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This is the blog for the Cognitive Science Seminar at the University of Memphis for fall 2012.
On this blog you can post your responses to readings, which will also be distributed on the blog.
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Uli
As a musicologist, my primary interest is in how music or musical sounds may have evolved and the meaning assigned to it. At the present time, a great deal of my exposure to meaning in music has been limited to specific structures in music from 800-present day. Unfortunately, within my research, very little time has been given to the study of the evolution of musical sounds. My gut feeling is that music, like it was used by bugles and drums in times of war, may have partially evolved out of the need to communicate over large distances and because musical sounds do not truly exist in nature, their novelty serves multiple purposes. For example, in language acquisition, adults almost instinctively will begin talking to children in a sing-song voice. I believe that this novelty may serve the dual purpose of attracting attention from an infant with a very short attention span, as exaggerate sounds for the purpose of learning. The most pertinent aspect for me book chapter “Theoretical and methodological tools for comparison and evolutionary modeling of communication systems,” is the section discussing Dunbar in which communication may have been a way for non-human primates to groom and for bonding among larger groups. Again, this fall in line with the general idea of music being used to cross farther distances. In the second paper, I found the section was the effect of parents on the process of infant vocalization. While it is briefly discussed how parents take part in reinforcing certain sounds ie: the nonsensical “dada,” “mama,” “baba,” and “papa”, because they are interpreted by parents of having meaning and their excitement encourages the infant to begin saying them more often to illicit a response from the parent. As a masters student I took a course in psycholinguistics, with Louis Goldstein of the Haskins Laboratory, and we spent a good deal of the semester deconstructing the anatomical structures as they related to the vocal gestures (referred to as protophones in the article) seen in x-rays of children and adults at various points during vocalization. For those interested, a complementary article may be “Articulatory Gestures as Phonological Units” by Louis Goldstein. Nevertheless, I am still very new to this area, so I am still trying to determine which information I have is outdated, already studied, or disproven.
ReplyDeleteMy comment consists in some of the questions I have with regard to the article “Vocal development as a guide to the modeling of the evolution of language”. My questions are the questions of a beginner and I apologize if they sound too elementary or they arise from me misunderstanding the text. However, I’m genuinely interested in the answers.
ReplyDelete1) At page 19 there is a distinction between vocal flexibility and flexible expressivity. How do the authors of the article explain the evolution from one to the other?
2) At pp. 20-21 the authors claim that it is not necessary that evidences of stone-based culture imply joint attention because cooperative work with tools has been observed in chimpanzees (who lack joint attention). It seems to me that there is a difference between mere tool use and “tool production/tool culture”. The former requires that the subject understands the relationship between an object and the goal of its action and that it can use the object when it needs it. The latter presupposes that the subject produces a tool knowing that it can be used for the same purpose by itself and by any other member of its group: this seems to imply the ability to know that others refer to the same things it refers to, and therefore joint attention. What kind of culture can we associate to the Oldowan toolkit?
3) If I understand the article correctly, canonical babbling (syllabicity) is made possible by a genetic mutation. My question is: does canonical babbling arise also in the absence of people who already speak (for example in the case of mute parents)? If this is not the case, then it would seem that canonical bubbling presupposes that the child hears people who already pronounce syllables in speaking. Moreover, genetic mutation without reference to a certain social context would be an insufficient explanation for the onset of syllabicity in evolution.
4) My fourth question is about how Austin’s terminology of the “illocutionary forces” is used in the article. It’s not clear to me that we can appropriately speak of “illocutionary force” in the case of babies or other non-linguistic animals. The term comes from the description of language and denotes a specific aspect of a speech act. When I say “Is there any salt?” the sentence has a clear meaning for everyone of us who understands English, but I can have different intentions in saying it: I might be asking, in a polite way, if somebody can give me some salt, I might be criticizing the people who prepared the table or I might be philosophizing about the ideal arrangement of a dinner table, ecc. In these cases, my speech act has different illocutionary forces. The point is that in each of these cases the particular illocutionary force is possible only because I share the meaning of my sentence with the people I’m talking to. In each of these cases, I know that the other knows the meaning of my sentence and I also know that she knows that I know the meaning of the sentence I’m pronouncing. I know that the meaning of the sentence is identical for all of us, is inter-subjective. Only because this complex structure is in place, it is possible for me to expect the other to cordially give me the salt, to feel sorry or to participate in my philosophical reflection. That is to say that illocutionary forces are inseparable from their linkage to a meaningful linguistic expression. Thus, my question can be formulated in the following way: “If an illocutionary force is defined as an essential element of a linguistic act, can we speak of illocutionary forces for non-linguistic acts?”. Note that when a newborn cries she doesn’t know that the mother understands her cry as a call for nourishment, nor she knows that her cry has that meaning: she just cries because she’s hungry. In a similar way, when birds signal specific predators with specific sounds, it suffices for them to react with the right sound when they see a certain kind of predator or to react in the correct way when they hear a certain signal without knowing that the other knows… Certainly, we can use the expression “illocutionary force” in a very abstract way, more and less a synonym of “function”, but then we must remember that it would no longer capture the peculiar character of language. Perhaps this is not only a terminological point. It might be hasty to presuppose that linguistic and non-linguistic subjects are of the same kind, the only difference being that linguistic subjects have a particular tool called “meaning”: perhaps linguistic subjects bear in themselves a different structure of needs and of ways of relating to the world. As a consequence, the question “how does evolution generate subjects with meaning from subjects with illocutionary forces?” could reveal to be misleading.
ReplyDeleteInfants seem to have the flexibility to play sounds so as to develop protophones and then acquire mature language systems. On the other hand, infants also need linguistic input and interact with the outside world in order to make progress. We can probably infer that those who lack intentions to play sounds and to interact with others may under risk of delayed development (e.g., children with autism), although they may have the ability (i.e., mature physically) to produce sounds. However, is the development of language the same as learning other skills? For example, when infants learn to walk, they start from the intention of reaching out something. And then they crawl, stand up, walk with others’ help, and eventually walk independently. They play with their arms and legs and interact with the things they want to grab, or adults. Joint attention would be involved in the development of walking because both parents and the infant would have to focus on the same item.
ReplyDeleteAnother question is that it seems that interactions play an important role in the development of speech. For example, if no or little interactions occur throughout an infant’s first year of life, would the child’s onset of canonical babbling still emerge on time? On the contrary, would the onset of canonical babbling emerge faster if adults interact with the infant a lot? I know children also play sounds without others’ presence, but how much is the interaction accounted for in the development of speech?
I am intrigued by the idea mentioned in a paragraph of the newly assigned article. After language develops or evolves to a point that have all the logical properties (i.e. Figure 1 and 2), some of the new properties, adaptable syllabicity and syllable recombination, is then targeted by natural selection, somewhat turning all the world’s languages into different groups and families with each language having different degrees of freedom on syllabicity and recombinationality. This view is related to language-general and language-specific properties in a sense that all the human languages have properties mentioned in Figure 1, but differing in at least these two properties (more to discover, I believe). I also believe that it is just a beginning of the story. When signals are thought along with their functions, the world of language becomes meaningful.
ReplyDelete“Here we suspect that two new kinds of foundations may have been required, after which perhaps the whole of the remaining naturally logical properties sequence in Figure 1 could have evolved culturally1…. The properties that we think might have needed to be targeted directly by natural selection were adaptable syllabicity and syllable recombination. The actual targets were presumably somewhat more abstract, as we shall explain (p 21).”
“1Less obvious is the notion of adaptation through cultural transmission (also sometimes referred to as ‘glossogeny’). The knowledge of particular languages persists over time only by virtue of it being repeatedly used to generate linguistic data, and this data being used as input to the learner– a type of cultural evolution termed iterated learning. In this sense, we can think of the adaptation of languages themselves to fit the needs of the language user, and more fundamentally, to the language learner (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003, p302).
After reading this book chapter I have a few questions:
ReplyDeleteMy first question has to do with the Infraphonological Stage 1, specifically the function of quasivowels. To summarize the description of quasivowels found in this section: they occur when the infant is alone and in company, they have no systematic posturing, they are pure phonatory events, they are not fixed signals, not driven by emotion, state of fitness as a function, they can be treated as “fussing”. This spontaneous production is seen to lay a naturally logical foundation for the later developments mentioned in the paper. With these things in mind, my question is this, could these quasivowels also been seen as an attempt for the infant to place itself into a category? For example these quasivowels could be produced in order to make more sense of the world it is in, to know that there are things around me that make noise, and I too am able to make noise. Not to say that infants are experiencing some kind of existential angst, but instead these quasivowels are a very primitive way of creating the individual’s first ontology; things that make noise versus things that do not make noise. This may be more of byproduct of what will already naturally occur, but my thoughts are that our brains, even at their earliest stages, are striving to categorize the world around us in order to save time and cognitive resources in the future.
My second question has to do with Infraphonological Stage 2, the elaboration of spontaneous produced vocalizations to include primitive articulation. This stage is said to typically occur during the second and third month of infancy. Here is the first time we are able to hear glottal interrupts within the quasivowels. Are these glottal interrupts first heard within the second and third months of the infant because of some physiological strengthening, like the strengthening of the diaphragm/vocal cords/lungs, or is it more tied to the exploratory characteristics of learning/producing language? Excuse my ignorance on the physiological aspects of language production, but I am curious of the major driving force for the appearance of glottal interrupts. Are these glottal interrupts simply physically impossible to produce for a 1 month old infant?
I really enjoyed this book chapter as it has to do with natural logic in ordering and scaffolding. My work with vicarious learning has highlighted the importance of scaffolding during teaching. While the language production and development that occurs in infants may not be hugely tied to their modeling of their parents and other caregivers, I would like to think that this natural logic indicates a core truth of human learning -- that in order for efficient and effective learning to occur there must be some form of scaffolding within the learning material.
There is one thing that particularly stood out to me while reading Chapter 7, Evolution of Communicative Flexibility. At the top of page 144, the first paragraph mentions that both signal flexibility and functional flexibility are required in order for the process of learning to occur. This assertion makes absolute sense to me in regards to the communicative power of human language. I wonder how well this translates to animal communication where fixed signals and fixed action patterns is the dominate form of communication. I believe that both signal and functional flexibility is required for learning to occur across all species regardless of primary communication modality.
ReplyDeleteA good portion of the “Vocal development” paper is spent in explaining why embryology can be used as a productive and effective model for vocal development. In both papers, a move from a preformationistic view of vocal development is emphasized. The reason for this move is because preformationism made for an unproductive and unreasonable starting point for research. Oller explains that preformationists looked at early stages of development with a predetermined view of what was presently taking place in the development process. Instead of observing and studying what was there or was taking place, they would study the early stages of development by what would eventually be there and take place. In other words, they were applying models from mature stages of development to immature stages of development.
ReplyDeleteIn the “Contextual Flexibility” paper, Oller further defines her non-preformationistic approach to the study of vocal development as “Natural Logic.” In explaining this move to “natural logic” and away from preformationism, Oller emphasizes that even the early stages of language development involve steps and sub-stages of their own. There is a real “development” taking place in what may seem like nothing but infantile gibberish. A preformationistic view would render studying these early stages a waste of time, because, by definition, their functions and signals would have already been predetermined.
Also, as Oller notes in the “Vocal development” paper, “…most modeling in the past has begun at a point after the primary developments differentiating humans from non-humans have already occurred… We emphasize the importance of the very earliest differentiations between communicative capabilities of humans and non-humans in both development and evolution… within the first three months of life human infants already outstrip the vocal communicative abilities of other primates at any age” (9). And, to me, while reading, this was one of the most significant and strongest purposes for studying the “coos” and “goos” of early vocal development. It’s fascinating to know that even at such early stages the chasm between human and non-human language is still so great.
The second Oller paper, “Contextual Flexibility, etc.” seemed to further flesh out what Oller said in “Vocal development,” “The primary bottleneck in the evolution of human language, we contend, was in the realm of flexibility in vocal production – once vocalization was commanded in the new and more powerful ways suggest by even the most primitive properties of Figure 1, a foundation had been laid that represented a clear break from primate lineage, and a potential for much further growth” (10).
With regard to the Owren, Amoss and Rendall article, I would like to give my interpretation of an empirical finding, so that, if I’m wrong, somebody can correct me. The fact that vervet monkeys don’t learn predator-specific calls is a sign that these calls don’t “refer” to the predators, but are just signals for appropriate responses in other monkeys. A vocal gesture refers to a determined object (or, better, a determined type of object) if the sender knows that its gesture has the same meaning both for itself and for the receiver. Evidently, vervet monkeys do not need to know that others respond with the same call when they see a specific predator: the vervet’s call is the appropriate response determined by its instinct, that is by an innate-genetic factor. Language is something that humans have to learn because it’s essentially intersubjective. I have to learn that others refer to a certain type of object with a certain word in order to be able to use the word as having an intersubjective symbolic meaning. However, I don’t want to say that any learnt vocal gesture system is symbolic, since gestures can be learnt simply because they provide a benefit for the sender or because they are associated with a kind of gesture that the sender can generate.
ReplyDeleteIn response to one’s question about canonical babbling regarding its onset of emergence and the quality/quantity of babbling, here are some key findings collected from Oller (2000: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Speech-Capacity-Kimbrough-Oller/dp/0805826297):
ReplyDeleteCanonical babbling in special populations:
1) Socio-economic status (SES): the onset of canonical babbling and motoric development (e.g. rolling, reaching, sitting) does not delay sig. in infants from low SES (26 weeks for 13 LSES infants and 29 weeks for 15MSES infants). However, the total amount of vocalization in protophone categories of any kind, per unit time, did differ and it showed that MSES group to be the more voluble, with 7.5 utterances per minute compared with 6.0 for LSES group.
2) Prematurity does not seem to slow protophone development.
3) Bilingual or having different linguistic background other than English: canonical babbling ratios and vowel ratios were statistically indistinguishable across monolingual and bilingual groups.
4) Hearing experiences: the sooner deaf infants obtain hearing assistance, the sooner they may accumulate the necessary experience to trigger onset of canonical babbling (the correlation between age of onset of canonical babbling and age of amplification in deaf infants was very high =.69).
5) Total lack of hearing: found in cochlear aplasia, in which the hearing organ does not develop. Lynch et al (1989) studied one case like this systematically and provided clinical treatment associated with tactual vocoders. Tactual vocoders are devices that receive sound through a microphone, divide the sound into a number of channels based on acoustic frequency, and then use the information in each channel to drive a stimulator on the skin. A few months after the child began to produce canonical vocalizations consistently.
6) Middle ear problem such as otitis media: children with otitis media studied by Oller and his colleagues did no find a delay in their onset of canonical babbling.
7) Down syndrome: both Dodd (1972) and Smith & Oller (1981) found a great amount of similarities both qualitatively and quantitatively between children with down syndrome and children with normal development. However, a slight delay in onset of canonical babbling was found later researches.
The importance of canonical babbling:
1) The emergence of canonical babbling and protophone development is highly canalized even in special populations.
2) Multiple channels other than auditory input appear to be accessible by the acquisition of canonical babbling.
3) can serve as a clinical indicator and red-flag an emerging disorder long before traditional symptoms can be identified (as in Oller et al.’s 2010 PNAS paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/30/13354.full).