The Origins and Evolution of Language | Michael Corballis | TEDxAuckland
Nearly everybody can communicate, and most do so through some form of language, and yet the question of where language came from is one of the most difficult questions in science. Psychologist and author, Michael Corballis explores the many theories of language's origins, including his own, and details how language and communication have continued to evolve, from primates' use of gestures, to the advent of communicative technologies. Michael Corballis, emeritus professor at the Department of Psychology at The University of Auckland is one of the foremost global experts on the evolution of human language.
The son of a sheep farmer from Marton, Michael’s long and decorated academic career has seen his studies of the brain and what it is to be human earn him New Zealand’s top science prize, The Rutherford Medal.
He has worked with patients who have had two-sides of their brains disconnected to relieve epilepsy which led him to look deeper into studying the two brain hemispheres. His most recent book The Truth About Language explores the idea that language evolved from manual gestures. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
I think one advantage of spoken over gestural communication is that it doesn't depend on daylight so can allow communication at night and -- when vision is obscured by surroundings -- at a distance.
Yooo I’m gonna use this in my essay
Beautiful,what a profound thought :)
No-one has ever paid me such a compliment in all my life. Thank you very, very much.
I agree POV, I listen to heaps of science youtube vids on evolutionary linguistics and never heard this, you've come up with a profound original thought about spoken language. It probably has some evolutionary advantage. There's several PhD's there that no one has every studied. I once thought that I was a night owl because it made evolutionary sense to have someone in the tribe that stays up keeping watch until the early risers waken. Anyway bravo.
Thank you so much.
Love how he comments "[this is my opinion.....it's important to note what others believe]"
"from the wagging of tongues to the wiggling of thumbs" - great quote, thanks!
Corballis seems to be talking about "Communication," not what Chomsky calls "Language". Chomsky points out that Language (a modular faculty of the mind) can be used for communication, but it is something deeper, it's the ability to create an infinite variety of abstract structures (generative grammar) representing thoughts, from finite means (finite set of words or, basically, the alphabet).-- these structures can be mapped onto the sensory/motor apparatus (speech, gestures, signing, writing etc) in a variety of ways, but that's separate from the underlying nature of Language. Chomsky thinks it happened all at once because he thinks it's based on the ability to go from a finite system to an infinite system, which in logic and mathematics can happen once you can combine any two things into a new entity (merge), which is not an incremental process: once you can go from 2 to infinity you can go from 7 to infinity -- once you get an "successor function" there is no reason to think it would stop at, say, 7 -- so, boom, once you get it, you get the whole enchilada, no half-ways. This simple ability is what Chomsky thinks is the root of Language ability in humans. 50,000 years ago humans could not do that, and then someone was suddenly able, which gave them enhanced planning and thinking capability etc. Chomsky also emphasizes that Language is mostly internal/self talk -- it goes on in our minds continuously -- that's one of the reasons he thinks it has nothing to do with communication, at least initially -- it has everything to do with thinking, and ultimately with the subconscious.
That sounds interesting, can you point to sources to read more about this theory?
@@asengo141 Google universal grammar
Chomsky now considers Music to be a probable origin of human language. Just study our original human culture - the San Bushmen - for details. Dr. Chris Knight builds on this also.
@@asengo141 'Why only us' by Robert C Berwick & Noam Chomsky or 'On Language' by Noam Chomsky (although I'd begin with the first title)
Sounds to me that Chomsky was set on bigging himself up and revelling in the wonderfuness of his own intellect . It seems that getting to the abilities he (you) described must have taken many, many, many generations of communal living and development and given the wide range of languages it seems highly improbable it did not develop in very many societies scattered across the world, possibly as a development of story telling or dream telling. my feeling is that "simple" language probably evolved through communication between mothers and crying infants as our physical ability to produce increasingly sophisticated sounds developed, I imagine we'll never really know
"One of them has died you'll notice" I've never seen a dad joke in academia before
Joke he talked so long guy died and became skeleton before he finished his speech.
@@hydrolito b/c you didn't 2x it
Not a dad joke. That was a dead academic. They nearly all look like that
This is exactly what I was wondering about; Origins and evolution of language. Thanks Michael Corballis!
Thank you so much for uploading this video. It is helping me get through the pandemic!
Professor Corballis is not only tackling the most mysterious problem in biology, he is coming up with proposals (such as gesturing) that are TESTABLE through the study of extant apes.
Nim Chimpsky can sign in Ameslan. But do not try too many gestures with bonobos... you have been warned!
Primate gestures may be testable, and probably a lot has already been explored, but chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas do not have the vocal tracts (SVT) necessary to produce speech. That is physiologically unique to humans.
The musical quality of vocalisation (intonation, rythme) also participates in communication - this obviously also contributed greatly to spoken language
You are talking about deontic and epistemic modalities. In English these are solely determined by intonation in interrogative circumlocution. This is applied to modal verbs and phrasal modals by context.
history originally was SUNG because humans achieve photographic memory through frequency as meaning. Noncommutative time-frequency reveals the secret origin of music leading also to language. The older a language is the more musical it is. The Eland Bull dance song exists as the SAME song in the oldest cultures with the oldest human dialects - proving that the same song existed BEFORE human language split into different dialects. Our original human culture - the San Bushmen - insist on using Gibberish words for their spiritual healing singing. The meaning is not dependent on the words but rather a meaning from frequency of energy directly. Hameroff and Penrose go into this - Hameroff has worked with Chomsky on this also.
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 tell me more
@@Halo6166 Chomsky has stated that he considers the music origin of language to be a plausible if not probably truth but Chomsky told me unfortunately he does not have time to research the noncommutative time-frequency logic connection. You can read my free 2012 book, "Alchemy of Rainbow Heart Music" as a start and go to my first upload for further links - all free research. thanks
@@Halo6166 Or just go to the "radical anthropology" channel
The best observation by Michael Corballis was that of the two phases of bipedalism in order to free our hands and be able to comunicate by gestures and then the second phase of developing articulation with our mouth and tounge in order to free our hands and use them to create while communicating. This observation is very enlighting for understanding the evolution of language. Modern genetics have revealed that there is agene or probably more genes in the human genom that makes it possible to develop a language. It has been proved that disorder in this gene has made people unable to communicate or develop a language!
It is possible that last common ancestor of humans and chimps was already partly bipedal, living on the trees and on the ground, but generally in a upright posture. I like those points you mentioned, but if that's how our human evolution started, then the first (full) freeing of hands would come not at the point of bipedalism, but at the point of coming down from trees. That's a lot earlier than 2 milions years ago, so that's a possibility to consider. Also, could you please point me to some source about this language development gene you mentioned?
Thank you Michael Corballis..very very captivating..evolutionary..just a summation so appreciated so much..onward with ideas and references etc etc ad infinit.. .. .. .. until we pop or fizzle
Given that language left no physical trace until the invention of writing, I think it makes sense that archaeologists use art, decorative shells, pigments, and stone tools which are more carefully worked than they need to be for mere utility, all of which indicate symbolic thought, as proxies for the probable timing of the origin of language. No art or art materials as such have been found that are more than about 100,000 years old. I find this more telling than this speaker's speculations about bipedalism's connection to language.
Yeah, this talk is entirely non scientific. Consider the evolution of the hyoid bone alongside music, dance, art... Personally this talk is nothing but anecdotal.
This is such a mind boggling topic
I think one of the reasons why language was became more verbal is perhaps in order to be able to communicate and coordinate while doing other things and tasks like hunting etc, as said in the lecture. You wouldn’t want to talk with your hands when a predator is in front of you.
Depends if it's an apex predator or not. Polar bears, I just smack them with the back of my hand but if its a mosquitoe or a bat I call the police.
Onamatapoeic theory which has a mimetic foundation, would argue that just as early animals can vocalise by different calls, early humans identified things by the sounds they made. The Australian Aboriginal word in Nyungar for a whilly wagtail is djiti djiti which mimics the sound of that bird. It would be easy to construct a communication system and then a language from identifying the sounds which things and persons made or the sounds the subject heard and interpreted according to their hearing capacity.
I’m here because I wanted to discuss the origins of Latin. I began with Scotland, then to Galicia, Rome, Vedic influences, the Yamnaya, the proto-Indic-Europeans of the steppes, then to the Fertile Crescent and finally to the origin of language itself. It’s difficult to discuss anything without knowing it’s origin.
I think Michael's close, but I think it's more likely that once we started using our hands to communicate, we used certain sounds from the mouth/throat as emphasis for our gestures, and language began there. Especially in times of panic/danger, there could be an imperative to communicate threats (or opportunities) more precisely. So, perhaps those grunts of emphasis became more sophisticated, and, simultaneously, over time, the hand gestures became less effective than vocal cues, and became less frequently used or focused on. We see this passing back and forth from hand to mouth, and back to hand as our dominant communication tool throughout history too. After we got bored of speaking, we created a way for our hands to emphasize our vocal communication - hieroglyphs/pictograms/paintings/art/etc. Then we perfected a way of expressing our art through a vocal means - singing. Then back to the hands with writing. Eventually we come to the present, where text-based communication (typed with our hands) is our most dominant form of communication, and once again, an emphasis on our vocal communication which we feel is insufficient. People feel more heard online on social media where no one is speaking a word. We use our gestures to emphasize our voices, and we use our voices to emphasize our gestures. Perhaps gestures and voices are two inseparable components of the system we call language - much like the system of communication consists of the two inseparable components of speaker and listener - and perhaps they have evolved in tandem. Perhaps they will continue to do so.
Many primates also make subconscious vocalizations when performing complex tasks with their hands, just as we move our hands when we're speaking. Not all of the gestures that accompany speech are intentional for emphasis.
Maybe the preservation of such sounds and sayings was also needed which is why people started to "write" things down. I mean, they might have realized that spoken-only things can't be properly recalled contrary to written things. Just a thought.
The saddest part about this lecture is he didn't even do his homework enough to present where the evolution of the human larynx, pharynx and hyoid bone fits into this. The human version of these organs gives humans a higher likelihood of choking than the great apes but it also allows humans to speak. The human ear also has peculiarities that indicate evolutionary trade-offs were made. When that change in evolution happened is key to his entire argument.
This is a good point when did they happen?
I think you are confusing language and sound. It is well known that some birds, which have a very different but sophisticated sound-making apparatus, can mimic human words extremely well although there is no indication that they attach any sort of symbolic meaning to the sounds. So while the anatomical features you mentioned undoubtedly played a part in the evolution of language as we know it they are not the key factor. In fact, the speaker did point out that we have been unable to teach great apes to talk and their lack of the vocalising ability is undoubtedly a great part of the reason for this. However, to some extent great apes do share humans' ability to understand symbols: objects which have an attached meaning that is not inherent in them. Had humans not developed the ability to vocalise, it is possible to imagine that they might have evolved 6,000 sign languages rather than that number of verbal languages. Whether there is any historical basis to the Babel myth it is interesting to note that the era in which such an event might have occurred also appears to be the time when humans invented many of the symbols we see carved in stone. The fact that we often cannot determine the meaning of some of these symbols does not alter the fact that the people who made them seem to have had one in mind. Language is a means of connecting the mental and physical worlds.
Oh, dear, "he didn't even do his homework"! You are confusing language and speech. He asserts that language did not begin with speech. He may not be correct about that but it's unlikley he got there by not knowing we have a larynx.
Also he doesn't recognise the interaction and co-evolutional-aspects of cultural - to biological Evolution and vice versa.
To me the lack of explanation of those isn't much of a hindrance, those points have been well made by others discussing the origin of language, he's just arguing from an angle where the lack of these features doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of language. To me, those features are actually one of the hypotheses' greatest strengths. Humans evolving those features only really makes sense in one of two cases, that language was a predetermined goal humans have always been evolving towards, or that humans already had a functioning language and were evolving a different mechanism for utilizing it. Vocalizations were likely already a component of language, just as gestures of all kinds remain relevant to aural language today. The incremental changes needed to make our vocal apparatus and inner ear structure don't really help with creating language (in the sense of modern aural language, with modern phonological capacity) until complete, and can be detrimental at most steps along the way unless they're providing some other benefit. To me, I feel his causation is inverted, language didn't switch to aural on its own, thus allowing us to use tools, I think our increasing tool use necessitated freeing our hands from communicative use, and we gradually evolved more sensitive ears and a more versatile vocal tract that could project sound more effectively with less effort as well as greater control over said vocalizations.
freeing up of the hands as a spur to language is a very interesting and novel concept
If we follow the trace of communication capability. From gesture->tongue->book->printing->telephone->internet->... it's quite coherent.
Signed languages are not just gestures. They're complete, complex languages capable of conveying abstract thoughts with the same amount of ease as spoken languages. The interpreter wasn't just gesturing what you were saying... He was signing and interpreting the message to match conceptual accuracy to convey the same message.
He didn't say they were "just" gestures, he said (paraphrasing) that it used gestures to form a complete, complex language capable of conveying abstract thoughts with the same amount of ease as spoken languages. He used poetry classes at Deaf universities as an example.
@@slobodanzjalic Sat it then. Don't make us message you.
“...emptied our minds into our communication systems “. That is becoming increasingly significant
lol indeed: more and more essentially empty minds are popping up everywhere... or at least minds devoid of things one would think condusive to long-term survival - such as logic and "common" sense, lol.
Slogan for the Internet
Das ist gut. Der arbeit in spreche ist wunderbar.
There is a difference between the mental capacity for language and the externalized language, which could be multimodal such as vocal or gestural.
From sign language and facial expressions evolution would favour those that became good at communicating with voice playing a part. Those that were expressive in all these would be leaders and would bind the tribe together and improve their chances in hunting and war..
In my preteens a few of us close friends would develop 'our' own version of spoken English which could only be understood by us. It was very difficult to speek but we felt happy all the same. I later realized that many groups in my neighborhood had their own version of English.
Peckham?
Excellent❤
I appreciate it that he didn't make this talk a performance like many other lecturers did
Wdym
It doesn't have that Hipster air to it where they are trying to blow you away with their world altering insights.
This. Ted has become a kindergarden in recent years.
This is not a lecture, it's a talk. Therefore, a performance would be a completely valid form of presentation.
@@Liliquan He did not say it would be invalid. He said he appreciated that it was not a performance. And I heartily agree. So many of these TED talks come off as a cult of personality. The presenters often seem to self-consciously assume the role of a character in a play, with exaggerated gestures and affected styles of speech. Valid or not, it is annoying.
Seems to me they are ignoring that vocal language in animals exists. We know that Corvis birds have language and regional dialects. We know that schooling fish have vocalization they use to communicate. We even know what many of the vocalizations mean. We know that whales and elephants use language to communicate at long distance. We even know that captured dolphins modulate their vocalizations so that their captors can hear what they are saying. Yes, the symbology and syntax is different- but this is the nature of different languages. The fact is, we aren't very good at learning other languages. If we were, I think we would recognize that many animals have vocal language.
Agreed. And a good point.
As with most differences between humans and other animals, language is likely a mater of degree. Other animals use or sometimes even MAKE simple tools. Other animals have various forms of languages, which are often learned to a certain degree with more advanced species. What differentiates humans so well, with both tools and language, is the huge difference in how diverse, imaginative and versitile human capabilities are: we can make insanely complicated tools, and we can use language to express an AMAZINGLY diverse and imaginative variety of concepts - including some that are completely nonsensical, as is the case with the Trumpite tribe, lol. Example: "Muslims are up to 1% of our country's population now, and even MORE are coming along all the time....the horror!! We had better shut the door to them before they try to force Sharia law on us"....lolol. That said, ALL human languages, even Valley-Speak (dating myself a bit, i realize, lol), are capable of expressing an INCREDIBLY wide variety of thoughts: our languages allow us to think about almost anything we can understand - and even stuff that we can't, or refuse to understand.
@lao3fu3 Human speech is noise sequences to a newborn baby. If those noise sequences have a meaning, and that meaning is understood by another mind, communication is occurring., so not sure why you are claiming noise sequences arent language
@lao3fu3 Communication is the conveyance of meaning from one mind to another. Speech is irrelevant. When I hear a siren outside, the noise tells me whether it is a fire truck, police car, or ambulance. You needlessly overcomplicate the issue
@lao3fu3 You seem to know the subject well, so i'll move along and watch some semiotics videos.
A human child can be taught sign language, including crude sentence structure, expressing physical needs, emotions, and concepts much sooner than the ability to speak words. The capacity of all children to use language non verbally much earlier than verbally is perhaps some evidence of gesture theory.
Chomsky's response to this typical misrepresentation of his ideas on the origin of language from an email from Chomsky to me "...I’ve given extensive arguments that communicative efficiency is disregarded in language design in favor of computational efficiency, and that not only communication but even externalization of language in general is an ancillary aspect of language, and that the core processes of syntax and semantics do not even make use of linear order and other arrangements. "They" choose to disregard all of the arguments and evidence, and appeal instead to some confused notion of Darwinian evolution. ...I’ve presented a perfectly sound proposal, consistent with whatever evidence is available and with the actual theory of evolution, as to how the actual design of language might have evolved. "...They don't" happen to like the conclusions, and the easiest way to deal with that is to ignore the evidence and argument." He went on to say he does not respond to ideas like in this video because they don't deserve even mentioning.
i was just commenting that this is the worst (i don't mean it's terrible, just that TED has a higher standard) the worst TED talk i've watched, we have to be forgiving, but when someone mixes up thousands with millions repeatedly, well, the guy seems senile. i wish Chomsky was a mate of mine.
Corballis seems to be talking about "Communication," not what Chomsky calls "Language". Chomsky points out that Language (a modular faculty of the mind) can be used for communication, but it is something deeper, it's the ability to create an infinite variety of abstract structures (generative grammar) representing thoughts, from finite means (finite set of words or, basically, the alphabet).-- these structures can be mapped onto the sensory/motor apparatus (speech, gestures, signing, writing etc) in a variety of ways, but that's separate from the underlying nature of Language. Chomsky thinks it happened all at once because he thinks it's based on the ability to go from a finite system to an infinite system, which in logic and mathematics can happen once you can combine any two things into a new entity (merge), which is not an incremental process: once you can go from 2 to infinity you can go from 7 to infinity -- once you get an "successor function" there is no reason to think it would stop at, say, 7 -- so, boom, once you get it, you get the whole enchilada, no half-ways. This simple ability is what Chomsky thinks is the root of Language ability in humans. 50,000 years ago humans could not do that, and then someone was suddenly able, which gave them enhanced planning and thinking capability etc. Chomsky also emphasizes that Language is mostly internal/self talk -- it goes on in our minds continuously -- that's one of the reasons he thinks it has nothing to do with communication, at least initially -- it has everything to do with thinking, and ultimately with the subconscious.
Check out Dr. Erich Jarvis for his Continuum Hypothesis on vocal learning - very similar to Dr. Michael Corballis. Also check out Dr. Chris Knight and his "radical anthropology" group. I don't think communication and "language" are mutually exclusive. I've corresponded with Chomsky a few times since 2001. He now considers music as a feasible origin of human language. Just keep digging is all I can say. I also corresponded with Michael Corballis around 2007.
The remarkable thing is that we came up with 6000 languages in less than several thousand years after coming through millions of years of evolution.😊
And by the way, according to greek myth, in addition to fire, Prometheus blessed humankind with the gift of gab as well, so I guess that is "for some reason he knows".
bollocks! ... promethesus is a master copier, counterfeiter, he creates nothing, but merely, simply takes what has been created and remodifies it . animate or inanimate
I find this brilliant.
The part that makes different languages complicated is the rolling of the tongue as well as the vibration of your voice box while we speak. That's why I'd argue that your mother tongue comes naturally to you as you have gotten the set of predisposed evolutionary changes necessary for those set of movements from your ancestors. As well as why children can pick up languages so easily, their body slightly mutates during growth to fulfill the requirements to speak the new languages that they learn(aside from their mother tongue). But sadly this might be the reason why adults take a longer time to learn as well as cannot perfectly speak a new language that is very different from their mother tongue as well as the language/languages that they learnt in their childhood. I believe grasping an accent is the first step to proper pronunciation as well as diction. That is why we have so many different versions and accents of spoken English according to region, even though the language is but one.
Once my hunting gathering mates decided that a certain sound would be assigned to a phenomenon, language was born. You, two, go, day, night, now........... Once that concept proved so much more efficient than grunting, or pointing, it would have naturally been expounded on.
I'm of the belief that we were able to discover "music" with our vocalizations and were able to draw a tribe together to bond and enjoy the sounds. Through these sounds were are able to label physical things with a sound. Now as far as grammar evolved shaman were probably the groups who introduced a more complex set of rules. In my opinion Chinese is a language that fits my theory of sounds and then particles to attach to thise things as adjectives and adverbs
The last gesture is so cute🤣
Hey Michael I was waiting for you to relate increasing ability to manipulate the hands to increasing ability for language. Years ago, one of my textbooks made a human body based on the proportion of brain that controls it. The body is mostly fingers, lips and some face. How is that hypothesis for origin of language doing these days. Thank you.
The homunculus picture? I think it was in Sagan's Dragon of Eden.
@@allistairneil8968 Yes. Thank you for adding homonculus to my vocabulary.
@@francissantos7448 Homunculus.😇
When we go back in history, we find early species of humans made art and music. In places like S. Africa we found stones with a zigzag patterns inscribed on it meaning development of abstract ideas. Even an ancient wooden flute means the ability for creativity. People who created music instruments may also be singing along and therefore having a language.
There were other species of humans in the past and at least 1 species (the Neanderthals in Europe) was found to have interbred with modern humans and passed on their genes. They did exhibit the customs of burying their dead. With some sort of complex social behavior, does this mean they also acquired the use of language as well? We'll never know if some of the extinct species of humans acquired language even when they did make tools such as arrowheads for hunting and other stone tools.
A musical note is a musical note therefore it is a universal language.
Let me tell you my theory on language 1-early modern humans started by making sounds and noises to send messages and communicate together 2-they later tied each sound with a common word that they used daily 3-we later evolved more, then we got the ability to make sentences with those newly created words 4-this protolanguage evolved and we got more languages till today
And do u think the reason of multiple languages could be people in different environments with different groups, when all people like spread throughout the world, that in specific areas created specific types of communication, that evolved to the multiple languages we have to day,
@@Itsover-bj5ed I'd like to hear a linguists view on this but it seems to me that one good reason why there are so many languages is that for millennia most people didn't travel more than a few miles from where they lived and so there was no widespread contact between adjacent communities.
The "evolved more" step needs to be fleshed out. That is the big problem. None of these anthropologists can point to genes in the mapped out human genome and just say "there it is".
It is of course impossible to say what actually happened but it is reasonable to assert that language developed over several hundreds of thousands of years.
he is better as a book!
Thinking this through really illuminates the biblical proposition that language itself exists independently of human communication. Language may have "moved to the mouth" as the speaker says, but that isn't convincing to me. Suggesting that entire anatomy of the mouth, face, throat etc. just turned out "by the way" to also be the perfect mechanism to handle communication to me is highly implausible. It seems that spoken language must have been a part of human evolution for much longer than the last sliver of human evolution.
The Biblical story of the tower was not that God destroyed the tower but that He looked down and said, "These people speak one language and are of one mind; nothing will be too great for them to accomplish. Let us confuse their languages." The people no longer being able to communicate abandoned the project and scattered. I see this not as a vengeful God but rather a God attempting to slow progress down so that morality could catch up. If we worked together science would have developed much faster but we may have not developed the ethics needed to contain it. If you are going to quote the Bible check it carefully. Because this is a totally different story than the one you told.
Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.
It was simply that Jehovah exacts exclusive devotion, as stated in comparing other parts of the Bible. They turned away from Him and built that tower for worship. God put an end to that by scattering their language.
why even quote the bible in a scientific talk?
@@jeromedragon5287 why not? Do you think bible isn't scientific?
Bantu is not language . It is a group of related languages .
I just made the same comment. Odd that he does not know this.
That is one of many mistakes he made in this talk.
R.I.P :( You were so great, Sir Corballis.
Firstly it is quite obvious and logical that onomatopoeia played a big part in vocalization of language, mimicking the sounds of creatures to describe such creatures. What Michael assumes about visual communication being our first form of communication, actually has vasts amounts of supporting evidence in the lithic record, in the form of 'figure stones'. Unfortunately this world wide evidence is being ignored by the mainstream as it contradicts much of the accepted paradigm about evolution and the time lines involved. I have personally recovered figure stones from cretaceous layers (circa 70MYA) and depictions on the stones themselves appear to show locally long extinct species, crocodiles for example, cease locally in the fossil record some 35MYA. The evidence does not support the false theory/currently accepted paradigm, so the evidence is being ignored.
Could you send me a link to what you are talking about? Id like to know more. Thank you
@@TheMBROO basically, people find rocks that they think look like things so they claim humans made it. If. Proof of human life millions of years ago was ever actually found, the discoverer would be world famous and likely win prizes. He or she wouldn't be ignored.
@@Amateur0Visionary My finds contain ochre etching and birch tar application, both can only be attributed to deliberate agency. My finds also contain a topology of motifs/glyphs just like the words and letters written in books, many of my finds also are verifiable as flint tools.
@@Eoliths can you offer us any evidence? Can you give us a link or two? Journal articles maybe? If your finds are as you say, you're bound to be a famous discoverer.
@@Amateur0Visionary I have lots of evidence, and I could teach you or anyone to recover there own, as paleo language appears to be world wide. Read the whole thread above, link and explanation has already been provided. I have one article published in a Archeology magazine, but a more content rich version is on my blog anyway.
If you look at other mammals, many communicate with sound as they walk around on four legs. There could have been an audible element to language before bipedalism, which was subsequently made better by bipedalism as we could make faces and gestures to add meaning to our grunts. I find it hard to conceive that we only used signs for any length of time. Signs only work when you're close enough to the receiver and they are looking at you. You also need light. The first time we felt the need to sign to someone up on the hill and facing away, I'm sure there was a yell to get their attention. And it probably evolved from there. Just as Chomsky's theory is a bit simplistic, the clear boundary between signs and voice was likely not that neatly delineated.
I agree and wrote about it above. Cats e.g. communicate also with their ears and tail. Anf maybe they have sounds we can not hear.
There’s no such language as ‘Bantu’; it’s a language family containing languages which include Swahili, Sesotho, Isizulu, Tshivenda, Xitsonga etc.
@Douglas Vale, good point. You should be doing the TED talk.
In other words, it seems the guy is not a great linguist?
@@TheCompletePackage007 Perhaps Douglas Vale has too much knowledge to give the false answer given?
@@duncanhw Bantu, in common language, is called a language family. Its parallel is not English, its parallel is Germanic.
Germanic as in including : English, Dutch, Low Saxon, German, and further North, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and still further North, another kind of Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic. Swahili is comparable to one of the languages within the language family. Like English or Dutch.
Very interesting perspective. Before this video I was researching for two hours about how languages evolved, how all European languages mostly came from Latin, where Latin came from - from Semitic languages - the Syro-Arabian languages (Middle East) - which is part of Afroasian language family, meaning... first there was Africa and Asia, then came Arabic, then came Latin, then came European. This is a short summary and not that detailed and thorough, but made me understand this subject on a very interesting level. Now I just have to search about the human migration and put together these two timelines.
Where did you read Latin is a semitic language?
You are wrong about relations between languages
Yeah... Latin isn't related to the Afro-Asiatic languages, they're in completely separate families. Not all languages are related to each other.
وَعَلَّمَ آدَمَ الْأَسْمَاءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَهُمْ عَلَى الْمَلَائِكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنبِئُونِي بِأَسْمَاءِ هَٰؤُلَاءِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَادِقِينَ (31) قَالُوا سُبْحَانَكَ لَا عِلْمَ لَنَا إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَا ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ الْعَلِيمُ الْحَكِيمُ (32) قَالَ يَا آدَمُ أَنبِئْهُم بِأَسْمَائِهِمْ ۖ فَلَمَّا أَنبَأَهُم بِأَسْمَائِهِمْ قَالَ أَلَمْ أَقُل لَّكُمْ إِنِّي أَعْلَمُ غَيْبَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَأَعْلَمُ مَا تُبْدُونَ وَمَا كُنتُمْ تَكْتُمُونَ
As a linguist, I'm surprised he thinks Bantu is a language. It's like saying "I speak Scandinavian."
Nothing new here, really... yet a brilliant new book, "SPEECH! How Language Made Us Human" by Simon Prentis, provides a radical yet surprisingly obvious solution to the origin of language. It's an amazing insight -- even Steven Pinker agrees. Check it out!
great distances made all the differant languages. gestures became sounds and words were created. again, all differant from areas that were far away . you will note that shorter distances create acents. for example, the new york acent, the boston acent and the southern acent . also items like food are callled differant names. a grinder in new england may be called a hoggie or a sub elsewhere. it’s the distance that made all the differant languages, dialects, acents and calling all the same things by differant names. i’m not a scientist. this is just my theory. anyone have opinions on this?
ut Agree but not only distances count. The geology is also playing a role. Dialects between valleys in the Alps differ between each other.
Research the mutation of the foxp2 gene compared to the great apes (2 aminoacids of a difference) and what it does when incorporated in the DNA of lab mice, this may be the origin mutation of language.
I will suggest that it may only address the vocalization of language but not language itself which would have emerged from gesturing
I was immersed
interesting theory... it leaves me bemused, though
i would like to debate these ideas, i think there are some problems with these ideas from the length of time and the beginning of language.
It's like an evolution eh, thank you
Im curious if anyone has any ideas about how grammer evolved. I can see hiw this would work with words, but I don't see how this would explain grammar necessarily.
A paper by Nowak and Krakauer explores the emergence of language as we know it and how it acquired it's limitlessness that was alluded to in this talk (how language can create an infinite set of meanings with a limited set of sounds/gestures). Their hypothesis is roughly that in order for communication to be successful, both speaker and listener have to agree as to what object is associated with what sound/gesture. Since we are limited in the amount of sounds and gesture we can make we are limited in the amount of information we can convey, and so we risk falling into an "error-catastrophe" were communication is essentially hopeless because there's no agreement in the object/sound-association. Nowak and Krakauer argue that in order to avoid this, basic rules for how language should be structured have to be established so that you can be more precise in what you're trying to communicate than you can with just a basic set of sounds/gestures linked to objects in the world. Grammar and syntax give languages the resolution necessary for the communication needs of humans. It's been a while since I read it so I might have failed to do it justice, so please check it out if you're interested! It's called "the evolution of language" published in 1999 by Martin Nowak and David Krakauer.
@@ljohander Absolutely will do!! Your explanation is beautifully done, but any additional information on this topic is something I am eager to explore! Thank you so much 😊
Corballis seems to be talking about "Communication," not what Chomsky calls "Language". Chomsky points out that Language (a modular faculty of the mind) can be used for communication, but it is something deeper, it's the ability to create an infinite variety of abstract structures (generative grammar) representing thoughts, from finite means (finite set of words or, basically, the alphabet).-- these structures can be mapped onto the sensory/motor apparatus (speech, gestures, signing, writing etc) in a variety of ways, but that's separate from the underlying nature of Language. Chomsky thinks it happened all at once because he thinks it's based on the ability to go from a finite system to an infinite system, which in logic and mathematics can happen once you can combine any two things into a new entity (merge), which is not an incremental process: once you can go from 2 to infinity you can go from 7 to infinity -- once you get an "successor function" there is no reason to think it would stop at, say, 7 -- so, boom, once you get it, you get the whole enchilada, no half-ways. This simple ability is what Chomsky thinks is the root of Language ability in humans. 50,000 years ago humans could not do that, and then someone was suddenly able, which gave them enhanced planning and thinking capability etc. Chomsky also emphasizes that Language is mostly internal/self talk -- it goes on in our minds continuously -- that's one of the reasons he thinks it has nothing to do with communication, at least initially -- it has everything to do with thinking, and ultimately with the subconscious.
How about music? Varied pitched and glissando ,melismatic resonant sustained vowel calls?
He misquoted Chomsky either deliberately or by not understanding what Chomsky actually said.
TED is the equivalent of Readers Digest from decades gone by. It's fun fun, interesting, but superficial. If you want to learn properly then read and read widely. TED imparts as much factual information as you might gain listening to a conversation in any bar in any town in the eworld !
No
@@dagoat5499 don't, then
@@jvincent6548 don't what?
The whole speech could be contracted to the educational sentence that language began in the trees with hand gestures. The rest is just filling.
The argument that humans developed language because they stood erect and hence had their hands free to communicate with has a weakness. Dogs, for example, have several specific tail and ear movements. They could have easily formed a sign language by combining the two, yet they have failed to do so. The idea of using symbols, and forming concepts, may sound simple to us, but since no other animal has yet been able to cross this threshold suggests a genetic factor, affecting the brain, is at play. Is it possible that our Language ability is actually the formation of a new sense? (still in its infancy). A sense that can detect what we call Time.
i am by no means an expert but here's my reply. Dogs do use sign language in a way right? wiggly tail = happy dog, tail between the legs = scared, ears downnetc... But you are right, there is a brain factor at play! Understanding gestures and learning them as well other stuff like faces and the stars has to do with pattern recognition, or to be more general, with neuroscience, as its all about what your brain can process. Dogs wouldnt be able to form any intelligent sign language simply because they have no awareness of what language is (in this case, how to generate/receive gestures as a way to communicate something)
@@YiannisANO1911 Correct. It still does not answer as to what exactly is this unique ability we humans have.
Good
The first speaker wasn't Adam or Prometheus. She was Eve. But Chomsky's dead wrong as to when language emerged. It emerged much earlier. The problem with gestures as being the forerunner of spoken language is it doesn't explain the evolution of the human vocal tract, which likely occurred over a period of several hundreds of thousands of years. This is where Calls as the forerunner makes more sense. Calls certainly co-existed with gestures early on. And while gestures may have played some role, it doesn't make sense that it would supplant calls as the primary motivating force. With calls it can be explained how the evolution of sophistication of a calls inventory could lead to a more modern vocal tract. Gestures can't explain this.
Keep in mind though, I don’t think he was entirely focusing on spoken language. He stated right at the start that many animals use vocalizations and gestures to communicate; the real milestone we reached is the ability to transfer new ideas and concepts. I don’t think he is saying that hominids didn’t communicate through sound prior to the date he gave, but rather that we first started to use complex communication. He was talking about how apes could use sign language to make requests, and each object had a sign. Hominids were likely doing this vocally and physically for a while, but the difference he is talking about is going from a word to a sentence. If a toddler says “juice”, it’s obvious what they want, just like how an ape would point to where it wants groomed. However, “I want juice” or “can you get me some juice?” is actual language. He even talked about sign language poetry in there, showing that vocalizations are just one form of language. He’s not talking about the physical evolution of how we communicate, but rather the evolution of that communication itself.
Eve, lol.
@@MatthewSmith-sz1yq Still,.that's not the way it happened. It's important to understand that all developmentally normal children pass through something called the Language Acquisition Stage in the 2nd or 3rd year of life. Prior to the LAS children speak in one or two word sentences with no grammar present. After children have passed through this stage, they are using sophisticated, fully recursed grammar. Where did this ability come from? Our genes. The acquisition of language is an evolutionary adaptation every bit as much as the vocal tract is.
Very interesting. I think music, both singing and making rhythmic sounds in other ways, also needs to be considered. It is widespread in the animal world and probably predates human language itself.
And that is why GIFs and MEME seem so natural to us.
Would it be a feasible idea to say,that I may possibly have strong genetic Germanic roots,based on the facts of how I find a lot of different forms of media and entertainment appealing,that are also very popular amongst German people? I Know in each country there are people who love games where you build and strategize,but the certain games I feel drawn towards are almost always also favored by a majority of german groups and communities. Then aside from that I've also noticed I love the language and the sound of their accents,culture and of course the colors of their flag.
It could very well be that You have been german in an earlier physical body. Adults change their physical body, total, two times, every 3 year, but Our consciousness and language, just move from 'body to body', so to say. Every night we do move Our Day-consciousness, to Our 'Night.bodies' (5) one by one, untill it return to Our physical body, in the morning, same happend after permanent leaving the physical body, as we call dead. just much longer time.
Thank you for the video, wanting more info. Would understanding DNA (mutation/evolution) and external influence (environmental/cause effect(s))explain this further? Was waiting for the connection of both minds. Seems political ideals prevent this in linguistics. The idea of Babel is true whether biblical or man made. Man always place themselves at the center.
welcom
at 16:47 i thought he was gonna give them the middle finger
Greek Latin arabic Chinese hebru ena all languages coming from tamil only tamil finds all languages tamil is first human civilization in world
The English and the Arabic language and others , all their documents , started with small sheets ( papers ) . Now they cosist of thousands of papers and will continue to rise with the development of technology and human progress.
My question is how did we develop talking. The great apes animals are not capable of talk. So If we came from them then How do we achieve talking?
dam bro they dont know
Rest in Peace professor
If man is using less of his mind, as he uses more of his body, how smart would he have been, when he had few tools? Inverse relationship?
Didn't Eric Gans propose this in his original of language book published in the early 80s?
50) Classical Irish-Indinéisis Clasaiceach, 50) Clasaiceach Éireannach Clasaiceach, Nuair a choinnítear leanbh a rugadh díreach gan aon duine ag déanamh cumarsáide leis an leanbh, tar éis cúpla lá labhróidh sé agus teanga dhaonna nádúrtha (Prakrit) ar a dtugtar teanga Clasaiceach Magahi Magadhi / Classical Chandaso / Classical Hela Basa (Hela Language) / Pali Clasaiceach atá mar an gcéanna. Labhair Buddha i Magadhi. Níl na 7111 teanga agus canúintí go léir as lámhaigh na Clasaiceach Magahi Magadhi. Dá bhrí sin tá gach ceann acu Clasaiceach i nDaoine (Prakrit) de Dhaoine, mar a bhfuil a dteangacha nádúrtha féin ag gach speictream beo eile le haghaidh cumarsáide.
Dude - Chuir mé é seo i aistriúchán google go Béarla. Ba é an t-uaigneas is mó a léigh mé sna caoga bliain anuas !!!!
Evolution would still hold valid for all the other cases. This would just constitute a special case. Newtons 2nd law 'is also wrong' once you get into relativitic speeds.
language is a liberty of thinker
I always wonder about thought that doesn't compile words or imagine scenarios. What could someone use to describe the process of making a decision or having an insight that isn't done using a vocabularian language or a visual representation? Chomsky says that language is a means to use a finite set of words and rules to express an infinite number of ideas. But does that mean that all ideas are expressable? Perhaps language limits our being able to express our lives as we live them to being able to express them to someone else. Hah! This coming from someone with a meme based mentality!
how I see the matter left babel
well,he is from New Zealand,that tells all.
Vwry interesting about a consequence of bipedalism. I think however it is important to define what a language actually is. Noam Chomsky says that Language is mainly a system of thought basically. You think with your language. You Michael talk about language as atool of communication (and separating as you said after min 14). Ca we ssy that animals do not communicate or have some form of language? Looking at the apes today, we could maybe think that the screaming of apes when there is a predator nearby, could also be a form of language. language we can not yet interpret. Mice call for their parents using ultrasounds that cats can hear. So some form of language did maybe already exist before bipedalism.
Tribes started pointing and making sounds. tribes got bigger ,Certain sounds got taken over, developed etc,etc. & in time languages evolved and still keep evolving. That's it.
Spiritual Anarchist...no...
@@aquillafleetwood8180 Good argument. Spiritual anarchist is indeed spot on. But in the interest of free speech, how do you propose language evolved. I mean, even if you don't understand that the Earth is 4.5bn years old you must be able to grasp that language changes over time. It will have changed at least a little bit in your life time.
Bernie Basset...God gave man the original language! Evolution is only for fools! The last letter in Paleo-Hebrew is "tau", which is shaped like the cross of Christ for a reason! God determined from creation to send Christ into the world as "Emmanuel", which means "God with us"! So, God came in the flesh...that is the only way He could die! He rose from the dead to prove to this world that we too will not stay in our graves forever! You atheist have never actually ever studied the whole Bible! Google, the Northern Cross, by Aquilla Fleetwood, youtube. Google Night Signs, by Aquilla Fleetwood, youtube! Google Paleo-Hebrew Word Pictures, by Aquilla Fleetwood, youtube! Google Paleo-Chinese Word Pictures, by Aquilla Fleetwood, youtube! Atheist simply do not study the evidenses.....
Wowwww you sooooo smart....
****@@aquillafleetwood8180 Tau is shaped as a T
I am no expert but just someone who's interested in this. Hasn't this been the mainstream view of language evolution.. I have came across mutation theory much less
the more I know of people,the more I,m glade I,m not long for this world.
Using commas for apostrophes is quite irritating.
The existence of whistle languages from around the world not well studied may be a problem for the Corballis theory.
Daniel O'Connor Canary Islands for one
How? Why would the existence of whistle languages harm his argument?
Some men have found that the signs can provide information as long as there are men to understand the association. That's all.
I think (spoken) language came right after humans evolved the ability to store long-term memories. Monkeys and non-human apes have remarkable short-term memory.
Ironically, the meaning of the universe is only understood in Silence
In the search for advanced ETs, the Drake equation cranks up the odds against. But think here how many things could have gone wrong on the path to useful, vital abstract speech. Without speech, no writing, without writing… no advance. This alone raises the odds against finding advanced alien civilisations. Clearly, language almost never happens.
Ello. I'm Michael Caine.
“Not many people know that.”
@@PeterEsq77 I still miss that show
Imagine being a deaf person and seeing 9:39. Would be pretty validating of the deaf experience.
If there was a Prometheus or an Adam and eve of languages, wouldn't they be able to trace back common words such as mother and father and moon and sun to this person the way we are able to trace back words in the Proto Indo European family?
Emojis...the universal language of the future!
I don't think that humans designed language to keep others out, as he says at 13.30 It is rather the separate evolution of different groups who originally spoke the same language, that made us speak so differently. The difference is not only in lexic or in grammar, but also in phonetics. Humans in tropical and subtropical areas use more gutural sounds and have a thick voice, and those in subarctic and arctic areas use more labial sounds, shorter vowels, and have a thin voice. Maybe there are also differences between mountain people, people of the sea, etc. And for sure they understand different sounds differently, so they change the meaning and the pronounciacion of a word with the time.
Y entering ...
Nice vid. This speaker misrepresents Chomsky considerably though.
@TheBeaTle Agree. In the condensing into ‘information bites’ that are brief, most nuance is lost. Chomsky isn’t the easiest guy to encapsulate by any stretch of the imagination.
Corballis seems to be talking about "Communication," not what Chomsky calls "Language". Chomsky points out that Language (a modular faculty of the mind) can be used for communication, but it is something deeper, it's the ability to create an infinite variety of abstract structures (generative grammar) representing thoughts, from finite means (finite set of words or, basically, the alphabet).-- these structures can be mapped onto the sensory/motor apparatus (speech, gestures, signing, writing etc) in a variety of ways, but that's separate from the underlying nature of Language. Chomsky thinks it happened all at once because he thinks it's based on the ability to go from a finite system to an infinite system, which in logic and mathematics can happen once you can combine any two things into a new entity (merge), which is not an incremental process: once you can go from 2 to infinity you can go from 7 to infinity -- once you get an "successor function" there is no reason to think it would stop at, say, 7 -- so, boom, once you get it, you get the whole enchilada, no half-ways. This simple ability is what Chomsky thinks is the root of Language ability in humans. 50,000 years ago humans could not do that, and then someone was suddenly able, which gave them enhanced planning and thinking capability etc. Chomsky also emphasizes that Language is mostly internal/self talk -- it goes on in our minds continuously -- that's one of the reasons he thinks it has nothing to do with communication, at least initially -- it has everything to do with thinking, and ultimately with the subconscious.
@Math Man Well said He eluded to the ‘self organising information system’ of the inherent mechanism of mind, yet doesn’t go so far as to touch on creativity in this phenomena, which is ultimately what has enabled the expansion of intellect within the human species. His work merges well with other psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers who are familiar with the mechanism of humour and creativity and the power of this self reflective cognitive tool of adaptation that for all intents and purposes may have accidentally and serendipitously emerged and evolved without any particular selective design or intent.