Dear Cory!
What Mercier and Sperber said in the summary of their paper (which I pasted the other day) seems to be reinforced by your desire to get some clarification from me. If I remember rightly, you and I have been debating this point long before you wrote your (excellent!) thesis which I quoted in my subsequent paper (in Spanish) on the subject written ages ago; it would seem, then, that our two points of view should be clear to each other with no need to clarify things whatsoever in our particular case.
However …
Now, since we are in a new place, where all the traces of our ideas have disappeared from view at one click, I will try and summarize as clearly as I may my position on this problem for you (and everyone else interested) to be able to forget it yet again as another just-so story (which, I am afraid, is what all our ideas are, given our present state of knowledge). I will concentrate on two points, an introductory one, and the crucial one:
1º) EVOLUTION:
Let me employ a very basic account on this topic (you are much more conversant with the real steps than I am, of course): I think that when we talk about EVOLUTION we figure out how proto-humans appeared in this world from other ancestors related to apes; and then, we try and establish how real humans evolved from those proto-humans.
But once humans are around, we tend to forget about evolutionary steps. We don’t imagine Romans evolving from, say, Ligurians, nor, subsequently, Italians, French, Rumanian, Portuguese, Catalans, etc., from Romans, etc. We change the term EVOLUTION and call this changing process HISTORY.
If you agree (generally speaking) on the two points above, tell me then on what grounds you seem to use the same word EVOLUTION to point to the appearance of human language and also for the changes that occur in that same human language in the course of time, from the Proto-Germanic to Germanic, to English, etc.
For me, then, it is quite clear, that there are two such processes also in language, and that extending the term EVOLUTION to cover the HISTORICAL changes would very much look like the (to me, at least!) ludicrous intent to show how, say, Macbeth and his subjects EVOLVED into Alex Salmond and his nationalist compatriots.
Therefore, I never talk about the EVOLUTION of languages, but only about the HISTORY of their changes.
2º) LANGUAGE (L1, L2 and L3)However, surely, there was a time where no LANGUAGE whatsoever existed; how come it exists now-a-day? This, indeed, is a problem that may be tackled by an EVOLUTIONARY account.
Unluckily, a very great linguist of our time, with a lot of followers, Chomsky, is universally thought to have claimed that language did not evolve; the story goes that he maintained it appeared abruptly as some jack-in-the-box. Happily (for me, who am a chomskyan), I have an e-mail of his own where he strongly and crossly objects to that universal rumour. I will paste it here, as indeed, I have already done it in several forums before, but, for the same reasons that Marcier & Sperber pointed to in their paper, to no avail. The rumour keeps growing like a snowball and nobody ever doubts that Chomsky is culprit of that misdeanour. Such is life!
I am afraid you have misinterpreted both my past and present views on natural selection and human language. You say: “Chomsky seems not to have changed his views on the lack of a role for natural selection in the origin of language”.
That statement presupposes that on some earlier occasion I expressed “views on the lack of a role for natural selection in the origin of language”. I have never expressed such views in the past. If you think otherwise, try to find the statement –by me, that is; not by someone repeating something they think they heard in the common room about what someone was told I said somewhere.
Nor is such a view expressed in the statement you cite. On the contrary, that statement explicitly presupposes that natural selection is operative in this case (as in others). The statement raises questions about 'the “channel” within which natural selection proceeds'. That natural selection selection proceeds within such a “channel” is too obvious to have been questioned by anyone. Only the most extreme dogmatists would produce a priori declarations about its role in any particular case, whether it is virus shells, slime molds, bones of the middle ear, infrared vision, or whatever.
As before, in the excerpt you cite I take no particular stand on the matter, for the simple and sufficient reason that virtually nothing significant is known –even about vastly simpler questions, such as the evolutionary origins of the waggle dance of honeybees. The excerpt to which you refer makes some tentative suggestions about what may be useful directions to pursue in seeking to determine how these various factors interact in the case of natural language.
Unfortunately, in the past few years a curious religious cult has emerged, which would have appalled Darwin. Members are enjoined to chant “natural selection” repeatedly from the mutual admiration society, even if there is no substantive content; as an exercise, you might take some of the mantras and ask how they would if the properties of natural language –pick the simplest one you like– were to turn out to be radically different from what is now supposed. And you might also want to have a look at the biological literature on the evolution of the waggle dance, or vervet calls, or songbirds. A requirement for membership in the cult, it seems, is to circulate claims that have been concocted about various symbolic figures cast as “enemies”, which are circulated and repeated, based on little more than gossip in the corridors. It's not an attractive picture, to put it mildly
Noam Chomsky
These are his words. Now, everyone may go on claiming what they think they believe Chomsky said. What I think he claims, though, is that we (ALL!) know yet very little about the evolutionary process that shaped our human language to muse about it inventing just-so-stories, as I am indeed going to attempt. Everybody knows Chomsky tries to describe the English language as it is NOW in his part of the World; he does not claim to be studying language historically (or geographically, for that matter), although there is a vast knowledge about these changes and differences. Why should he be concerned with a process from which we still possess such a lack of evidence? We may just as well suppose that language is an unchanging object and try to describe it.
That’s fair enough for me.
But I am not as serious and as intelligent as Chomsky. And although I believe he is right in limiting his scientific effort, I feel like musing my own just-so story which, to me, at least, makes sense as framed in my overall conception of human communication, which is not necessarily the conception of other people –and I suppose, correct me if I am wrong, though, you to be one of those people.
To begin with, I imagine that communication among apes (and other species) is very similar to our own. By acting in a certain way, individuals are able to point to things or events out there; some are even able to point to basic desires and longings (such as foraging for food, or indulging in mating behavior). This pointing makes those things manifest to others and so some kind of joint action may result.
Some species are able (as well) to learn from experience (in which, some communicated aspects may be included). That is, they seem to have evolved a faculty whereby they, not only perceive that a given F(act) exists, but are able to embed another into it. So, when there is the F that Godzilla has screamed it points to the F that there is danger. We could represent it like this: [F (F)].
My just-so-story imagines that a very small mutation has occurred in human beings, which has allowed us to establish enormous chains of embedded facts, one inside the other. This seems to be a faculty that appears only in our species and, as such, gives us an enormous power to organize aspects of our surrounding environment and our inner states of mind relating them in all sorts of ways. That is, I believe that this small mutation is the origin of what has been known as the human soul, which some of us now names the human mind.
This (seemingly unique human) faculty, then, is what has created our human LANGUAGE (the formal device with which, through mental representations, we are able to organize our surroundings and our relations towards them). I have called it LANGUAGE 1, and it is the translation of the Spanish word LENGUAJE. I have no clue as to what was the step by step process that resulted in that faculty; it may have been as Michael A. K. Halliday imagined, namely, steps covering distinct needs of individuals: (1) the
instrumental step, where language serves to get things done: come! Go!, Watch up, etc., This step is shared with other animal species. (2)The
regulatory step, closely related to the first
one, but where embedding begins to show: [I say, want, desire, etc. (do this)]. (3)
Interactional step, where "I" is extended to other individuals, showing for instance who belongs to our world, or not, etc. (4)
Personal step, where language is used by an individual to express her awareness of herself and, by opposition, of the environment. (5) The
heuristic step, whereby the individual is able to look at language as an appropriate tool to be explored. (6) The
imaginative step in which individuals may create world of their own. And (7), the
representational, in which language is used to make mental representations of anything that happens to them. (I may have given a too sketchy account of Halliday’s seven evolutionary functions. If interested in having a deeper account, you may consult this model in his 1973 beautiful little book,
Explorations in the Functions of Language (Edward Arnold).)
In any case, this hallidayan story, or any other which offers a likely narrative, will serve. In fact, my using of his ideas can be considered problematic in a chomskyan world, since both researchers have an altogether different view of how language works. The important thing to notice here, though, is that the REAL unique characteristic of this human language (L1) is that it offers in the last step an organized set of related mental representations.
In my view, then, the fact that humans communicate with each other by behaving in one way or another (using vocal sounds is a form of behaviour, which is shared by other species) does not present an important problem for our just-so-stories, unless we are all set into believing that this linguistic behaviour becomes coded and is thereafter the crucial aspect of our human communicative behaviour.
What seems to happen, though, is that some of those L1 characteristics become modularized and act as a universal sieve through which subsequent communicative linguistic experiences are percolated thereby creating a universal structure of relationships which I call LENGUA (L2) and some of you, English speaking people, name Faculty of Language (wide or restricted, in recent chomskyan terms). This modularized device, like the rest of centres of immediate reaction (i.e., modules) helps individuals to acquire the linguistic code of their social environment and make it newly formatted module, except in terminology, where different and new words and meanings are always popping out. The final linguistic module is what I call IDIOMA (L3). Of course, like everything I mention here, the processes are a lot more complicated, but this is long enough, I am afraid.
Now, my final point is this: the linguistic code that we modularize is just one of the many tools humans have to make their inner mental states apparent to other individuals. A very handy tool, certainly, but NOT (in my view, that is) the crucial element in achieving communicative effects. The linguistic code is so wide and complicated for two main reasons: (1) because with it we do not only point to things and events out there, but also to inner representations inhabiting our minds, with all their shades and differences; (2) this enormous richness has been achieved by the unique human way to use these codes as tools to point to their intentional messages. We do not use the coding-decoding faculty as the only way to achieve our communicative efforts, but as a helping device in acquiring accuracy. Our communication is crucially inferential: we normally guess what the communicative intentions of others are (Grice called it, “reading the mind” faculty) by using all kinds of cues from the context of communication, one of them is, naturally the linguistic material we are able to express ), and we do it reasonably well. If we need a new meaning, we act in a way to make it clear to others even using the same coded material but giving it a new function. Thus, languages evolve, new meanings are acquired and vast vocabularies are created over time.
To summarize all this:
1º) I don’t think that the origins of the coded L3 are interesting in any way to answer the question of why we humans communicate differently than other species. This endeavour is, in my view, the result of a wrong perspective, namely, the communication as a (complex) coded activity.
2º) What IS interesting is to figure out a nice and coherent just-so-story about the change our species achieved from pointing to things out there and some feelings inside, like other species are able to do, to point mainly to aspects of our mental life. I used Halliday’s story, but any other might do instead. I believe we are a long way off to find a “real” answer to this problem, for mental activity leaves no traces and it is mighty hard to find clear evidence for this.
3º) What IS interesting too is to find how and why humans started to use a physical object (i.e., vocal noise) to represent publicly their mental representations organized in L1. I have suggested elsewhere that this could have been a symbiotic process as described by Lynn Margulis, but this would require another posting, and I am sure you have had more than enough.
(I will understand if, from now on you sort of shun my possible "short and simple explanations"!. Really, I sympathise!)
