CARTA: The Extraordinary Nature of Human Language

Human language is a strong contender for the title of most often named species-specific feature in the literature. But why is that? In this talk, Eva Wittenberg explores what we could mean by "human language", and how different conceptions of language inevitably lead to different answers about whether it is species-specific. While syntax is a central feature, it is only one of several, and the uniqueness of human language is that it arose from a combination of, perhaps, ordinary ingredients. [1/2024] [Show ID: 39277]
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[@uctv]

Check out "The Miraculous Healing Power of Food with Anthony Lim" here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKbXpGmQepqqpc0

[@larryparis925]

Why use the term "miraculous"? If it's a miracle, by implication it's beyond a natural phenomenon and therefore science cannot research it. Please, stick to science, not supenaturalism.

[@Nmethyltransferase]

1:35 Lecture starts.

[@savorymarshmallows]

I feel like the interpolation here is a key step and a very large key step. I'm not sure defining what is and isn't a language is especially useful, but the ability to understand figurative communication seems like a key boundary, and it would be interesting to encounter species who were close to it, though I'm not convinced we currently have any.

[@tom-kz9pb]

It is astonishing how human beings acquire thousands of words in their vocabulary, but when you look back, you often have no idea when or how you acquired a particular word. There are many words that you may have looked up in a dictionary, but others that you simply picked up by contextual inference, or seeming almost to pick up by "magic". It is easy to understand how a child might pick up a straightforward word like "ball" or "spoon", by a parent simply pointing to it, but we also seem with surprising ease and little instruction to pick up more abstract words like "category" or "inference". I have wondered sometimes if a kind of "genetic memory" might be involved with language acquistion, where we are not simply learning words, but having a buried memory refreshed, and learning them again. Similar to birds instinctively exhibiting characteristic song patterns, or the "communication dances" of bees. There could be some interesting experiments to test the hypothesis. For example, do Chinese infants show any predisposition to preferentially learn Chinese language, and Russian infants show a predisposition to preferentially learn Russian language?

[@Jan96106]

I remember where I picked up many/most of the English words I know. I thought everyone remembered that. What I found interesting when I studied German as a second language was how well so many words remained in my brain after 30 years even though I never got a chance to use my German. It still amazes me.

[@drashokkumar9209]

8.30 Syntactic recursion is uniquely human . Recursion comes only AFTER basic sentence formation - using minimum of a noun and a verb . Has any other animal developed the ability to produce this basic sentence ? Even this 2 word sentence is uniquely human .

[@anialiandr]

Displacement /: me to my fog: where is grandma? Dog looks around , checks and barks at me , indicating grandma is not at home. Grandma was in his knowledge vocabulary , not needed to be there for him to understand my question.

[@juanrodriguezsalazar]

Hi Eva. Happy new year! In my opinion, human language is a software located on atoms' air because is common to all person. Obviously, it has many outputs programming languages. Bye-bye.

[@myparceltape1169]

Programming languages are hardware dependent excepting the few limited types which are firmware dependent. In the absence of I/O there could be a Program running or a Language being processed and tools are necessary to intervene to tell us. In the same way, human Language is hardware dependent, some of that hardware being formed in the first few years of exposure to said Language, rather like EPROMs being burnt in.

[@user-zc9ce6dd2v]

This is fascinating! We know we are different from animals. That is obvious. But we struggle to define it. Every time someone says we are different because…. Someone else finds a counter point in animals. Yet, we ARE different. This discussion keeps going, but somebody is going to figure it out. These people seem to be on track. Very interesting…. I’m struggling with that pattern….hmmmm

[@hunterG60k]

Remember that we ARE animals, and every animal is different from every other animal.

[@danpress7745]

Your opinion word is belief. Where does science include belief?

[@larryparis925]

Learn science. And when you need medical care, you will be better off than relying on "faith", which is another word for "opinion".

[@beaulah_califa9867]

I can't take anyone seriously who believes that humans had no language prior to 200K years ago. Homo Sapiens split from Homo Neandertals 700K yrs ago & Neandertals died out 30K yrs ago. Denisovans (like an Asian Neandertal population) were also around, older than Homo Sapiens and closer genetically to Neandertals. We must have had language/s. Homo Naledi must of had language and their dates are 250k to 335K yrs ago b/c they CLEARLY HAD CULTURE (fire, art, burial practices, and belief in afterlife). You don't put a carved stone in a dead child's hand for no reason.

[@andrewalcock461]

I agree that hominids almost certainly had increasing levels of language culminating with our current abilities. I think that Wittenberg would agree too, and in this presentation is laying out how those levels probably evolved, based on a theoretical framework of incremental improvements, part of which are recapitulated in childhood language acquisition. Those steps are in the ladder she uses as a metaphor in the later slides

[@emiliog.4432]

Proof. What can you prove? Science. Unfortunately there’s no evidence. No preserved bodies from that time. We can only guess.

[@Matlacha_Painter]

The ability of “language “ is not Boolean; it’s not a yes or no question.

[@andrewalcock461]

@@Matlacha_Painter Of course - that's the very first statement I made above: "hominids almost certainly had increasing levels of language culminating with our current abilities"

[@Divig]

It is the common and accepted thought right now since we know that our species has language but we can not know if other human species did. I would assume that most human language scientists believe that other human species had some sort of language, but since there are no evidence (yet) the origin of language is set to the same time as the origin of our species. Science is not built on assumptions and guesses.

[@ronhuff9219]

I think you've utterly underestimated other life forms'ability to communicate.

[@mikiohirata9627]

Here we go ! Animalogic psyco ! We are talking the Language not merely primordial and basic communications !

[@larryparis925]

Respectfully, it seems like you have missed the point. Each species, by definition, has something unique about it, whether large or small. Language in Homo sapiens, and likely H. neanderthalensis and probably other Homo species, has traits that are unique to that phylogeny. This does not discount the communicative traits of non-Homo species, whether reptiles, birds, or other mammals.

[@ExiledGypsy]

What I don't understand is why there needs to be a comparative analysis with other animals when we have no need for it and infact it leads into a lot of problems such as what do we mean by language. Other forms of lives could do everything we associate with our idea of language involving specific mechanic and medium is a number of different ways and there is absolutely no way that we could possibly know about other animals. For all we know ants could be thinking about their pensions or childhood tramas in the context of the biology and environment. Furthermore the trend of evidence being discovered is certainly not in the opposite direction. So, why insist on making assumption? All that we need to is limit the boundaries to human language and call it linguistic. What might be called the language of other forms of life is not part of linguistic research. This idea of comparison probably came about because of different beliefs at a different time. A lot of it has already been proven wrong anyway. Now it is more like an indication of hubris and exceptionalism of homosapians that is contradictory to the scientific method. Here we have physists trying to figure out as to why we happen to be in such homogeneous cosmos but with strangely fine tuned values and when it comes to linguistic we are still thinking like Jesuit preists.

[@johnmanno2052]

Tsk. Someone doesn't like Chomsky. I'm not buying it. Animals don't do poetry. Animals don't do fiction. Animals don't do metaphor. And animals don't do theater. Humans have done all that since there were humans. Even cave paintings have some kind of grammar that we can kinda sorta understand. The gulf between humans and animals (in terms of language) is titanic, even with this person's interpretations. Sorry. Just don't agree.

[@larryparis925]

You wrote, amongst other things: "Animals don't do poetry." Humans ARE animals. How can you not understand that?

[@johnmanno2052]

@@larryparis925 Humans are animals, yes. But humans are decidedly unique ones, in that we do lots and lots of things they don't seem capable of doing. And yes, I know what you'll probably say, something like "well they can do things we can't do" and sure, they can fly and swim and turn into cysts or something, but all the things that are necessary for, and are an integral part of, the socio/economic/cultural side of being human, which is the bulk of being human, they simply cannot do. They can't make a sentence, despite whatever calls and whistles and whatever they do, they can't be sarcastic or flip, like I've been in this post. There's a definite line between "not human" and "human" in spite of our animal nature. We can argue about the details, we can argue about just where and how exactly that line got drawn and whether or not it's some kind of "spectrum". But it definitely exists

[@larryparis925]

@@johnmanno2052 I agree with your main point. But again, each species is unique genetically and behaviorally. We, as human animals, have our own unique traits. We are upright bipedalists, with opposable thumbs, an expanded brain given the cranial to body mass ratio, cooperation, and we have language and cumulative culture. We are unique in these important aspects. You wrote: "The gulf between humans and animals (in terms of language) is titanic". Yes, I agree, but where I disagree is that your sentences separate us from animals. My point is we ARE animals. Otherwise, it seems we agree.