The aim of this course is to trace possible connections among structured communication phenomena in various domains, from intra- and inter-cellular signaling, via animal behavior, to human language. Parallels of all kinds are sought, e.g., functional (as in the analogy between the modular nature of messenger molecules in cells on the one hand, and grammar structures on the other hand), and evolutionary (as in the comparison between hierarchical and modular motor programs on the one hand, and morphology/syntax on the other hand, considered in the light of the hypothesis that the latter developed from the former.
It would appear that a general framework for studying communication is to be found in semiotics, the discipline dealing with signs and signification. Semiotics, whose roots in the US can be traced to the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, addresses the structure of messages under the rubric of articulation (a message is considered articulated if it can be broken down into constituents which are themselves significant). Critics point out, however, that semiotics is "'imperialistic', since some semioticians appear to regard it as concerned with, and applicable to, anything and everything, trespassing on almost every academic discipline"; at the same time, "semiotics does not ... lend itself to quantification ... The empirical testing of semiotic claims requires other methods."
Some disciplines - notably, contemporary molecular biology of the cell - seem all too willing to adopt the language of communication without being prodded by semioticians. A recent article in Scientific American, Cell Communication: the Inside Story, provides plenty of examples, beginning with its title. One must admit that the parallels between the mechanisms it describes and the machinery of language are striking.
"From an evolutionary perspective, the advent of a modular signaling system would be very useful to cells. By mixing and matching existing modules, a cell can generate many molecules and combinations of molecules and can build an array of interconnected pathways without having to invent a huge repertoire of building blocks. ... When a new module does arise, its combination with existing modules can increase versatility tremendously."The parallel to the combinatorial structure of language is obvious.
"... the `old synthesis' failed to integrate the communicative or semiotic behaviour of animals into its explanatory schemes. The reification of communication to `nothing but' transmission of signals (e.g., genes) favoured quantitative genetics but at the cost of a grave underestimation of the interpretative or semiotic competence of living systems."The extent to which such observations are influencing current research in animal communication or, for that matter, in the mainstream evolutionary theory, will be discussed later in this course.
The parallels between structured communication phenomena on the cellular level and in human societies, intriguing as they are, cannot explain the emergence of human languages (except on the most general level, in terms of structural self-organization). If we are to follow Prigogine's admonition ("We must understand our world in such a way that it shall not be absurd to claim that this world has itself produced us") and seek continuity between the understanding of the world and the study of language, we should really be looking closer to home. Robin Allott's ideas on the motor origin of language is just the example we need. In the particular paper to be discussed in class, Allott proposes that
"The dogma that there is no primitive language rests on the assumption that syntactic simplicity is the proper criterion of primitiveness. The essence of language development is lexical development (in size, in range of reference, in discrimination and in interconnectedness) linked to the possession of the concepts to which the words in the lexicon refer."The stress on the importance of concepts is both interesting and relevant to language (viz. cognitive linguistics). It is, however, of secondary importance in Allott's paper, which concentrates on putative prerequisites for language that are found in animals (birds, arguably, have it all; look forward to hear about avian communication in some of the lectures in the first half of the semester). Of these, the capacity for fine-grained motor control is deemed to be central:
"...action and language are homologous; a formal theory of language and a formal theory of movement control would be qualitatively indistinguishable; human language is primarily a series of actions; language and motor action are intimately connected, ontogenetically, perhaps phylogenetically, and in the continuous daily use of language by adults...It seems to me that a productive dialog between students of biological motor control and linguists is possible, despite (or, perhaps, due to) the asymmetry in the kinds of knowledge available to date in each of these two fields: in motor control, much is known about the biological substrate and little about the formal structure, if any, that fits the observed behavior, while in linguistics the formalization of behavior has been proceeding at a dizzying pace, but relatively little is known about the brain mechanisms that support it.Movements are controlled by programs, the essential features of which are that they are generalised, containing an abstract code for the order of events, for phasing (or temporal structure) of the events and for the relative force with which the motor events are to be produced. The same motor program can produce movements in entirely different limbs. At the heart of the schema theory of motor control (of which this is a statement) is the idea of the generalised motor program, as part of the hierarchical nature of motor control..."
The last paper to be discussed this week, by James Hurford, argues against the version of the continuity hypothesis according to which the structural complexity found in human languages has its origins in animal communication systems. Note that this specific claim (which Hurford does not back up with evidence or arguments in the present paper) does not deny all continuity: it is still possible that the characteristics of the representational system (many of which we share with animals) influenced the development of human language. Hurford, however, argues against this possibility too, suggesting instead that language was shaped by the constraints stemming from the need to express thoughts rather than merely representing them.
"The phonological component of a language comprises a very significant proportion of its structure. Phonological structure is (part of) the mapping between internal representations of meanings and their external expressive forms. A purely representational system has no mapping to external expressive form. Obviously, then, all of phonological structure belongs in the aspect of linguistic structure dealing with the (public) expression of thought."
sevildirememek `not to be able to cause to be loved'
sev il dir e me mek
`love' Passive Causative Ability Negative Infinitive
"To argue that [pre-existing hierarchically organized conceptual structure gave rise to hierarchical syntactic structure], one would have first to establish the logical independence of the two alleged sorts of hierarchical structure (semantic and syntactic) and then point to the parallelism between them."Another claim is that universal syntactic phenomena such as movement and binding are arbitrary constructs and have no counterparts outside of syntax; I believe, in contrast, that analogous structures can be found in vision.
