Where do languages come from

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Where do languages come from?

• Ian Roberts
• igr20_at_cam.ac.uk

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• Historical approaches (historical linguistics)
• Evolutionary approaches (biolinguistics)
• Child language (psycholinguistics)
• A general theory of language Universal Grammar

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Where does English come from?

• Modern English (1700-)
• Early Modern English (1500-1700)
• Middle English (1066-1500)
• Old English (450-1066)

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To his Coy Mistressby Andrew Marvell (c1650)

• Had we but world enough, and time,This coyness,
  lady, were no crime.We would sit down and think
  which wayTo walk, and pass our long love's
  dayThou by the Indian Ganges' sideShouldst
  rubies find I by the tideOf Humber would
  complain. I wouldLove you ten years before the
  FloodAnd you should, if you please, refuseTill
  the conversion of the Jews.My vegetable love
  should growVaster than empires, and more
  slow.An hundred years should go to praiseThine
  eyes, and on thy forehead gazeTwo hundred to
  adore each breast,But thirty thousand to the
  restAn age at least to every part,And the last
  age should show your heart.For, lady, you
  deserve this state,Nor would I love at lower
  rate.

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Middle English (1066-1500)

• Late 14th century (Wycliffe) version of the
  Lords Prayer
• Oure fadir þat art in heuenes, halwid be þi name
  þi reume or kyngdom come to þe. Be þi wille don
  in herþe as it is doun in heuene. 3eue to vs
  to-day oure eche dayes bred. And for3eue to vs
  oure dettis, þat is oure synnys, as we for3euen
  tu oure dettouris, þat is men to men þat han
  synned in vs. And lede vs not in-to temptacion,
  but delyuere vs from euyl.

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Old English (450-1066)

• The Lords Prayer in West Saxon (c1000)
• Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, si þin name
  gehalgod to-becume þin rice gewurþe þin willa
  on earðan swa swa on heofonum urne
  gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg and forgyf us
  ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
  and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of
  yfele.
• (To hear the sound file, go to
• http//bitterscroll.podomatic.com/entry/2006-08-09
  T16_02_07-07_00).

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Old High German

• Fater unser, thu thar bist in himile,si
  geheilagot thin namo,queme thin rihhi,si thin
  uuillo,so her in himile ist, so si her in
  erdu,unsar brot tagalihhaz gib uns hiutu,inti
  furlaz uns unsara sculdiso uuir furlazemes
  unsaren sculdigon,inti ni gileitest unsih in
  costunga,uzouh arlosi unsih fon ubile.
• (Tatian, c830)

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Gothic (c400AD)

• Atta unsar, þu in himinam, weihnai namo þein,
  qimai þiudinassus þeins, wairþai wilja þeins,
  swe in himina jah ana airþai.
• Hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga,
  jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima, swaswe jah
  weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim, jah ni
  briggais uns in fraistubnjai, ak lausei uns af
  þamma ubilin.
• (To hear the sound file, go to
• http//www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/777516)

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Indo-European

• Sir William Jones address to the Bengal Asiatick
  Society, 1786
• The Sanskrit language, whatever be its
  antiquity, is of a wonderful structure more
  perfect than the Greek, more copious than the
  Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either,
  yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity,
  both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of
  grammar, than could possibly have been produced
  by accident so strong indeed, that no philologer
  could examine them all three, without believing
  them to have sprung from some common source,
  which, perhaps, no longer exists there is a
  similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for
  supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic,
  though blended with a very different idiom, had
  the same origin with the Sanskrit and the old
  Persian might be added to the same family ...
• (emphasis added)

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For example
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the forms of grammar
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Beyond Indo-European Nostratic

• Proto-Nostratic /q?iwlV/ 'ear hear'
• Proto-Indo-European ?leu?- /k?leu?/- 'hear'.
  Ancestor of English listen, loud.
• Proto-Afroasiatic /k?(w)l/ 'hear'
• Proto-Kartvelian /q?ur/ 'ear'
• Proto-Altaic /k?ul/- 'ear'
• Proto-Uralic kule- /ku?le/-
• Proto-Dravidian ke? /ke??/ 'hear'.
• Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan /vilvV/, possibly from
  earlier /k?ilwV/ 'ear'

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What is grammar?

• A preposition is something you cannot end a
  sentence with.
• Misled by grammar, the great majority of those
  logicians who have dealt with this problem have
  dealt with it along mistaken lines. They have
  regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in
  analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not
  known what differences in grammatical form are
  important. (Russell (1905))

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Implicit grammatical knowledge

• (1) Flying planes can be dangerous.
• (2) John is easy/eager to please.

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More things you didnt know you knew

• (3) John is too stubborn
• John is too stubborn to talk to.
• John is too stubborn to talk to Bill.
• (4) a.
• John said he could come to the party, and Bill
  said he could too.
• he could come to the party
• b.
• John loves his mother, and Bill does too.
• Bill loves his mother, too.
• WHOSE mother ??
• SO something about (English) grammar is in your
  mind

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I-language and E-language

• I Internal, Individual, Intensional I-language
  is the knowledge a normal adult native speaker
  has of their native language.
• E External, Extensional language as found in
  corpora, ancient texts, invented by logicians,
  computer scientists, etc.

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Grammar and I-language

• A grammar of a particular language can be
  considered .. to be a complete scientific theory
  of a particular subject matter (Chomsky
  (195577))
• A grammar of English is a theory of a (idealised)
  native English-speakers I-language.

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Universal Grammar

• The theory of what all native speakers of all
  languages (i.e. all humans) share, which makes
  them able to speak a language the Language
  Faculty.
• It is very plausible that the Language Faculty is
  determined by some aspect of the human genome.

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Biolinguistics

• A human infant will acquire language if left in
  the company of humans and fed, etc.
• A kitten, a rock or a chimp wont.
• Therefore there is something in the human
  mind/brain (or at least biology) which
  distinguishes us from them as far as language is
  concerned.

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Language Evolution

• Animal communication systems are of three kinds
  (M. Hauser (1997) The Evolution of Communication,
  MIT Press)
• 1. warning calls (look out!)
• 2. mating calls (hey baby)
• 3. utility calls (food)

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ACSs

• Contain a finite repertoire of calls
• Fixed to here-and-now
• Largely indivisible into smaller units

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But human language is

• infinite (think of the longest sentence you can,
  and add a clause)
• discrete (sentences are made of words, words of
  phonemes)
• compositional (the meaning of a sentence or a
  complex word is derived from the meaning of its
  parts)

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Continuity or not?

• Continuity humans got more and better hardware
  (vocal tract, neural circuits) and software
  (cognitive capacity) than prehumans.
• Discontinuity human language is so unlike ACSs
  that it is hard to see how it evolved from them.
• Everybody the selective value of language, once
  you have it, is clear.

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Language evolved from

• Gossip
• Grooming
• Group bonding/ritual
• Hunting
• Thinking
• Mating/pair-bonding
• Motherese
• Sexual selection
• Song
• Status for information
• Tool making

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The human lineage I

• 7Ma Split from chimpanzees
• 4.4Ma Austrolepithicus afarensis, probably
  bipedal and (later) hairless
• 2.5Ma homo habilis stone tools
• 1.8Ma homo erectus migration from Africa
• 1.5Ma homo georgicus control of fire
• 5ka homo antecessor common ancestor of us the
  Neanderthals

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The human lineage II

• 150ka Mitochondrial Eve lives in East Africa.
  She is the most recent female ancestor common to
  all mitochondrial lineages in humans alive today.
• 70ka Behavioral modernity.
• 60ka Y-chromosomal Adam lives in Africa. He is
  the most recent common ancestor from whom all
  male human Y chromosomes are descended.

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The Great Leap Forward

• occurred sometime between 50-40kya in Africa or
  Europe.
• Modern human behavior is observed in cultural
  universals which are the key elements shared by
  all groups of people throughout the history of
  humanity. Examples of elements that may be
  considered cultural universals are language,
  religion, art, music, myth, cooking, games, and
  jokes.

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Distinctive human capacities(Hauser (2009))

• Generative computation forming recursive
  patterns (the procedure can itself be a step in
  the procedure), central to language, music and
  maths, at least.
• Mental symbols seeing things as standing for
  other things, central to language, art and
  religion/myth.
• Promiscuous interfaces combining different kinds
  of symbols, central to morality, etc.
• Abstract thought redness, infinity, noun.

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The key?

• 50kya is nothing in terms of evolution, so the
  change cant have been that big.
• A single mutation giving rise to the special
  cognitive capacities underlying (modern) human
  linguistic and cultural capacities?
• at some point before or during the Paleolithic,
  the human brain was transformed (Hauser
  (2009193))

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But ..

• We can perhaps discern the outlines of an account
  of the evolutionary emergence of the language
  faculty
• But where do all the different languages and
  language families come from?
• Why should such an important, biologically
  grounded capacity be so variable?

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Spread of early humans

• H. sapiens reached the Near East around 70 kya.
• spread east to South Asia by 50kya
• on to Australia by 40 millennia ago
• Europe was reached some 40 kya
• East Asia was reached by 30kya.
• The date of migration to North America is
  disputed it may have taken place around 30kya,
  or only considerably later, around 14 kya.

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Haplogroups and language groups

• In the study of molecular evolution, a haplogroup
  shares a common ancestor with a single mutation.
  Haplogroups are assigned letters of the alphabet,
  and refinements consist of additional number and
  letter combinations, for example R1b1.
  Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups
  have different haplogroup designations.
  Haplogroups pertain to deep ancestral origins
  dating back thousands of years.
• In human genetics, the haplogroups most commonly
  studied are Y-chromosome (Y-DNA) haplogroups and
  mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups, both of
  which can be used to define genetic populations.
  Y-DNA is passed solely along the patrilineal
  line, from father to son, while mtDNA is passed
  down the matrilineal line, from mother to
  daughter. Neither recombines, and thus Y-DNA and
  mtDNA change only by chance mutation at each
  generation with no intermixture between parents'
  genetic material.

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Overlap between Y-haplogroups and mt-haplogroups

• South Africa, Khoisan
• Pygmies and related people
• Sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Bantus
• East Asia, Siberia
• Oceania
• Europe, West Asia, North Africa, Horn of Africa
• Easternmost Siberia, the Americas

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Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

• So

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First-language development in children Year One

• 1st week characteristic intonation pattern of
  mother tongue discriminated from that of other
  languages.
• 2-6 months basic vowels perceptually
  distinguished
• 6-8 months basic consonants perceptually
  distinguished
• 8-12 months babbling, gradually converging on
  mother-tongue sounds

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First-language development in children Year 2
(and a bit)

• 12-18 months one-word stage (Dada!)
• 18-24 months two-word stage (Want bottle.
  No sleep. Daddy shoe)
• 24-30 months explosion in both grammar and
  vocabulary (I want my bottle)

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First-language development in children later
stages

• 5 years grammatical maturity (Dad, bring me
  my dinner so that I can eat it watching TV)
• 7-15 years ability to naturally learn further
  languages begins to diminish.
• 15 ability to naturally learn further
  languages atrophies.

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Grammatical instruction and small children

• CHILD Nobody dont like me.
• MOTHER No, say Nobody likes me.
• CHILD Nobody dont like me.
• (dialogue repeated eight times)
• MOTHER Now listen carefully, say Nobody likes
  me.
• CHILD Oh! Nobody dont likes me!

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The Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus

• Errors, slips of the tongue, memory lapses etc.
  in actual performance mean children are exposed
  to ungrammatical sentences without special
  information as to their ungrammaticality
• The man that, um, came .. I mean left, is a
  friend of mine
• We all had to admit that cest la vie
• Further, it is impossible to present all the
  sentences of a language to a learner, and maybe
  exotic facts of the sort seen earlier are very
  rare, possibly missing from the experience of
  certain individuals.

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And

• the inherent difficulty of inferring an unknown
  target from finite resources .. in all such
  investigations, one concludes that tabula rasa
  learning is not possible. Thus children do not
  entertain every possible hypothesis that is
  consistent with the data they receive but only a
  limited class of hypotheses. This class of
  grammatical hypotheses H is the class of possible
  grammars children can conceive and therefore
  constrains the range of possible languages that
  humans can invent and speak. It is Universal
  Grammar in the terminology of generative
  linguistics. (Niyogi (200612))
• See also Hauser, M., N. Chomsky T. Fitch, in
  Nature 20021576-7)

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So ..

• Conclusion it is highly implausible that
  linguistic knowledge is derived purely from
  experience.
• There must be an innate component.
• Universal Grammar is the theory of this innate
  component of language.

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Universal and Particular Grammars

• A universal core, with options (parameters of
  variation) open.
• For example, the position of the verb in a simple
  clause
• a. English -- after the subject
• Yesterday I went to Amsterdam.
• b. Japanese last
• Sensei-wa Taroo-o sikata.
• Teacher-TOP Taro-ACC scolded
• The teacher scolded Taro.

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• c. Dutch -- Second
• Gisteren ging ik naar Amsterdam.
• Yesterday went I to Amsterdam
• d. Welsh Welsh
• Dwy i wedi mynd i Amsterdam ddoe.
• Am I after going to Amsterdam yesterday
• Verb, clause, subject and the positions in (a-d)
  are defined by universal grammar. The choice is
  parametric.

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Conclusions I

• Historical investigation is very informative on
  relations among currently existing languages, but
  not much else.
• Investigation into evolution is very difficult,
  and seems unlikely to explain why we have so many
  different languages.
• First-language acquisition is also very
  informative, and suggestive for UG, but not
  variation.

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Conclusions II

• A parametrised UG can describe variation very
  nicely, but does it really give us an explanation?

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THANK YOU!!
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