tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post3069927563209211540..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Berwick Post: Gene JockeysNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-45645251209572415982013-07-16T16:57:39.834-07:002013-07-16T16:57:39.834-07:00The part you quote is from my intro, not Berwick&#...The part you quote is from my intro, not Berwick's post. So let me say that I rely entirely on experts. The main source for my views are Ian Tattersall "Masters of the Planet" c.f. Chapters 13 and 14. Ian Tattersall is no goomba, as you can see if you look at this link: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Tattersall.<br /><br />So at the very least the claim that language is a relatively recent innovation is hardly without scholarly support by mainstream anthropologists. Of course, as I noted, the evidence is indirect and so not dispositive. That said, as these things go it's not bad and I am happy to assume that something like the indicated 80-100,000 year time frame is on the right track. <br /><br />Last point: it's never been clear to me that this matters all that much. If there is a qualitative difference between what humans do linguistically and what everything else does then the change is quite dramatic. If the time span re the emergence is short it only emphasizes that the change was small. However, whether large or small it resulted in a qualitative change and the goal is to find out how this might have happened. So, take whatever starting points you want and give yourself as much time as you want, how does this help? Recursion does not arise by increments and as this is the source of the big bang (at least for people like me) it's not clear what elongating the time line will buy you. That said, my current view is that Tattersall's discussion seems pretty good to me given the standards of the field.lNorberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-3339990613825855462013-07-16T15:22:33.846-07:002013-07-16T15:22:33.846-07:00I'd like to comment on this:
" The main r...I'd like to comment on this:<br />" The main reason for taking this second position is the absence of markers of cultural complexity (no big bang anthro evidence for cultural complexity until roughly 50,000 years ago). This kind of evidence is not dispositive, but it is very suggestive and anthropologists have regularly linked the emergence of cultural complexity to the emergence of language."<br />Dediu and Levinson (the paper mentioned above) claim that this is *not* currently the standard view of anthropologists. And they provide convincing arguments (in my view) against the inference from absence of evidence of cultural complexity before a certain date to absence of fully human language before that date. For instance, there are attested human groups (hunter-gatherers) whose cultural practices can leave no detectable trace. And yet undoubtedly they have the same language capacity as other humans. So it seems to me that this idea that fully human language is not older than (about) 50000 years old has basically very little basis. On top of that, evidence for symbolic activity before 50000 years ago seems to have been found (the paper mentions this). I haven't seen anything convincing that would rule out the possibility that a (non-trivial) precursor of human language existed 1 million years ago. In fact, precisely because of Darwin's problem, it is reasonable to speculate that there was such a precursor. But of course this is just speculation, and I agree that basically not much can be known in this domain at this point (if anything at all).Benjaminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16392683273389659624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-74872091438689407062013-06-20T05:05:59.119-07:002013-06-20T05:05:59.119-07:00Thanks for your note, Christina. I think I was a ...Thanks for your note, Christina. I think I was a bit unclear when I referred to empirically testable assertions. I was referring to the paper that Chris (in the first blog comment) linked to - it claims all sorts of things about Neandertal and Homo ergaster 'language' (namely, that these lineages all had fully modern language, and that Neandertals were the same species as us). So, the idea was to see whether one could find any testable assertions in that paper. It's hard to come up with testable assertions about any of these events in the past about a cognitive ability (language) which doesn't leave any fossil record. As for the 'special sauce', I have written elsewhere that one obvious candidate is whatever it is that gave rise to 'Merge', or, along the lines of what Norbert says, 'label'. (See my chapters, "Syntax Facit Saltum" and "All you need is Merge" in the book edited by Di Sciullo and Cedric.) I haven't the foggiest idea about how to figure out what really happened, though - first we'd need a description of the 'phenotype' for merge or label - something like its neural realization would be good. This seems out of reach at the moment, at least to me.Robert Berwickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01114260546073129733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-68651820058061233202013-06-20T04:58:07.045-07:002013-06-20T04:58:07.045-07:00Good question, Alex. The 88 amino acid differences...Good question, Alex. The 88 amino acid differences noted above are differences that have become _fixed_ in the human population - that is, as far as we know, humans don't differ at all wrt these. Obviously there _are_ differences in genomes from person to person (or else we'd all be genomic clones of one another, like identical twins). If one looks at single DNA nucleotide differences ('single nucleotide polymorphisms', or SNPs), then on average you will find 1 SNP for every 1000 DNA nucleotides. But there are other variations too. In the blog I mentioned one, in Microcephalin, where there seem to be at least two main variants in human populations. So, yes, the number is probably less than 30 million, but not so much less that it changes the back-of-the-envelope calculation all that much. It will be interesting to see what David Reich and the rest of the Neandertal genome people come up with in their high-resolution analysis later this year.Robert Berwickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01114260546073129733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-36666102670829573912013-06-20T04:24:13.776-07:002013-06-20T04:24:13.776-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Robert Berwickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01114260546073129733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-8955815270866604772013-06-20T04:14:42.459-07:002013-06-20T04:14:42.459-07:00Excellent that an expert who knows more than most ...Excellent that an expert who knows more than most people about genetics has joined discussion on Norbert's blog. You pose a challenge:<br /><br />For every such _empirically testable_ assertion that anybody finds, I will pledge $100 to the charity of their choice.<br /><br />I admit this challenge reminds me of a question Cedric Boeckx faced at recent conference in Lisbon [I do this from memory, so please correct me if I am wrong, Cedric]. During Q&A of a talk reporting results from early acquisition studies on 4 [or was it 5?] languages one person asked: Why do you guys [generativists] always just work on a few well known European languages and then make claims about all languages. Cedric agreed that data from more languages would be desirable but, unfortunately, at the moment there are no [no large enough??] data bases for early acquisition in most languages. The questioner was rather unimpressed and asked: So why don't you [Cedric + his students] go out and create data bases for additional languages instead of waiting for others to do it for you? I thought it was a bit unfair to direct that question just at Cedric but, that aside, it seemed like a reasonable request directed at the field. <br /><br />So, in this spirit, instead of paying us to locate _empirically testable_ assertions why don't you tell us what your empirically testable hypothesis is? And while you're at it: instead of letting us decide what that "little bit of ‘special sauce’ that makes for human language and a world of difference between ‘us’ and ‘them'" is - why don't you tell us what you think it is? Empirically testable proposals are especially appreciated.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-46674351433248384502013-06-20T01:08:35.783-07:002013-06-20T01:08:35.783-07:00Hi Bob, fascinating stuff.
A clarification quest...Hi Bob, fascinating stuff. <br /><br />A clarification question: one thing that puzzles me is that the variation between humans is apparently 0.1% to 0.4%. <br />So how can the difference between human and neandertal be <br />0.000293%? Should the 88 be divided by a much smaller number than 30 million, namely the number of amino acids that is fixed in human?<br /><br /><br />Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-58601310053832974632013-06-18T16:52:11.826-07:002013-06-18T16:52:11.826-07:00Btw, thanks a lot for the clarification!
Btw, thanks a lot for the clarification!<br />karthik durvasulahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14541529987768107005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-64355234589831872872013-06-18T16:50:04.266-07:002013-06-18T16:50:04.266-07:00Nice! I guess, I misunderstood the post a bit, the...Nice! I guess, I misunderstood the post a bit, then. <br /><br />I went back and took a look at it, I think this is what led me to infer what I did in the post: "There has been simply too little evolutionary time and too little evolutionary distance between DNA-sans-language and DNA-with-language for the change that brought us language to have been all that great....That’s right in line with any approach that tosses out as much ‘language specific’ machinery as possible, leaving behind just that little bit of ‘special sauce’ that makes for human language and a world of difference between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ "<br /><br />Are we talking about "language-specific machinery" at the genetic level or at the neurobiological and cognitive levels? Isn't it possible that there could be small changes at the DNA level that could still have big consequences at the neurobiological and cognitive levels? I feel that we will be in agreement here too, but I figured it was wise to clarify.karthik durvasulahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14541529987768107005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-19076021771385322042013-06-18T15:37:30.437-07:002013-06-18T15:37:30.437-07:00You're spot on Karthik. I share your view. We...You're spot on Karthik. I share your view. We have _almost no_ idea how anybody's genotype connects to almost any phenotype you'd care to name - let alone a complex cognitive/behavioral phenotype like language. If there was any impression to the contrary, please let me be the first to dispel it. In fact, I was trying to get across an _anti_reductionist point: there is very little genomic difference (much much smaller than 1% BTW -- 100 times smaller), and yet, apparently, a large phenotypic difference, between 'us' and 'them'. What conclusions are to be drawn from this - well, you'll get different answers from different people.Robert Berwickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01114260546073129733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-29563307898880849222013-06-18T14:48:52.518-07:002013-06-18T14:48:52.518-07:00I'm afraid there is a strongly reductionist fe...I'm afraid there is a strongly reductionist feel to the discussion about how the data connects back to linguistic theory. If the argument against neural reductionism is that we know precious little about the neuronal processes and how they result in complex behaviour ("we presently know next to nothing about the physical principles underlying mental phenomena"), then why isn't it also true of inferring too much (or even anything) from the current genetic evidence. [Note: the anti-reductionist stance makes sense to me.]<br /><br />The observed similarity is in 1-2% of the genome. From the little I understand of genetics, there seems to be a tremendous amount we don't know about these "regulatory" gene sequences and even the "junk" DNA. If so, shouldn't we be pretty skeptical of any evidence such data provides for/against linguistic theories?<br /><br />I can't help but feel that there is a "reductionist thought is OK, when it serves our purpose" flair to this that I find very unsettling. Furthermore, it puts linguists in bad light, when our reasoning becomes so opportunistic.<br /><br />Perhaps, there are genuine differences between the two cases. It would be nice to know why arguing based on known information in a realm is not OK (to the point of stupidity) in one case, but OK in another.karthik durvasulahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14541529987768107005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-73696345356766449162013-06-18T12:31:42.999-07:002013-06-18T12:31:42.999-07:00Yes, indeed. But in my view, it's not really ...Yes, indeed. But in my view, it's not really 'heresy' As far as I can make out, it's simply a collection of untestable assertions, which is to say, a story. See if you can find _one_, as in _one_, assertion in the article pointed to by Chris that is empirically testable. (It claims, e.g., that we ought to be able to find remnants of Neandertal language in modern human languages, just like we can find Neandertal genes in the modern human genome; it claims that Neandertals had full human language -- actually, even further back, that 1 million years ago, the ancestor of both modern humans and Neandertals, Homo ergaster, had fully modern language, and that Neandertal language was most probably tonal.) For every such _empirically testable_ assertion that anybody finds, I will pledge $100 to the charity of their choice. (Duplicates don't count; your offer may vary; members of the National Academy of Science are prohibited from entry.)Robert Berwickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01114260546073129733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-64566622810899481802013-06-18T10:27:53.357-07:002013-06-18T10:27:53.357-07:00Conveniently timed to counter this bit of heresy.....Conveniently timed to counter <a href="http://www.frontiersin.org/Language_Sciences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00397/abstract" rel="nofollow">this bit of heresy</a>...Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02873949286995651782noreply@blogger.com