expectations, on the other hand, entail the perspectives of the observers who interpret these events from their perspectives. Expectation therefore is a kind of proto-modality; it is the means whereby the satisfying of needs and the attain- ing of wants is no longer tied to the self’s immediate gratification of pleasure or pain. Expectation in this sense lifts the activity out of the here-now. Kanzi’s needs and wants are mediated by indexical-symbolic resources such as those afforded by the lexigram. Kanzi’s pressing into service of these resources in episodes such as the one under consideration here means that he has achieved an elementary level of indexical-symbolic mediation of his needs and wants. His actions are interpreted by his human interlocutors (e.g. Sue, Janine) in terms of culturally mediated needs and wants. Moreover, these same mediational resources allow for the emergence and recognition of a human-bonobo social group with its semiotically mediated social-interpersonal participant roles (Benson, 2002; Benson et al., 2002). With this level of symbolic achievement, Kanzi has acquired some ability to generalise from individuals to a range of role-types that characterise the pan-human socio-cultural group of which he is a member and the activities that characterise the social organisation of the group and its members. This ability creates expectations as to who can and should fulfil these roles from one occasion to another. This achievement further entails the development of generalised expectations concerning the behaviours of the participants who enact particular roles and the responsibilities that are assigned to these roles. At this point, we might venture that Kanzi has an implicit theory of himself and his human interlocu- tors as social agents who can be held responsible for their actions on the basis of generalisable expectations about identities, roles and actions. Such expectations partially lift these identities, roles and actions out of the flux of the here-now activity and place them on a time-line of expectations concerning past, present, and future actions. In this way, Kanzi’s bodily performances on level L in the three-level hierarchy (Section 2, Part 1) are contextually integrated to and reorganised by an emergent system of symbolically mediated pan-human role types, along with their associated expectations and responsibilities on level L+1 of the emergent pan-human ecosocial semiotic system. P. J. Thibault 359 Kanzi’s lexigram signs in this episode anticipate a desired action outcome at the same time that this is calibrated with an elementary experiential representa- tion. Each sign that he produces during the course of the interaction with Janine progressively indicates a more precisely defined subclass of surprise, as the progression <SURPRISE> → <FOOD-SURPRISE> → <M&M’s> throughout the episode shows. The increasingly precise experiential representations guide the action selections in relation to his expectations and the perspectives that inform his expectations. The grounding of Kanzi’s utterances is far more implicit and less highly speci- fied compared to the grammatical resources of the clause. Tense, modality and polarity (Section 5, Part 1) are not present in his utterances. Nevertheless, his utterances function as moves in the discourse between himself and Janine. On this basis, we can say that his utterances specify a point of reference in relation to the here-now (the ground) of the speech event and therefore the modal or proto-modal perspectives that such points of reference entail. Consider the following excerpt from Table 3 above: 3 Janine: can you tell me if you’d like some surprises? 4 Kanzi: touches lexigram: <surprise> 5 [Sue: surprise] 6 Janine: you would, ok Janine’s interrogative utterance asks for Kanzi’s modal perspective on the propo- sition in her clause.