Becoming Human: From pointing gestures to syntax
Abstract
What do the pointing gesture, the imitation of new complex motor patterns, the evocation of absent objects and the grasping of others’ false beliefs all have in common? Apart from being (one way or other) involved in the language, they all would share a demanding requirement – a second mental centre within the subject. This redefinition of the simulationism is extended in the present book in two directions. Firstly, mirror-neurons and, likewise, animal abilities connected with the visual field of their fellows, although they certainly constitute important landmarks, would not require this second mental centre. Secondly, others’ beliefs would have given rise not only to predicative communicative function but also to pre-grammatical syntax. The inquiry about the evolutionary-historic origin of language focuses on the cognitive requirements on it as a faculty (but not to the indirect causes such as environmental changes or greater co-operation), pays attention to children, and covers other human peculiarities as well, e.g., symbolic play, protodeclaratives, self-conscious emotions, and interactional or four-hand tasks.
... (1) the direct-path hypothesis, whereby initiation of basic forms in symbolic action or babbling will be directly related to all later emerging language and motor outputs (Bejarano, 2011;Piaget, 1962;Smith & Jones, 2011;Thelen, Schöner, Scheier, & Smith, 2001); (2) the indirect mediated path, whereby basic forms in symbolic action will be associated with more complex forms in symbolic play, as well as with babbling, and this relationship with babbling will be related to speech (an additional possibility is that babbling will link to speech that will, in turn, be related to complex symbolic play forms (Petitto et al., 2004)); and (3) the dual-path hypothesis, whereby basic forms in symbolic action will be linked to basic forms in language, i.e., to babbling, and complex symbolic play forms will be linked to complex language forms, such as single words, or vice versa (McCune-Nicolich, 1981;McCune, 2010). ...
... • The age of initiation of babbling, but not necessarily speech, would be related to the development of symbolic play from the early phases of single-object play through multiple object play (McCune, 2010). • The age of initiation of simple symbolic representation would predict the age of initiation of speech (Bejarano, 2011;Piaget, 1962;Smith & Jones, 2011). ...
Symbolic play and language are known to be highly interrelated, but the developmental process involved in this relationship is not clear. Three hypothetical paths were postulated to explore how play and language drive each other: (1) direct paths, whereby initiation of basic forms in symbolic action or babbling, will be directly related to all later emerging language and motor outputs; (2) an indirect interactive path, whereby basic forms in symbolic action will be associated with more complex forms in symbolic play, as well as with babbling, and babbling mediates the relationship between symbolic play and speech; and (3) a dual path, whereby basic forms in symbolic play will be associated with basic forms of language, and complex forms of symbolic play will be associated with complex forms of language. We micro-coded 288 symbolic vignettes gathered during a yearlong prospective bi-weekly examination (N=14; from 6 to 18 months of age). Results showed that the age of initiation of single-object symbolic play correlates strongly with the age of initiation of later-emerging symbolic and vocal outputs; its frequency at initiation is correlated with frequency at initiation of babbling, later-emerging speech, and multi-object play in initiation. Results support the notion that a single-object play relates to the development of other symbolic forms via a direct relationship and an indirect relationship, rather than a dual-path hypothesis.
Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.
... However, I lean towards rejecting the existence of the innate 'language of thought'. More concretely, in some works, I have opposed, not only to innate syntax, but also to innate semantics, since our semantics is indelibly shaped by syntax: See Bejarano 2008, Bejarano 2010, Bejarano and Bejarano 2011. Without syntax, there aren't nouns / verbs / adjectives, etc.: There are not even nouns -my proposal insists against a deep-rooted idea that influences Hurford 2007, for example. ...
Is there a qualitative difference between apes’ and human ‘ability to estimate others’ mental states’, a.k.a. ‘Theory-of-Mind’? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to ‘vicarious expectations’ –very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one’s own (full) contents are distinguished without need of meta-representation. Then, I propose: First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes’ Theory-of-Mind (including ‘spontaneous altruism’). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to ‘social order’ and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible the human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others’ mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me.
... However, I lean towards rejecting the existence of the innate 'language of thought'. More concretely, in some works, I have opposed, not only to innate syntax, but also to innate semantics, since our semantics is indelibly shaped by syntax: See Bejarano 2008Bejarano , 2010Bejarano , and 2011. Without syntax, there aren't nouns / verbs / adjectives, etc.: There are not even nouns -my proposal insists against a deep-rooted idea that influences Hurford 2007, for example. ...
Is there a qualitative difference between apes’ and human Theory-of-Mind (or ability to estimate others’ mental states)? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to ‘vicarious expectations’ –very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one’s own (full) contents are distinguished without need of meta-representation. Then, three proposals are made. First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes’ Theory-of-Mind (including ‘spontaneous altruism’). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to ‘social order’ and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible the human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others’ mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me.
... However, linguistic symbols mostly refer to unnatural meanings. Studies about language evolution reveal that pointing is the incipient stage of languages (Bejarano 2011;Diessel 2013). People who use sign language resort to pointing 1 + pointing 2 in a parallel-continual pair to present ideas or make judgments. ...
The syntactic studies of Indo-European languages are characterized by the epistemological stance of subject-predicate parse or verb/tense-as-the-head oriented approach. Contrary to subject-predicate construction based upon hierarchicality, I define parallel-dialogic syntax as multiple non-hierarchically constructed run-on constituents or clauses in parallel status, in which each constituent or clause dialogically complements the meaning of another. The protolanguage originates from dialogic-oriented nature and ushers in linguistic evolution, with some languages moving towards subject-predicate structure and some consolidating the status of dialogic parallelism. The formalization of parallel-dialogic syntax evolves to be the grammaticalization of many morphologically less salient languages. Parallel-dialogic syntax contains the subject-predicate structure, whereas subject-predicate constructions fail to be fully compatible with parallel-dialogic syntax. I argue that such syntactic representation in view of palindrome, referential tautology, antithetical couplet, and intertextuality is rooted in the incipient dialogic nature of languages. The study surpasses individual syntactic theories and contributes to theorizing the generalized protolanguage of evolutive typology.
... Others have outlined detailed accounts of the steady elaboration of human communicative competence, extending from pointing to full-blown grammar (Bejarano, 2011;Rolfe, 1996). Such "pointing first" proposals have occasionally met with skepticism. ...
The human pointing gesture may be viewed from many angles. On a basic description, it is an intentional movement, often of the hand, by which one person tries to direct another’s attention toward something; it is, in short, a bodily command to look. But this definition is only a start. Pointing may also be seen as a semiotic primitive, a philosophical puzzle, a communicative workhorse, a protean universal, a social tool, a widespread taboo, a partner of language, a part of language, a fixture of art, a graphical icon, a cognitive prop, a developmental milestone, a diagnostic window, a cross-species litmus test, and an evolutionary stepping-stone. A tour of these fifteen ways of looking at pointing reveals the diverse dimensions of one of our most unassuming, ubiquitous behaviors. It also reveals a series of dualities that make the gesture especially compelling: it is at once natural and irreducibly cultural; simple yet put to sophisticated purposes; by turns salient and subtle; and is—in its prototypical form, with the index finger extended—special in some ways and not so special in others. These tensions in part explain why pointing has been treated so widely and variously across disciplines. But there is also, I propose, a deeper reason: The gesture embodies our distinctively human preoccupation with attention.
... One can also mention the emergency of research since the 1990s dealing with expressive movements and gestures, conceptual unities referred to within the German-speaking psychological tradition by the terms expressive movements (Ausdrucksbewegungen) and sound gestures (Lautgebärde), both traditional objects of the psychological age of the humanities (Armstrong et al. 1995;McNeil 2000;Kita 2003;Kendon 2004;Gfrereis and Lepper 2007;Bråten 2007;Bejarano 2011;Donald 1991;Corballis 2001). ...
... For Tomasello, what is most distinctive about our species is a cooperative mode, and he sees pointing as a basic tool of cooperative communication. Others have outlined detailed accounts of the steady elaboration of human communicative competence, extending from pointing to full-blown grammar (Bejarano, 2011;Rolfe, 1996). Such "pointing first" proposals have occasionally met with skepticism. ...
The human pointing gesture may be viewed from many angles. On a neutral description, it is an intentional movement, often of the hand, by which one person tries to direct another’s attention—it is, in short, a bodily command to look. But this bland definition is only a start. Pointing may also be seen as a semiotic primitive, a philosophical puzzle, a communicative workhorse, a protean universal, a social tool, a widespread taboo, a partner of language, a part of language, a fixture of art, a graphical icon, a cognitive prop, a developmental milestone, a diagnostic window, a cross-species litmus test, and an evolutionary stepping-stone. These fifteen ways of looking highlight the diverse dimensions of one our most unassuming, ubiquitous behaviors. Pointing appears so widely, and in so many guises, because of what it embodies: a distinctively human preoccupation with attention.
Is there a qualitative difference between apes’ and humans ‘ability to estimate others’ mental states’, a.k.a. ‘Theory-of-Mind’? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to ‘vicarious expectations’—very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one’s (full) contents are distinguished without needing meta-representation. Then, I propose: First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes’ Theory-of-Mind (including ‘spontaneous altruism’). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of the human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in the human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to ‘social order’ and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others’ mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me.
Keywords: human lifestyle; language evolution; mentalese; self-conscious emotions; Theory-of-Mind; vicarious expectations
Gestures are an important part of intelligent human-robot interactions. Co-speech gestures are a subclass of gestures that integrate speech and dialogs with synchronous combinations of various postures, haptics (touch), and motions such as head, hand, index finger or palm, and gaze. Deictic gestures are a subclass of co-speech gestures that provide Spatio-temporal reference to entities in the field-of-vision, by pointing at an individual entity or collection of entities and referring to them using pronouns in spoken phrases. Deictic gestures are important for human-robot interaction due to their property of attention seeking and providing a common frame-of-reference by object localization. In this research, we identify different subclasses of deictic gestures and extend the Synchronized Colored Petri net (SCP) model to recognize deictic gestures. The proposed extension integrates synchronized motions of head, hand, index-finger, palm, gaze (eye-motion tracking and focus) with pronoun reference in speech. An implementation using video-frame analysis and gesture-signatures representing meta-level attributes of SCP has been described. An algorithm has been presented. Performance analysis shows that the recall is approximately 85 percent for deictic gestures, and conversational head-gestures are separated from deictic gestures 95 percent of the time. Results show that mislabeling in deictic gestures occurs due to missing frames, feature points, undetectable motions, and the choice of thresholds during video analysis.KeywordsArtificial IntelligenceConversational GesturesDeictic GesturesGesture RecognitionPetri NetsSocial RoboticsSynchronization
Can we nowadays keep a qualitative difference between the primitive and advanced Theory-of-Mind? The old criteria have become blurry. In addition, it is clear that in ‘apes’ lifestyle’ it is not necessary to use the communicative-cognitive basic abilities which became indispensable in ‘the new lifestyle’. Thus, it is usual to conclude that apes would have to some degree such abilities. However, this article tries to reformulate and defend that qualitative difference. Thus, after underlining the contrast between two kinds of mental states (‘contents’ and ‘expectations’), I apply it to the detection of foreign mental states as well. Then, three points are proposed: First, ‘vicarious expectations’ sustain the primitive ToM; second, a subject can have no expectation of inner states which are intrinsically impossible for him; third, the state of interacting with ourselves as with a different person –e.g., the thinking what others think of us– cannot be a vicarious expectation of ours, but it requires the estimation of foreign contents. From this hypothesis, I deduce that vicarious expectations are unable to sustain self-conscious emotions or the really effective reception of pointing gestures. These abilities could appear only when ‘the estimation of foreign contents’ –i.e., the origin of the advanced ToM– arose.
The attempts to make moral and evolution compatible have assimilated moral capacity either with complex self-control in favour of one's own goals or with spontaneous altruism. Those attempts face an easy problem, since those two senses of moral are adaptively advantageous resources. But let us focus on the decisions made in favour of another person which the subject, when making them, feels are contrary to his own goals: Could a base for this capacity arise in evolution, however poor and weak? I propose that such base, while it is not an adaptive advantage but quite the opposite, arises from the convergence between two abilities which in their respective origins were adaptively very advantageous: the advanced mode of 'theo-ry-of-mind' (ToM) and inner speech. Keywords: others' mental contents; speech directed to oneself; spontaneous altruism; Advanced Theory of Mind; vicarious expectations. Resumen: Los intentos de hacer compatibles la moral y la evolución han asimilado la capacidad moral con el autocontrol complejo en favor de las metas propias o con el altruis-mo espontáneo. Esos intentos se en-frentan a un problema fácil, puesto que esos dos sentidos de la moral son adaptativamente ventajosos. En cambio, las decisiones que van contra las propias metas de uno son desven-tajosas. A pesar de ello, ¿pudo surgir en la evolución una base, por pobre y débil que fuera, para esta capacidad? Propongo que tal base, si bien no es una ventaja adaptativa en principio, sino más bien lo contrario, surge de la convergencia entre dos habilidades que en sus respectivos orígenes sí eran muy ventajosas adaptativamen-te: el modo avanzado de la teoría de la mente (ToM) y el habla interior. Palabras clave: contenidos mentales de los otros; discurso dirigido a uno mismo; altruismo espontáneo; Teoría de la Mente; expectativas vicarias. 1 I am very grateful to the reviewers for their helpful comments.
“Super-humans” is usually to be linked to Nietzsche or to Heidegger’s criticism to Nietzsche, or even to the ideology of Nazism. However, they can be properly underlain by philosophical and scientific anthropology as that biological species who will originate from humans eventually in the course of evolution. There is a series of more or less well-established facts in anthropogenesis, which would be relevant to the philosophical question about the “super-humans”: bipedalism, cooling by sweating, specific hair or its lack, omnivorous-ness, thumb opposition and apposition, vocal system of speech production, human brain, long childhood; our species is evolutionary young (about 200 000 years old), but it is the last survived descendant being genetically exceptionally homogenous (<00,01% genetic differences) of the genus “homo” (about 6 000 000 old). All this generates a few main features of our population: society, technics, language, and mind, which guarantee the contemporary absolute domination of mankind. The society has reached a natural limitation of earth. The technics depends on how much energy is produced. The mind is restricted by its carrier, i.e. by the brain. Thus only the language seems to be the frontier of any future development inducing a much better use of the former three. The recent informational technologies suggest the same. Language is defined as symbolic image of the world doubling it by an ideal or virtual world, which is fruitful for creativity and any modeling of the real world. Consequently, a gap between the material and the ideal world produces language. The language increases that gap in turn. Furthermore, the ideal world is secondary and derivative from the material world in origin and objectivity: Language serves for the world to be ordered. Thus language refers to the philosophical categories of ‘being’ and ‘time’. Any “super-language” should transcend some of those definitive borders of language and be a generalization. The involving of infinity can extend the language. Any human language is finite and addresses some finite reality. Thus the gap between reality and any model in language can be seen as that between infinity and its limitation to any finite representation: Finite representations dominate over society, technics, and the mind use. A “super-language” as an “infinite language” can be approached in a few reference frames: Husserl’s “Back to the things themselves!” if “phenomenon” in his philosophy is thought as the ‘word’ of the language of consciousness; the semantic and philosophical theory of symbol: from consciousness and language to reality; the concept of infinity in mathematics and its foundation: set or category theory; quantum mechanics and information: the coincidence of the quantum model and reality; quantum computer. Mankind is approached the problem of infinite language as the language of nature
La idea de que el ser humano es la meta de la Naturaleza esta claramente fuera de lo comprobable o refutable. Pero podemos preguntarnos si esa idea ‘encaja’ con los descubrimientos cientificos, y, mas concretamente, con la evolucion pluridireccional y ramificada que ha suplantado a la vieja scala naturae y que parece prohibir nociones meramente descriptivas como las de cuspide o escalones de la evolucion. Ciertamente el invocar la indiscutible mayor inteligencia de la especie humana con vistas a colocar a los humanos en la cuspide seria absolutamente inutil a menos que se encuentre una justificacion para privilegiar como criterio el de la inteligencia. Pero nosotros podemos enfocar la siguiente cuestion: El avance en la captacion de la realidad externa, ?podria ser realmente una tendencia general de toda la evolucion, o, mejor dicho, la mas general entre las muchas y variopintas tendencias de avance y especializacion que se pueden detectar en la evolucion de los seres vivos? Este trabajo sugiere una respuesta afirmativa. Si esta es correcta, entonces aquel ‘encaje’ seria ahora mejor, mas concreto y menos superficial que antes de que la evolucion fuera descubierta. The idea that the human being is Nature’s goal is certainly beyond what is verifiable. But we may ask ourselves whether it fits or not with scientific discoveries. Such ‘fit’, I propose, is now better and more concrete than before evolution was discovered. Certainly, invoking the indisputable greater intelligence of humans is of no use unless a justification to favour intelligence as a criterion is found. But we can focus on the following question: Is the advance in grasping the reality a general trend in evolution? I suggest an affirmative answer. More concretely, this paper distinguishes four qualitative advances in that ability. In this sense, the difference between tropism and animal consciousness, and even more so, the superiority of primates in comparison with the rest of mammals, are key for that ‘fit’.
In the origin of syntax, primitive, holophrastic signs had to be weakened (original, drastic ‘bleaching’) and to lose their previous status of whole message. The original syntax was probably thema/rhema syntax. The earliest themas repeat the hearer’s message: the speaker embeds the hearer’s message in his own message. In this way a holophrase could be weakened, and turn into a part of a syntactic combination. This pregrammatical, interpersonal ‘recursive embedding’ is embodied in sensorimotor processes. The upper level is embodied in the intonation; the lower level, in the articulatory-phonetic word. This decoupling of intonation and articulatory pattern–i.e. the emergence of intonation capable of comprising more than one word–facilitated the weakening of previous holophrases and the genesis of syntax. In time, that facilitation determined the preeminence of voice over gesture, regardless of whether or not that preeminence existed before syntax.
Keywords: bleaching (semantic weakening); embodied cognition; holophrastic sign; intonation; recursive mind.
Using recent insights from Cognitive, Affective and Social Neuroscience this paper addresses how affective states in social interactions can be used through social media to analyze and support behaviour for a certain lifestyle. A computational model is provided integrating mechanisms for the impact of one's emotions on behaviour, and for the impact of emotions of others on one's own emotion. The model is used to reason about and assess the state of a user with regard to a lifestyle goal (such as exercising frequently), based on extracted information about emotions exchanged in social interaction. Support is provided by proposing ways to affecting these social interactions, thereby indirectly influencing the impact of the emotions of others. An ambient intelligent system incorporating this has been implemented for the social medium Twitter.
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