Human language still has no clear definition. No one knows exactly when and how he appeared. There is an assumption that our ancestors began to speak when the hands - the main communication tool in the primate world - were busy.
The author of this hypothesis, Svetlana Burlak, a specialist in comparative historical linguistics, candidate of philological sciences, senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University, spoke about the amazing discoveries of linguistics.
You say that linguists have no generally accepted definition of language. Does this interfere with research?
- No, it does not interfere, because all normal adults are able to speak at least one language - the one that they learned in childhood. And you can quite calmly study its structure, for example, word order, a set of phonemes, in order to find out, for example, which cases will be used in the Vepsian language (or in Russian, or in Japanese) to express the meanings “he worked with an ax” and “he worked as a shepherd”, There is absolutely no need to think about the line between language and non-language. And in order to find out what options are possible in different languages in this case, how they are determined, where they came from, the line between language and non-language is insignificant, because all human languages are precisely languages. By any definition.
But are there criteria that determine the properties of human language?
- There are Charles Hockett's criteria that appeared back in the 1960s. But since then, biologists have begun to study the communication systems of animals and have discovered quite a lot. And it turned out that each property is individually owned by someone. And very many, almost all, are found in intermediary languages that great apes or parrots can learn.
Take, for example, a property called semantics (this means that at least some elements of the communicative system correspond to some elements of the surrounding reality). Vervet monkeys have a cry of alarm for a leopard and there is a cry of alarm for an eagle. Moreover, these are not sounds that reflect the emotional state of the animal. For emotional signals, it matters whether they sound louder or quieter, longer or shorter.
The researchers varied these parameters specifically in tape recordings and made sure that they did not change the meaning of the signal. There is a certain acoustic image: if there are only acoustic parameters, then this is a signal for the eagle, and one must run into the bushes. If others - then this is a signal for the leopard, and you need to save yourself on thin branches. and louder, quieter, longer, shorter - it didn't matter for vervettes.
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Another property is mobility, that is, the ability to communicate not only about what is happening here and now. If the vervet hears the scream "eagle", then it is able to scream "eagle", running into the bushes, even if it does not see this eagle. She heard the "eagle" - and this is enough to reproduce this cry and be saved. If she herself does not see the eagle at the same time, then displacement is already obtained - by definition. In the experiments that Zhanna Ilyinichna Reznikova conducts with ants, scouts remotely direct their foragers so that they go where they need to. When the scout ant returns to the nest and "explains" where to go for the bait, for him it is certainly not here and not now.
Further. Hockett talks about the openness of human language: we can add new signals to our communication system. For example, a computer appeared - they added a word. And then they added the word "geek". But look: Chimpanzee Mike comes to Jane Goodall, snatches the kerosene cans from her and makes a loud bum. And the rest of the male chimpanzees understand (although not the first time) that he had to tell them that he was in charge here.
So, if kerosene cans can be added to the communication system, then openness is already obtained, since a new signal is introduced into the system and it is understood by relatives. When studying different groups of chimpanzees, it turned out that they have different signals. For example, in some group it is customary to gnaw the leaves with a loud sound, and this is an invitation to courtship, and in another group the same action means an invitation to play. But since there are different signals, it means that they did not appear innately, but the members of this group once learned them. This means that new characters can be added to the chimpanzee's communication system. Although in practice it is rarely possible for new signals to become a tradition, it turns out that there is already a fundamental openness. Cultural continuity, of course, also exists, since such traditions are preserved and transmitted.
Another property highlighted by Hockett is discreteness: there are no smooth transitions between the signs of the human language, there is always a clear difference - either this is one sign or another. For example, the words “bar” and “steam” are distinguished by the voiced-deafness of the first sound (physically, this is the difference in the relative time of the beginning of the sound of the voice and the beginning of the noise caused by the opening of the lips). If you smoothly change this parameter, until a certain moment people will consider that they have heard "b", and after it - immediately "p", as if the switch is flipping in their head.
So, approximately the same experiments were carried out on tupai. The unfortunate animals were taught that some of their species signals are accompanied by a weak electric shock. If the tupaya hears this signal, then she tries to run away. Then the acoustic characteristics of this signal were smoothly changed until it turned into another signal. It turned out that the same "switch" is triggered for a tupaya: until a certain moment she thinks that this is a dangerous signal and that she must run away, and after that she immediately stops counting that way.
The next property is evasiveness: language allows you to make false or meaningless statements. Well, about apes (anthropoid) it is known that on occasion they can lie.
Further reflexivity - in human language, you can talk about the language itself. But who needs it in nature? So far, no such have been found. But in an experiment it happens. For example, when the gorilla coco first says that she is a bird, and then admits that she was joking. So this idea is quite accessible to human-shaped monkeys, it is just that there is nowhere to apply it in nature.
In the 2000s, Steven Pinker and Ray Jakendoff put forward other criteria for language. It must be said that these properties are characteristic of the human language as a huge, hyperdeveloped communicative system. For example, the organization of the sound side of a language in the form of a system of phonemes: in any language there is a limited set of sounds used to distinguish words, and these sounds are opposed to each other according to signs that pass through almost the entire system - as in Russian hardness / softness or voiced / deafness … Such a device is very convenient when there are a lot of these small elements, but when there are few elements, you can do without it - just memorize all possible signals separately.
Or, for example, the word order: words in any language follow each other according to a certain principle, and their order tells us a little what to expect next. great apes, as it turned out, can master this. So, the bonobo kanzi distinguished the commands: "put the pine branch on the ball" and "put the ball on the pine branch", "let the snake bite the dog" and "let the dog bite the snake." it turns out that great apes have opportunities for this, but in nature there is no demand for this, because in nature they do not build long chains of signs …
… - And what do we mean when we talk about the origin of the human language?
- And each researcher understands this in his own way. Someone says that the main thing is to learn how to use symbols, so that there is an arbitrary (that is, not natural) connection between form and meaning. Someone says that the main thing is to break away from the here and now. Someone says that you need to develop a complex syntax. Someone says that you need to learn how to intentionally transmit information. Naturally, these different approaches give different answers.
It was interesting for me not to find the notorious line, but to try to understand what actually happened there …
What is your hypothesis?
- I get this picture. If we look at Australopithecus, then their brains are, in general, monkeys - both in volume and in structure, as far as can be judged by the endocrane (casting from the inner surface of the skull. - DM). And their hands are also pretty much ape. Although they apparently used tools sometimes, they did not make them regularly - at least not with stone tools. Accordingly, they could well use the same communication system as that of chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees have a highly developed system of non-verbal communication. Including there are quite a few sounds. Moreover, these sounds are rather an emotional addition, and gestures are mainly controlled by will. Monkeys widely use their hands, and when they take out a banana, they understand where and why they are reaching out. And this understanding creates the basis for gestural communication.
Nobody bothered to do the same for Australopithecus. In addition, the hyoid bone of Australopithecus was found, and it shows that they had throat sacs, like modern chimpanzees. And about the throat sacs recently found out that they neutralize the effects of articulation. For chimpanzees, this is very helpful because they can chew and vocalize at the same time, and the signal should not depend on how their tongue turns. if the australopithecines had throat sacs, then it was also convenient for them.
And then the making of the tools begins. A skilled person (Homo habilis) has already formed a labor hand, which is convenient for making tools. This means that from the Australopithecines, those who had the tools for making tools (more precisely, those who managed to put all these devices together) "emerged into people". And they begin to do it regularly: they make it, use it, carry it with them - their hands, accordingly, are busy. And with gestural communication difficulties had to begin.
In this situation, those who could guess what the speaker wanted to say by the sound of general excitement should have gained the advantage. Even if he just vyaknets incoherently, but the rest will guess, this will be enough for the information to be transmitted.
Then Homo erectus appears, which have even more tools, they can be made even longer and can be used in even more diverse situations. hands are busy - you can only focus on sound.
Then the Heidelberg man (Homo heidelbergensis) appears, who already had a fairly developed complex of adaptations to sounding speech. He has no throat sacs, as the structure of the hyoid bone shows. this means that for him articulation was relevant. He has a fairly wide spinal canal - wider than an erectus. this means that many neurons went from the brain to the respiratory organs (to the diaphragm first of all) - many "wires" for control. And the diaphragm plays a very important role in the speech process. when we speak, we need, first, to supply air to the vocal cords in portions, by syllables, otherwise it will not be speech, but an inarticulate cry.
The wide channel makes it possible to pronounce long statements of several syllables. But even within the framework of one syllable, our organs of articulation are sometimes more closed, sometimes less. And the sound energy passes sometimes more, sometimes less, because it is extinguished by the lips and tongue. Accordingly, our diaphragm supplies air to the ligaments so that no matter how much energy is extinguished, about the same will come out. Otherwise it will be what psychologists call a mask: if one stimulus is quickly followed by another and one of them is significantly stronger, then the weaker stimulus is not perceived by the person at all. So if the diaphragm did not make the so-called paradoxical movements, we would not be able to pronounce syllables like “that”, since “o” would jam the “t”.
Another indicator is the reconstruction of the hearing curve. For the Heidelberg man, this turned out to be possible, because the auditory ossicles were preserved from several specimens. in modern humans, unlike chimpanzees, there are two peaks of better audibility: one at low frequencies (approximately in the same place as chimpanzees), and the other at higher frequencies, just where differences in sound characteristics are provided by articulation. So, in the Heidelberg man, judging by the reconstruction, this second peak is already outlined - in some it is more pronounced, in others it is less … This means that for some reason they needed to hear the differences that articulation gives. Did they have a "real language" - who knows? Even if they had the opportunity to use something, this does not mean that they actually used it.
Among other things, the ability to draw conclusions from several premises at the same time is very important for a language, to focus attention on the main thing, distracting from the insignificant (including purely sound differences), to keep enough units in RAM to be able to generalize syntactic rules, defined on long sentences. All this is provided by the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex, which were smaller in Heidelberg than in Homo sapiens.
HAVE THE NEANDERTHALS SPEAKED? WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THEM?
- Neanderthals have a wide spinal canal. The hyoid bone shows the absence of throat sacs (which is not surprising, since they, like us, descendants of Homo heidelbergensis, only Sapiens are descended from African Heidelbergerians, and Neanderthals from European ones). It is unlikely that they could do less than the Heidelberg man. And their brains, again, are big (bigger than ours) … In general, Leonid Borisovich Vishnyatsky writes about the Neanderthals best of all, in his recent book.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO JUDGE ABOUT THE PRESENCE OF A LANGUAGE BY CULTURAL SIGNS?
- Yes, they often talk about this, they say, if people hung all kinds of shells-trinkets on themselves, it means that they had a language. But let's take a closer look: if we see a person hung with ornaments, what does this tell us? Maybe about his wealth, maybe about stylistic preferences, the presence or absence of taste, a sense of beauty, etc., maybe about some psychological personality traits … But we can rarely express this in words, we rather feel what something emotions in relation to such a person. And the person himself, who has put on earrings, beads or something like that, can hardly clearly explain what he wanted to say.
This means that this refers not to the area of language, but to the area of non-verbal communication - just like his gait, posture, facial expressions, intonation … Accordingly, if it is shown that some people - it does not matter whether Sapiens or Neanderthals - adorned themselves beads or painted with ocher, this will only indicate that they have achieved great success in non-verbal communication. And about the language, alas, this does not say anything.
IF YOU RETURN TO SAPIENCES, IS THERE ANY ASSUMPTIONS WHEN A LARGE LARYNX APPEARED FOR MEMBERSHIP SPEECH?
- It is unknown - soft tissues are not preserved. The height of the larynx is judged by the basic cranial angle - the bend of the base of the skull (who has a more curved base of the skull, the more the larynx is lowered). But the drooping larynx is not good in itself, but for the sake of the ratio of the length of the oral cavity to the length of the pharynx. If it is the same, then you can pronounce the "extreme" vowels, that is, distinguish between "a", "and" and "y". The Neanderthal did not have such an opportunity: his jaws indicate such a length of the oral cavity that the larynx would have to be placed somewhere in the chest for balance. But, on the other hand, why is it necessary to be able to say "and"? It is quite possible to take a couple of vowels (for example, pronounce one with a completely open mouth, the other with not quite open, or distinguish them by length or intonation), add many, many consonants - and you get an inventory,fit for any number of words. The Abkhaz-Adyghe languages live with a minimum of vowels!
HOW LIKE IT IS THAT THE LANGUAGE STARTED WITH COMMENTS?
“I don’t know, because this is just my guess. It just seems to me that the language is optimized to the greatest extent precisely for the task of drawing the attention of another to some detail. When we shout: "Behind!" or: "Caution!", we say to the barmaid: "Coffee, please!" or teaching someone, for example, to tie their shoelaces, we don't need a complicated syntax. But individual details are important: "behind", not "side", "coffee", not "juice", "hold here" so that the lace does not come loose. So if the ancient hominids accompanied their actions or observations with something noticeable (best of all - sound, so that the department does not get distracted), then their relatives could take this into account (and change, if necessary, the line of behavior).
For evolutionary hypotheses, this is always considered a difficult moment: if there is something that works well, being strongly developed, then how could it appear, how could it be useful while it was poorly developed? But my hypothesis in this regard is lucky: if our ancestors were smart and loved to interpret whatever they got (and this feature is developed in primates, and in modern humans to the greatest extent), then any increase in visibility, even the most minimal and not necessarily intentional, is sufficient. By the way, our language is still largely a guessing game: the speaker says he can say, and the listener understands that he can understand. Sometimes he understands even better than it was said, and corrects the speaker, and sometimes worse, and the speaker then complains of his lack of understanding.
The tendency to comment is very developed in young children: they comment on their actions and the actions of their toys, and even just walking down the street, they will certainly point a finger at the car and say: "Bibika!" (or something similar). In adults, such commenting goes into inner speech. I suppose it could have been the same with human language in general.
DIFFERENT GROUPS OF SAPIENS SUMMARKLY STARTED SPEAKING IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES OR ONE?
- Who can say that? Geneticists say that our species in its development went through a bottleneck - a decrease in the number of almost ten thousand people. Naturally, they lived in a not very large area. Is it possible to live like this without having a single language? It probably depends on whether there were a lot of resources in that territory. Historians' studies show that when there are a lot of resources, tribes tend to defend their territories, not let strangers and even brides from their own tribe, so as not to scatter wealth, but in a poor environment, on the contrary, intercommunal ties develop so that there is someone ask for help in case of very urgent need. The first situation encourages each tribe to hold on to its own language, the second - to the spread of a language common to all tribes.
IS THE LANGUAGE EVOLVING NOW AND IN WHAT DIRECTION?
- Is it turning into something fundamentally different? No, it does not transform. Does he change within himself? Yes, it does. The language cannot but change. Even Esperanto, when it became widely used in direct live communication, began to change. If our language is a guessing game, then for normal communication you do not need to speak exactly like others: if your language systems are close enough, then you will be understood (and they will not require complete identity).
IS IT POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE SOME TRENDS IN THE LANGUAGE, FOR EXAMPLE, SIMPLIFICATION OR GLOBALIZATION?
- What is easier for someone, different languages decide differently. It is quite easy for the Russian language to have several consonants at the beginning of a word, but, for example, the Finnish language does not. It is easy for Chinese to have tones, but Russian does not. Therefore, if Russian borrows words from Chinese, it never observes the tone. Each language, of course, seeks to simplify, but each in its own direction. Therefore, it hardly makes sense to talk about a global trend towards linguistic simplification.
WILL WE SAVE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES IN THE FUTURE OR WILL WE ALL SPEAK ONE?
- And this is the question of who will overtake whom. Now, on the one hand, there is globalization - the Internet is spreading more and more, and in it - English, the language of interethnic communication. If you want to go out into the big world, then you can't do without it. But, on the other hand, the same Internet makes it possible to fragment the world: it is not at all necessary to speak with everyone, you can find a narrow group of like-minded people and communicate with them - now not only in writing, but also orally, and even with a video call. And the groups are different. For example, there is a group of people who travel to Karelia every year, live there Indian life and speak the Lakota Indian language. Through the Internet, they can connect with real Indians and speak with them in this language. In principle, there can be fans for any language. There are, for example, fans of colloquial Latin,they speak it among themselves and even sing in Latin (in a very high-quality translation, I must say!) "Murka" or "Yellow submarine".
So now I'm waiting to see what happens first: either the minor languages will die out, or Skype and the fans will reach them. And timidly hope for the second.
World Details Magazine