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Recent research suggests the evolution of language may be influenced more by culture than by "programming."

Copied from Youtube description: "How did humans acquire language? In this lecture, best-selling author Steven Pinker introduces you to linguistics, the evolution of spoken language, and the debate over the existence of an innate universal grammar. He also explores why language is such a fundamental part of social relationships, human biology, and human evolution. Finally, Pinker touches on the wide variety of applications for linguistics, from improving how we teach reading and writing to how we interpret law, politics, and literature."

by George Grace--a commentary on the "social grooming" theory of language evolution

Psychologists who analyzed video footage of a female chimpanzee, a female bonobo and a female human infant in a study to compare different types of gestures at comparable stages of communicative development found remarkable similarities among the three species. Gestures made by all three species included reaching, pointing with fingers or the head, and raising the arms to ask to be picked up. The researchers called "striking" the finding that the gestures of all three species were "predominantly communicative," Greenfield said. To be classified as communicative, a gesture had to include eye contact with the conversational partner, be accompanied by vocalization (non-speech sounds) or include a visible behavioral effort to elicit a response. The same standard was used for all three species. For all three, gestures were usually accompanied by one or more behavioral signs of an intention to communicate. At the beginning stage of communication development, gesture was the primary mode of communication for human infant, baby chimpanzee and baby bonobo. The child progressed much more rapidly in the development of symbols. Words began to dominate her communication in the second half of the study, while the two apes continued to rely predominantly on gesture. "This was the first indication of a distinctive human pathway to language," Greenfield said. All three species increased their use of symbols, as opposed to gestures, as they grew older, but this change was far more pronounced for the human child. The child's transition from gesture to symbol could be a developmental model of the evolutionary pathway to human language and thus evidence for the "gestural origins of human language," Greenfield said. While gesture may be the first step in language evolution, the psychologists also found evidence that the evolutionary pathway from gesture to human language included the "co-evolution of gestural and vocal communication." Most of the child's gestures were accompanied b

"The results are bad news for universalists: "most observed functional dependencies between traits are lineage-specific rather than universal tendencies," according to the authors. [...] If universal features can't account for what we observe, what can? Common descent. "Cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states." It's important to emphasize that this study looked at a specific language feature (word order)."

This evolution of the Spanish-English hybrid known as "Spanglish" really hit home. Especially considering how migrant workers adapted to language differences here in the early 20th century in the form of Pidgin, similar events took place in the states bordering Mexico.

In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn't sit still. It can't. Language change has preceded apace even in places known for preserving a language in amber. You may have heard that Icelanders can still read the ancient sagas written almost a thousand years ago in Old Norse.

This article examines the evolution of the work like, and how new usages of the word are still arising.

This is an excerpt of an article that details the evolution of the earliest writing systems. The most traceable writing system to date is the Mesopotamian cuneiform script, which follows a trackable evolutionary pattern through history. The script evolved from tokens to 2D impressions, to logographs, and then finally into something similar in concept to the modern alphabet. The Mesopotamian cuneiform script would later become the foundation of many other written languages, including the current English alphabet.

super interesting! read, read, read !

In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn't sit still. It can't. Language change has preceded apace even in places known for preserving a language in amber. You may have heard that Icelanders can still read the ancient sagas written almost a thousand years ago in Old Norse.

Decoding pictures as part of communication has been at the root of written language since there was such a thing as written language. "What is virtually certain," writes Andrew Robinson in Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction, is "that the first written symbols began life as pictures." Pictograms-i.e., pictures of actual things, like a drawing of the sun-were the very first elements of written communication, found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. From pictograms, which are literal representations, we moved to logograms, which are symbols that stand in for a word ($, for example) and ideograms, which are pictures or symbols that represent an idea or abstract concept. Emoji can somewhat magically function as pictograms and ideograms at the same time.

emojis were born from a man named Shigetaka Kurita back in the late 1990s. They came up with emojis as a way to appeal to teens. Emoji which is a japanese neologism means "picture word". A bunch of different emojis can actually be traced back to some Japanese custom or tradition.

"Did Neanderthals sing? Is there a 'music gene'? Two scientists debate whether our capacity to make and enjoy songs comes from biological evolution or from the advent of civilization. Music is everywhere, but it remains an evolutionary enigma."

This cool British Library link, enhanced with images, brief historical synopses, and transcripts, comes courtesy of Michelle Skinner: you can explore the evolution of the English Language by literary events, key works, and letters/newspapers/chronicles.

"Brain scans of modern stone-tool makers show that key areas in the brain's right hemisphere become more active when they switch from making stone flakes to more advanced tools. Intriguingly, some of these brain regions are involved in language processing... 'Our study reinforces the idea that toolmaking and language evolved together as both required more complex thought.'"

"A new study of word frequencies in political blogs finds that equations describing earthquake evolution fit the eruption of topics onto political blogs."

Thanks, Ryan! We're going to read this for homework, since it relates to what we've been doing with computational tools and language.

"In one 40-second clip, you can hear how "gaga" turned into "water" over the course of six months. In a video clip, below, you can hear and watch the evolution of "ball." .... Unreal 3-D visualizations allowed his team to zoom through the house like a dollhouse and map the utterance of each word in its context. In a landscape-like image with peaks and valleys, you can see that the word "water" was uttered most often in the kitchen, while "bye" took place at the door."

shows how human migration patterns established by dna tests mirror the language-reconstruction efforts of linguists

"...when the exact same material is presented in both media, there is no measurable difference in student performance. ... However, there are some subtle distinctions that favor print, which may matter in the long run. ... First, more repetition was required with computer reading to impart the same information. "Second, the book readers seemed to digest the material more fully. ... seemingly irrelevant factors like remembering whether you read something at the top or the bottom of page - or whether it was on the right or left hand side of a two-page spread or near a graphic - can help cement material in mind. ... spatial context may be particularly important because evolution may have shaped the mind to easily recall location cues so we can find our way around ... E-books, however, provide fewer spatial landmarks than print."