Understanding Language Evolution: Beyond <i>Pan</i>‐Centrism

Lameira, Adriano R.; Call, Josep

doi:10.1002/bies.201900102

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 89 publications

(122 reference statements)

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“…Language evolution remains a hotly debated, yet somewhat controversial topic, due to our limited ability to experimentally investigate it and observe it in nature. While some researchers contend that modern-like language emerged in a single leap from a “languageless” state (Berwick, 1998 ; Chomsky, 2002 ; Berwick et al, 2013 ; Nóbrega and Miyagawa, 2015 ; Berwick and Chomsky, 2016 , 2019 ; Chomsky et al, 2019 ; Tattersall, 2019 ; Reboul, 2021 ), others believe language evolution followed a more gradual path (Bickerton, 1990 , 2000 , 2007 ; Arbib, 2005 ; Hurford, 2007 , 2012 ; Krause et al, 2007 ; Knight, 2009 ; Casielles and Progovac, 2012 ; Dediu and Levinson, 2013 , 2014 , 2018 ; McMahon and McMahon, 2013 ; Collier et al, 2014 ; Janković and Šojer, 2014 ; Tallerman, 2014 , 2016 ; Lieberman, 2015 ; Everett, 2016 ; Planer, 2017 ; Gabrić et al, 2018 , 2021 ; Michlich, 2018 ; Gabrić, 2019 , 2021a , b ; Progovac, 2019 ; Barham and Everett, 2020 ; Botha, 2020 ; Lameira and Call, 2020 ; Mounier et al, 2020 ; Neto, 2020 ). Several scholars from the latter school of thought have proposed that there was a two-word stage in the course of language evolution, in which utterances could not combine more than two words (Jackendoff, 1999 ; Gil, 2008 , 2009 ; Hurford, 2012 , p.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differentiation Between Agents and Patients in the Putative Two-Word Stage of Language Evolution

Gabrić

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differentiation Between Agents and Patients in the Putative Two-Word Stage of Language Evolution

Gabrić

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Thus, future research in event cognition should be sure to examine responses to species-specific stimuli. It should also avoid relying too heavily on a pan-centric approach ( 144 ). Comparative work in apes could therefore be complemented with studies that examine links between event processing and simple syntactic communication, such as in birds [e.g., ( 145 )], as well as drawing comparisons between social and asocial species from different taxa.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolutionary origins of syntax: Event cognition in nonhuman primates

2022

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Languages tend to encode events from the perspective of agents, placing them first and in simpler forms than patients. This agent bias is mirrored by cognition: Agents are more quickly recognized than patients and generally attract more attention. This leads to the hypothesis that key aspects of language structure are fundamentally rooted in a cognition that decomposes events into agents, actions, and patients, privileging agents. Although this type of event representation is almost certainly universal across languages, it remains unclear whether the underlying cognition is uniquely human or more widespread in animals. Here, we review a range of evidence from primates and other animals, which suggests that agent-based event decomposition is phylogenetically older than humans. We propose a research program to test this hypothesis in great apes and human infants, with the goal to resolve one of the major questions in the evolution of language, the origins of syntax.

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“…Differences in the number of populations studied and general observation time per species could have influenced the initial amount of locally restricted candidates we compiled. Chimpanzees, for instance, have been systematically studied for a longer time than all the other great ape species (Lameira & Call, 2020). Furthermore, the number of chimpanzee sites under continuous observation surpasses that of any other great ape species (Vaidyanathan, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Method of Local Restriction: in search of potential great ape culture‐dependent forms

Motes-Rodrigo

2021

Biological Reviews

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Humans possess a perhaps unique type of culture among primates called cumulative culture. In this type of culture, behavioural forms cumulate changes over time, which increases their complexity and/or efficiency, eventually making these forms culture‐dependent. As changes cumulate, culture‐dependent forms become causally opaque, preventing the overall behavioural form from being acquired by individuals on their own; in other words, culture‐dependent forms must be copied between individuals and across generations. Despite the importance of cumulative culture for understanding the evolutionary history of our species, how and when cumulative culture evolved is still debated. One of the challenges faced when addressing these questions is how to identify culture‐dependent forms that result from cumulative cultural evolution. Here we propose a novel method to identify the most likely cases of culture‐dependent forms. The ‘Method of Local Restriction’ is based on the premise that as culture‐dependent forms are repeatedly transmitted via copying, these forms will unavoidably cumulate population‐specific changes (due to copying error) and therefore must be expected to become locally restricted over time. When we applied this method to our closest living relatives, the great apes, we found that most known ape behavioural forms are not locally restricted (across domains and species) and thus are unlikely to be acquired via copying. Nevertheless, we found 25 locally restricted forms across species and domains, three of which appear to be locally unique (having been observed in a single population of a single species). Locally unique forms represent the best current candidates for culture‐dependent forms in non‐human great apes. Besides these rare exceptions, our results show that overall, ape cultures do not rely heavily on copying, as most ape behaviours appear across sites and/or species, rendering them unlikely to be culture‐dependent forms resulting from cumulative cultural evolution. Yet, the locally restricted forms (and especially the three locally unique forms) identified by our method should be tested further for their potential reliance on copying social learning mechanisms (and in turn, for their potential culture‐dependence). Future studies could use the Method of Local Restriction to investigate the existence of culture‐dependent forms in other animal species and in the hominin archaeological record to estimate how widespread copying is in the animal kingdom and to postulate a timeline for the emergence of copying in our lineage.

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Understanding Language Evolution: Beyond Pan‐Centrism

Cited by 16 publications

References 89 publications

Differentiation Between Agents and Patients in the Putative Two-Word Stage of Language Evolution

Differentiation Between Agents and Patients in the Putative Two-Word Stage of Language Evolution

The evolutionary origins of syntax: Event cognition in nonhuman primates

The Method of Local Restriction: in search of potential great ape culture‐dependent forms

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