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The grammar of tool use: Converging processes in grammar and compositional tool manufacture
The grammar of tool use: Converging processes in grammar and compositional tool manufacture
This LOS - Language Origin Society session brings together multiple disciplines to discuss the connections between language and tool-use, and address theories about the origins of protolanguage. Initially, the co-evolution and the parallel evolution hypotheses will be introduced from an interdisciplinary perspective. Specifically, the co-evolution hypothesis claims that language and tool-use have a common evolutionary origin that is reflected in the archeological record and on the activation of similar cognitive and neural resources. In contrast, the parallel hypothesis defends the assumption that speaking and using tools draw on different cognitive processes and evolved independently. After some introductory remarks, 4 invited speakers will offer a series of predictions and possible experimental ways to address the two hypotheses. 15-minute presentations will be followed by ample time for discussions.
Hypotheses of language and tool origins
Natalie Uomini & Antonella Tramacere, Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
In this introductory talk, we will briefly describe the rationale for tool use and language comparison both from a neuro-scientific and archaeological perspective. The parallel and the co-evolution hypothesis will be presented as useful framework to provide two working hypotheses, which are respectively: language is a recent and unique human adaptation and language and tool-use evolve together and influence each other. We will also explain the relevance of this debate for the field of cultural evolution.
From action to language: the role of the mirror mechanism in the evolution of human communication
Doriana De Marco, Neuroscience Institute, National Research Council (CNR), Parma, Italy
In every culture, with some minor differences, manual and facial gestures are used concurrently with speech or in place of it, constituting a fundamental feature of human communication. For this reason, they were considered as the precursors of language development at both a phylogenetic and ontogenetic level. The discovery of Mirror Neurons (MNs) has permitted to consider a main role of mirror mechanisms in the transition from action recognition to human language processing. Nevertheless, a recent challenge regards how mirror mechanisms can explain the acquisition and comprehension of abstract concepts, because of their “multi-representation” of meanings that could be differently grounded to specific sensorimotor experiences. Recent theories and experimental evidences about the role of motor context and social interaction in abstract language acquisition will be discussed.
Labeling of symbol combinations underlies hierarchy in language
Tomás Goucha, Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
Language as a system is based on the ability to combine symbols. I propose that the labeling of these combinations is what underlies the linguistic ability to produce structured sequences of symbols. This labeling mechanism provides rules about how to further combine symbols in a structured, hierarchical fashion. I will provide neurobiological grounding to this hypothesis drawing from functional and structural brain data in language processing and artificial grammar learning. Further I will discuss its linguistic nature and possible analogies in other domains of cognition, including action planning.
Re-framing dichotomy: In search of the interconnected complex systems from which the sequencing of meaningful muscular and vocal gestures emerge
Joanna Fairlie, Independent
The enforced choice between two hypotheses concerning the connection between ancient technology and modern language cannot provide answers. We need a model of evolutionary cognitive change to describe how the basic blocks of muscular gesture and enunciated phonemes are generated and sequenced to build meaning. My model of cognitive change and results from my gestural coding research show how changes in tool-making gestures and related cognitive strategies have a networked, systemic rather than a linear cause-and-effect relationship. These demonstrate how the increasing ability to construct complex language constitutes another important part of this evolving system.
Hand laterality, task complexity, technology and language in human evolution
Marina Mosquera, Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain
Last decades have generated excellent studies on the relation between hand laterality, task complexity, technology and language, starting from experimental programs with chimpanzees and humans. I would like to offer a series of ethological and archaeological evidences and scientific considerations about the role of the feedback of these components in human evolution. To do this, I will refer to our own studies with the chimpanzees sheltered at Fundación Mona (Girona, Spain), and the archaeological evidence coming from the Early and Middle Pleistocene sites of Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain), involving the so-called Neanderthal family (450,000-80,000 years ago).
Natalie Uomini is a Researcher of Cognitive Evolution at the Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. Her main research interests include the origins and evolution of language and tool-making ability. She is a Cognitive Scientist with training in linguistics, evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, psychology, and animal behaviour. She seeks to understand how cognition evolves, and tackles this question by integrating approaches from several disciplines like comparative psychology, neuroscience, cross-cultural anthropology, evolutionary biology, and linguistics. Current projects focus on the neuroscience of prehistoric stone tool-making and language; the grammar of tool-making in New Caledonian crows; and the evolution of teaching. Dr. Uomini's research is sponsored by the Max Planck Society and the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
Antonella Tramacere is a researcher at the Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. She was previously affiliated with the Lichtenberg Kolleg, and the German Primate Center in Göttingen (Germany). Her research is highly integrative and interdisciplinary, and develops through close collaboration with the Department of Neuroscience at Parma University in Italy, the Lab of Symbolic Cognitive Development at Riken Brain Institute in Japan, and the Center for Mind, Behavior and Cognitive Evolution of Bochum University in Germany. She analyses comparatively the development of the Mirror Neuron System, to address the role of neural phenomena in the understanding of cultural traits, like imitation, language and self-awareness, and to ultimately build models of bidirectional relationship between culture and biological mechanisms.
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