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The evolution of
syntax: what do we
know?
PETAR GABRIĆ
GENERAL LINGUISTICS, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS, JOHANNES
GUTENBERG-UNIVERSITÄT MAINZ
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
The evolution of
syntax: what do we
know?
PETAR GABRIĆ
GENERAL LINGUISTICS, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS, JOHANNES
GUTENBERG-UNIVERSITÄT MAINZ
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
NOTHING
PROLOGUE: do we know anything
about language evolution?
„For centuries, people have speculated over the origins of human language. […] The
irony is that the quest is a fruitless one. Each generation asks the same questions, and
reaches the same impasse –the absence of any evidence relating to the matter,
given the vast, distant time-scale involved. We have no direct knowledge of the
origins and early development of language, nor is it easy to imagine how such
knowledge might ever be obtained. We can only speculate, arrive at our own
conclusions, and remain dissatisfied. Indeed, so dissatisfied was one group of 19th-
century scholars that they took drastic action: in 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris
published an edict banning discussion of the topic at their meetings. But the
theorizing continues, and these days there is a resurgence of interest, as new
archaeological finds and modern techniques of analysis provide fresh hints of what
may once have been.”(Crystal 1998)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Contents
•Human evolution
•Genetics
Epistemology
•Exaptation vs. modularity
•Continuity vs. discontinuity
Exaptation and
continuity
•Animacy and oncreteness/abstractness
•Action semantics
Embodied lexical
semantics
•Transitivity
•Word order
Embodied syntax
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Human evolution
„It would appear that the modern-human-origins debate is not for
the faint of heart.”(Lindly & Clark 1990:251)
Human evolution is a highly controversial topic both within and
outside of the scientific realm.
Creationism
General public etc.
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Source:
ScienceAlert
EPISTEMOLOGY: Human evolution
Language evolution and
archaeology (1)
Language evolution is necessarily an interdisciplinary topic.
Linguistic studies and discussion are few and far between.
Much of the work so far has been done by palaeoanthropologists
and archaeologists. Their hypotheses remain, however, mostly
speculative.
E.g. the putative perforated Nassarius kraussianus shell beads from
South Africa (Henshillwood et al.2004;d’Errico et al.2005)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
EPISTEMOLOGY: Human evolution
Language evolution and
archaeology (2)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Source: Botha (2009: 95)
EPISTEMOLOGY: Human evolution
Language evolution and
archaeology (3)
„What if all eighty remaining speakers of Banawá died out suddenly and
their bones were discovered only 100,000 years hence? [W]ould their
material culture leave any evidence that they were capable of
language and symbolic reasoning? Arguably it would leave even less
evidence of language than has been found for neanderthalensis or
erectus.Banawá art […] and their tools […] are biodegradable. So their
material culture would disappear without a trace in much less than the
800,000 to 1,500,000 years that have passed since the appearance of the
earliest cultures. […]It is known that current populations of Amazonians
have fully developed human languages and rich cultures, so care must
be taken not to conclude prematurely that the absence of evidence
about language or culture in the prehistoric recrod indicates that ancient
human populations lacked these essential cognitive attributes.”(Everett
2016: 8–9)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
EPISTEMOLOGY: Human evolution
Language evolution and genetics
Axiomatically, language evolution began via mutations: „First, there
is mutation. […] Without mutation, there could be no evolution”
(McMahon & McMahon 2013: 8).
Genetics of language remains largely understudied.
Some topics in the genetics of language (evolution) include:
forkhead box protein P2 (FOXP2), Williams syndrome, specific
language impairment, ProtocadherinX/Y etc.
„[S]ince genes operate in vast interacting networks affected by
both each other and the environment, the concept of ‘the gene for
…’ is at best oversimplified and at worst fundamentally flawed.”
(McMahon & McMahon 2013:178)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
EPISTEMOLOGY: Genetics
Chomsky’s „genetic model”
Noam Chomsky has become famous for proposing a „mutation-
based”account of language evolution. However, his hypotheses
are, in short, biologically nonsensical.
„[T]he original mutation will typically have had only a small effect, and
that subsequent development of the trait in question will have to wait
for further relevant mutations to arise.”(McMahon & McMahon 2013: 9)
EPISTEMOLOGY: Genetics
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Negation of genetics in language
evolution
Some linguists are reluctant to include genetics into language
evolution models, e.g. Everett (2016:70–71):
„[M]utations for language are superfluous because language evolution
can be explained without them. […]In fact, the idea of language as a
mutation simply offers no insights at all that help to understand the
evolution of language. That is to say that language evolution can be
explained without mutations, based instead on gradual, uniformitarianist
assumptions, rendering superfluous proposals of language-specific
genes or language-specific mutations.”(p.70–71)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
EPISTEMOLOGY: Genetics
Language evolution and
(cumulative) culture
Today many stress the role of (cumulative) culture in language evolution, but
some also appear to misunderstand it.
„Language gradually emerged from a culture, formed by people who communicated
one another via human brains. Language is the handmaiden of culture.”(Everett 2016:
xvii)
The term culture is in need of a more precise definition.
„We find that 39 different behaviour patterns, including tool usage, grooming and
courtship behaviours, are customary or habitual in some communities but are absent in
others where ecological explanations have been discounted. Among mammalian and
avian species, cultural variation has previously been identified only for single behaviour
patterns, such as the local dialects of song-birds. The extensive, multiple variations now
documented for chimpanzees are thus without parallel. Moreover, the combined
repertoire of these behaviour patterns in each chimpanzee community is itself highly
distinctive, a phenomenon characteristic of human cultures but previously unrecognised
in non-human species.”(Whiten et al.1999:682)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
EPISTEMOLOGY: Genetics
Language evolution as gene-
culture co-evolution
Language evolution is a
case of gene-culture co-
evolution, as in the case of
the appearance of milk
consumption.
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Source: Curry (2013)
EPISTEMOLOGY: Genetics
Exaptation in evolutionary biology
Exaptation = the process of the emergence of structures and/or
functions from pre-existing structures and/or functions (Gould & Vrba
1982)
Source: manfredrichter
(Pixabay)
Bird feathers
Heat
regulation,
display, flight
Anatomy
Mouth licking
in wolves and
domestic dogs
Begging for
food, signal for
submissiveness
Behavior
Source: ElfinFox (Pixabay)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Exaptation in human evolution
Exaptationist evolution vs. modular evolution
Exaptation has played a crucial role in the evolution of parts of the
human muscular system.
„Each and every muscle that has been long accepted to be “uniquely
human” and to provide “crucial singular functional adaptations” for our
bipedalism, tool use and/or vocal/facial communication, is actually
present as an intra-specific variant or even as normal phenotype in
bonobos and/or other apes.”(Diogo 2018: 1)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Domain-general systems, and
speech (1)
In the context of speech and language evolution we are talking
about the exaptation from pre-existing brain structures and functions.
Motor brain areas are involved in speech production via activation of
motor plans and muscle articulators, as well as movement
coordination.
Lateral and midsagittal
views of crucial speech
cortical areas (including
reading)
Source: Mildner (2015:36)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Domain-general systems, and
speech (2)
Motor areas are also probably involved in speech perception (e.g.
the motor theory of speech perception).
Bishop (2001) reports correlations and considerable genetic overlap
between developmental dyspraxia and specific language
impairment, mostly in speech production quality.
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Domain-general systems, and
language (1)
Concerning language evolution, most likely candidates for
exaptation are:
1. sensorimotor processing (including visuospatial processing)
2. declarative and procedural memory
3. executive functioning and general working memory
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Domain-general systems, and
language (2)
De Beni et al. (2005): role of verbal and visuospatial working memory
in language reception
Listening of „spatial”and „non-spatial”texts with concurrent cognitive
tasks
Van Beilen et al. (2004): correlations between semantic fluency and
executive functioning
Hamrick et al. (2018): role of procedural memory in grammar
acquisition and advanced grammar learning
„The findings yielded large effect sizes and held consistently across
languages, language families, linguistic structures, and tasks”(Hamrick
et al.2018:1487)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Hauser et al. (2002) and the faculty
of language (1)
Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch (2002): faculty of language in the broad
sense (FLB) vs. faculty of language in the narrow sense (FLN)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Source: Hauser et al. (2002)
Their assumptions are axiomatic.
Their assumptions are introspective.
Recursion is never defined (!).
It is not clear why „recursion”should be
considered as the „only uniquely human
component of the faculty of language”.
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Hauser et al. (2002) and the faculty
of language (2)
„[Hauser et al.] (2002)is an ambitious paper, written by a well-known
and interdisciplinary team of authors, and published in a very
prominent scientific journal.”(McMahon & McMahon 2013:199)
„Recursion, often undefined except in the loosest of senses, has
been seen by some as a symbolic last-ditch stand for a domain-
specific innatist view of human uniqueness. This is how Hauser et al.
(2002) have been interpreted, and indeed possibly how their paper
was intended.”(Hurford 2012:390)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Embodiment doesn’t necessarily
imply exaptation
Synchronic embodiment can suggest phylogenetic exaptation
(Occam’s razor).
The alternative, modular, hypothesis is problematic:
It would imply that there were two phases of language evolution
(language emergence and language embodiment).
It would imply that there was a significant brain reorganization in the
wake of various genetic mutations.
It doesn’t explain why some linguistic phenomena are more embodied
than others.
It is unclear how a modular language system would have functioned.
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Exaptation vs. modularity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Cartesian philosophy, discontinuity
and the „modern” humanities
„Much of the resistance to attributing concepts to animals comes from
philosophers and other scholars in the humanities. Until quite recently,
the detailed workings of the brain have been terra incognita, and
introspection by humans about their own mental activity was the main
source of theorizing about concepts. Thinkers for whom their own
mental activity is the foundation of all knowledge have some distance
to travel before they can be convinced that other people have minds,
let alone that animals have them, and let alone that the contents of
animal minds include entities like our own concepts. The Cartesian
tradition emanating from cogito ergo sum still has a strong grip. The
main objection to solipsism is that it flies in the face of common sense.
Neuroscientists and animal researchers have their own more
advanced common sense, and most start from a common assumption
of continuity between animal and human minds.”(Hurford 2007: 9)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Humans are primates (1)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Source: Smithsonian Institution
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Humans are primates (2)
Studies testing linguistic laws outside language have provided
important insights into the organization of biological systems. For
example, patterns consistent with Zipf’s law of abbreviation (which
predicts a negative relationship between word length and frequency
of use) have been found in the vocal and non-vocal behaviour of a
range of animals, and patterns consistent with Menzerath’s law
(according to which longer sequences are made up of shorter
constituents) have been found in primate vocal sequences […]. Both
laws have been linked to compression–the information theoretic
principle of minimizing code length. (Heesen et al.2019: 1)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Bickerton’s „paradox of continuity”
(1)
„[L]anguage was first and foremost a system of representation. It
was therefore, like all other such systems, a mechanism that to a
large extent created its own output–rather than merely replicating,
in another mode, what was fed into it. Precisely because of this,
language was able to increase, by several orders of magnitude, not
just the things but the kinds of thing that creatures could
communicate about. No mere communicative mechanism could
ever have done this. Thus, if we are to seek for the ultimate origins of
language, we cannot hope to find those origins by looking at the
means by which other creatures communicate with one another.”
(Bickerton 1990:75)
LANGUAGE IS UNIQUE.
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Bickerton’s „paradox of continuity”
(2)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Problems
with
Bickerton’s
paradox
of
continuity
Absence of evidence about the existence of a
particular phenomenon in a sample doesn’t imply
nonexistence of the phenomenon in the sample, let
alone nature (!).
Some aspects of animal communication systems can
be characterized as „productive”.
It is not clear why should qualitative/quantitative
differences between language and animal
communication systems be taken as arguments for
discontinuity.
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Ideas of discontinuity in linguistics
(1)
It would appear that the argumentation of discontinuity in linguistics
is following:
Language is phylogenetically independent on animal
communication systems because language is „unique”, and
language is „unique”because it appears sure to the naked linguist’s
eye that language has certain features which are lacking in animal
communication systems.
It is not clear how such argumentation is theoretically or empirically
valid from the viewpoint of the present models of evolutionary
biology.
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Ideas of discontinuity in linguistics
(2)
[M]an bears in his bodily structure clear traces of his descent from some lower
form; it may be urged that, as man differs so greatly in his mental power from
all other animals, there must be some error in this conclusion. No doubt the
difference in this respect is enormous […] If no organic being excepting man
had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly
different nature from those of the lower animals, then we should never have
been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually
developed. But it can be clearly shewn that there is no fundamental
difference of this kind. We must also admit that there is a much wider interval
in mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet,
and one of the higher apes, than between an ape and man; yet this immense
interval is filled up by numberless gradations. […] [T]here is no fundamental
difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.”
(Darwin 2013: 29–30)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
(„Lexical”) Semantics in vervet
communication (1)
Struhsaker (1967) and Seyfarth et al. (1980): semantic communication
in vervets (Chlorocebus pygerythrus)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Source:
Amandad
(Pixabay)
Alarm calls for five predators:
leopard (Panthera pardus),
martial eagle (Polemaetus
bellicosus), African rock
python (Python sebae),
babbons (Papio) and
unfamiliar humans
Vervet alarm calls are
semantic (denotative) and
symbolic (in Saussurean
sense)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
(„Lexical”) Semantics in vervet
communication (2)
Vervet alarm calls appear to be at least partially learned (vs. innate).
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Source: Seyfarth et al. (1980: 802)
(„Lexical”) Semantics in animal
communication (3)
There are other similar examples in other animals, and not only mammals:
„Digweed et al. (2005) describe two such calls in white-faced capuchin
monkeys: one call for bird predators, and one more general call for a
range of snakes and mammals. Writing of the pale-winged trumpeter, an
Amazonian bird, Seddon et al. (2002, p. 1331) write: ‘On detection of
danger, trumpeters gave two acoustically different calls, one for aerial
predators, and another for terrestrial predators or conspecific intruders.
They also produced distinct calls on detection of large prey items such as
snakes. These (alarm and snake-finding) call types seemed to evoke
different responses by receivers and therefore appeared to be
functionally referent.’Domestic chickens also have alarm calls
differentiated for aerial and ground predators (Karakashian et al.1988;
Evans et al.1993).”(Hurford 2007:226)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Syntax in „natural” animal
communication (1)
„Birds sing in combinations of notes, but the individual notes don’t
mean anything. A very complex series of notes, such as nightingale’s,
only conveys a message of sexual attractiveness or a threat to rival
male birds. So birdsong has syntax, but no compositional semantics. It is
the same with complex whale songs. Despite this major difference from
human language, we can learn some good lessons from closer study
of birds’ and whales’ songs. They show a control of phrasal structure,
often quite complex. The songs also suggest that quantitative
constraints on the length and phrasal complexity of songs cannot be
naturally separated from their structure.”(Hurford 2012: 1)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Syntax in „natural” animal
communication (2)
Suzuki et al. (2016) claim to have found semantic syntax in the
Japanese tits (Parus minor)
EXAPTATION AND CONTINUITY: Continuity vs. discontinuity
Source: Santa3 (Pixabay)
•scan for danger
ABC
•approach the caller
D
•scan and approach
ABC-D
•mostly no change in
behavior
D-ABC
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Concept modality vs. amodality
Semantic version of the embodiment vs. modularity dichotomy
„[T]here is not a general consensus on the specific properties that
distinguish modal and amodal representations, and different authors
adopt different criteria, which leads to a cross classification of certain
representations depending on the chosen criterion.”(Haimovici 2018:10)
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS
Source: Pulvermüller (2013: 465)
Animacy and biological motion (1)
Animacy is a semantic as well as a morphosyntactic category.
E.g. in „Serbo-Croatian”:Vidim miš-Ø.vs.Vidim miš-a. ‘I see a mouse’
(Barić et al.2005:104)
Animacy is cognitively related to the detection of biological motion:
‘Biological motion’ is a label attached to a kind of motion typical of an
animal; it is distinct from trees waving in the wind, rocks tumbling down a
cliff, waves in the sea, or eddies in a stream. Recognizing biological
motion is not just a matter of certain sensors being excited. There has to
be a quite complex calculation of the temporal and spatial relations
among the moving parts. (Hurford 2007:41)
Animacy can be understood as potential biological motion (Hurford
2007:43).
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Animacy and biological motion (2)
Detection of biological motion appears to be innate in humans as well as
other animals:
„Here we report that newly hatched chicks, reared and hatched in darkness, at
their first exposure to point-light animation sequences, exhibit a spontaneous
preference to approach biological motion patterns. Intriguingly, this predisposition
is not specific for the motion of a hen, but extends to the pattern of motion of other
vertebrates, even to that of a potential predator such as a cat. The predisposition
seems to reflect the existence of a mechanism in the brain aimed at orienting the
young animal towards objects that move semi-rigidly (as vertebrate animals do),
thus facilitating learning, i.e., through imprinting, about their more specific features
of motion.”(Vallortigara et al.2005:1312)
„The biological motion studies take off from a paper by Johansson (1973), who
showed that human babies attend preferentially to mobile patterns generated by
lights attached to the joints of moving animals.”(Hurford 2007:42)
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Lexical animacy
In linguistics, meaning of animate words is believed to be founded
on sensory features as opposed to functional features which
characterize the meaning of inanimate words (e.g. Caramazza &
Shelton 1998).
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
elephant
ears
tail
feet
trunk scissors
shear
blade
metal
cut
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
The animacy effect
Animacy is a prominent cognitive category that affects processing in
other cognitive domains, e.g. the so called animacy effect on memory
tasks.
Animate words and visual depictions of animate concepts are better
remembered relative to inanimate words and concepts (Bonin et al.
2014; Nairne et al.2013).
The animacy effect is also found in metamemory (Li et al.2016).
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Lexical concreteness/abstractness
Concreteness and abstractness are not categorical, but gradual
measures (Peti-Stantić et al.2018).
Concrete words are recognized faster and are remembered better
compared to abstract words (Kroll & Merves 1986; Marschark &
Paivio 1977; James 1975).
Cognitive linguistics: abstract semantics arises from concrete
semantics via mechanisms of metaphor and image schemas (e.g.
Lakoff 1987; Taylor 2003).
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Lexical concreteness/abstractness:
neuroscience (1)
Neuroscience of language is currently in development: „[I]t remains
a […] challenge to integrate neuroscience with the social sciences”
(Stout & Hecht 2015).
Concrete words are processed bilaterally with a „modest leftward
asymmetry”, while abstract words appear to be left-lateralized
(Binder et al.2005; Mildner 2015:199).
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Source: Pulvermüller (2013: 465)
Lexical concreteness/abstractness:
neuroscience (2)
Abstract words are also relatively embodied, namely in motor and
emotional brain regions.
Moseley et al. (2012): fMRI, passive listening of emotional (e.g.
dread,spite), face (e.g. gnaw,chew) and hand verbs (e.g. peel,
grasp)
Emotional verbs correlated with activation in the limbic and primary
motor cortices (incl. face and hand areas).
„We conclude that, similar to their role in action word processing,
activation of frontocentral motor systems in the dorsal stream reflects
the semantic binding of sign and meaning of abstract words denoting
emotions and possibly other body internal states.”(p.1634)
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Lexical concreteness/abstractness:
neuroscience (3)
Dreyer & Pulvermüller (2018): fMRI, passive reading of „mental”words
such as thought,logic etc. compared to action words
They found activation in the face area of the primary motor cortex
associated with processing of „mental”words.
„We conclude that a role of motor systems in semantic processing is not
restricted to concrete words but extends to at least some abstract mental
symbols previously thought to be entirely ‘disembodied’ and divorced
from semantically related sensorimotor processing.”(p.52)
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Action semantics: neuroscience (1)
Neurophysiological studies show somatotopic activation of words
related to face/mouth, hand/arm and foot actions.
Hauk et al. (2004): fMRI, passive reading of face (e.g. lick), hand
(e.g. pick) and foot action verbs (e.g. kick)
„This rules out a unified “meaning center” in the human brain and
supports a dynamic view according to which words are processed by
distributed neuronal assemblies with cortical topographies that reflect
word semantics”(p.301)
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Action semantics: neuroscience (2)
Studies investigating the ACE effect (action-sentence compatibility
effect) support the notion of the embodiment of action semantics.
Mollo et al. (2016): EEG and MEG, motoric priming during lexical and
semantic decision with hand and foot action verbs (SOA: 500 ms)
Congruency effects were found in motor areas, but also the superior
temporal cortex.
The connection between motor and language functions is also found in
areas traditionally associated with language or semantic functions.
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Action semantics: neuroscience (3)
Studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation also support the
embodiment theory of action semantics.
Pulvermüller et al. (2005): TMS of „left”motor areas during lexical
decision with hand and foot action verbs
„Arm area TMS led to faster arm than leg word responses and the
reverse effect, faster lexical decisions on leg than arm words, was
present when TMS was applied to leg areas.”(p.793)
Evidence of embodiment is also found in psychosemantics, e.g. the
BOI measure (body–object interaction), but also measures of
graspability, ease of gesticulation and the number of possible
actions (Heard et al.2018; Siakaluk et al.2008a,b).
EMBODIED LEXICAL SEMANTICS: Animacy and concreteness/abstractness
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Neural correlates of linguistic syntax
As semantic processing, syntactic processing is also associated with
distributed neural activation in the frontotemporoparietal areas.
The involvement of left-hemispheric middle and superior temporal,
inferior-posterior parietal, as well as inferior frontal brain regions in various
sentence comprehension tasks has been revealed by a host of
neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies […]. Part of this
supportive brain network is also the left-hemispheric lateral premotor
cortex, sometimes extending more posteriorly into the primary motor
area and more anteriorly into the middle frontal gyrus […]. The
involvement of the motor system in sentence processing is not only due
to phonological and articulatory mapping […] because it also provides
a grounding node for certain kinds of conceptual-semantic information.
(Ghio & Tettamanti 2016:647)
EMBODIED SYNTAX
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Neural correlates of linguistic syntax
As semantic processing, syntactic processing is also associated with
distributed neural activation in the frontotemporoparietal areas.
The involvement of left-hemispheric middle and superior temporal,
inferior-posterior parietal, as well as inferior frontal brain regions in various
sentence comprehension tasks has been revealed by a host of
neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies […]. Part of this
supportive brain network is also the left-hemispheric lateral premotor
cortex, sometimes extending more posteriorly into the primary motor
area and more anteriorly into the middle frontal gyrus […]. The
involvement of the motor system in sentence processing is not only due
to phonological and articulatory mapping […] because it also provides
a grounding node for certain kinds of conceptual-semantic information.
(Ghio & Tettamanti 2016:647)
EMBODIED SYNTAX
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Action production (and
understanding)
EMBODIED SYNTAX
Source: Stout (2010: 165)
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Transitivity in theoretical linguistics
(1)
Semantic vs. syntactic transitivity
Semantic transitivity is not a categorical, but a gradual phenomenon
Prototypical semantic transitivity: a volitional agent acts on a patient by
changing his state or position (thus, the typical agent is human)
„Hitting events are not prototypically transitive events, because the
affected (or non-agentive) participant in a hitting event does not undergo
a change of state or position, and consequently is not a typical patient. As
regards eating events, the point is that the primary motivation of the
action performed by the active participant in an eating event is not to
change the state of the other participant or control its position, but rather
to satisfy a physiological need, and consequently, the active participant in
an eating event is not a typical agent.”(Creissels 2016:18)
The typical patient is inanimate?
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Transitivity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Transitivity in theoretical linguistics
(2)
Core transitive verbs: verbs which code prototypical semantic events
(basic transitive coding)
Compare: He broke the window. vs.I feel love. vs.She is crossing the
street./She was sleeping all night.
Core transitive verbs are considered to be a linguistic universal and to
show „a high degree of formal homogeneity”.
„This suggests a cognitive prominence of this semantic class of verbs, and
justifies giving it a central status in a typology of argument coding and in
a typology of the interface between argument structure and
morphosyntax.”(Creissels 2016:19–20)
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Transitivity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Transitivity in theoretical linguistics
(3)
Wright (2001, 2002) differentiates between externally and internally
caused change of state verbs (e.g. break vs. bloom).
Internally caused change of state verbs relative to externally
caused change of state verbs
are significantly less coded in transitive frames,
they include significantly more often natural forces as agents,
and that they are rated as significantly less acceptable in transitive
frames.
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Transitivity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Neuroscience of syntactic
transitivity (1)
The methodology in these studies is a horror-story.
Tettamanti et al. (2005): fMRI, passive listening of sentences with face,
foot and hand-related actions („abstract”sentences as controls)
„Sentences were created by matching a transitive verb in the first-person
singular to a syntactically and semantically congruent object complement.
Each verb was paired with different objects each time. Subjects heard a
total of 40 sentences per experimental condition (mouth, hand, leg), plus
120 baseline (abstract) sentences.”
Ghio & Tettamanti (2016: 649) claim that „sentence of the subject–verb–
object type”were used.
Kemmerer (2012: 58), however, writes: „[P]articipants listened passively to
four types of Italian sentences that were syntactically equivalent but
described different kinds of situations: leg ⁄foot actions (e.g., Calcio il pallone
‘‘I kick the ball’’);arm⁄hand actions (e.g., Afferro il coltello ‘‘I grasp a knife’’);
mouth actions (e.g., Mordo la mela ‘‘I bite an apple’’); and psychological
states (e.g., Apprezzo la sincerita ‘‘I appreciate sincerity’’).”
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Transitivity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Neuroscience of syntactic
transitivity (2)
Tettamanti et al. (2005): Methodology remains shrouded in mystery,
but it appears they compared transitive constructions which were
semantically transitive in the experimental set and intransitive in the
control set.
Compared to the control set, experimental sentences evoked greater
activation in the frontotemporoparietal network incl. the pars
opercularis (BA 44), premotoric cortex, inferior parietal lobule,
intraparietal sulcus and pMTG.
„These data provide the first direct evidence that listening to sentences
that describe actions engages the visuomotor circuits which subserve
action execution and observation.”(action semantics)
Syntactic transitivity doesn’t have a unified neural correlate.
Is the embodiment effect due to the entire transitive scenario or due to
the meaning of particular components (e.g. verbs)?
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Transitivity
Neuroscience of syntactic
transitivity (3)
Desai et al. (2010): fMRI, active listening of hand and arm-related
action sentences compared to „abstract”sentences (e.g. They
consider the risk.).
Experimental sentences produced greater activation in parts of the
parietal and temporal cortices.
Previous question remain unanswered.
Similar studies with similar results and similarly enigmatic interpretations
concerning the embodiment of semantic and syntactic transitivity
include Van Dam & Desai (2016), Aziz-Zadeh et al. (2006), Scorolli et al.
(2012), Progovac et al. (2018).
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Transitivity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Neuroscience of syntactic
transitivity (4)
Ferretti et al. (2001): transitive verbs prime typical agents (arresting–cop),
patients (arresting–criminal) and instruments (stirred–spoon), but not
locations (swam–ocean)
A short SOA (250 ms) was used, indicating an automatic neural connection.
Results suggest that we can really talk about the embodiment of semantic
transitivity in previous studies as it would be difficult to separate the effects of
verb meaning, and agents and patients (and instruments).
Glenberg & Kaschak (2002): ACE, hand actions and transfer sentences
differing in the direction of action/transfer
Imperative sentences, sentences denoting transfer of concrete objects,
sentences denoting „transfer of abstract entitites”
ACE was found for all sentence types!
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Transitivity
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Basic word order
Basic word order is a controversial linguistic construct (Newmeyer
2003):
There are no clear criteria for determining basic word order across
languages.
Some languages appear to have no basic word order.
The universalist approach to the subject and object components is
potentiall problematic from a cross-linguistic perspective.
The relative frequency of the sentence type used for establishing the
basic word order is „extremely low”.
Nevertheless, Newmeyer (2003) concludes that the basic word
order approach is okay.
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Word order
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Basic word order from a cross-
linguistic perspective
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Word order
According to: Dryer (2011)
SOV and SVO are also
the dominant word orders
in sign languages (Napoli
& Sutton-Spence 2014).
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Dominance of SOV and SVO word
orders
Additional evidence that SOV and SVO word orders are overwhelmingly preferred comes
from several other sources. First, Kimmelman [2012] found that in a sample of 24 sign
languages, 21 (88%) have SOV and ⁄or SVO as the dominant sequencing pattern(s).
Second, within the last 70 years, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) has gradually
arisen in an isolated community with a high incidence of genetically based prelingual
deafness, and in the space of a single generation, it assumed a grammatical structure
characterized by SOV order (Sandler et al. 2005). Given that none of the neighboring
spoken or signed languages are SOV, this property of ABSL presumably developed
spontaneously. Third, Goldin-Meadow et al. (2008) asked speakers of three SVO languages
(English, Spanish, and Mandarin) and one SOV language (Turkish) to perform two non-
verbal tasks: first, describe events using manual gestures without speech; and second,
reconstruct events illustrated in pictures. The investigators found that in both tasks all of the
participants were strongly inclined to use the same sequencing strategy –specifically,
agent-patient-action, which is analogous to the SOV pattern in spoken languages. Taken
together, these three sets of results support the view that SOV and SVO word orders –
perhaps especially the former –reflect the most cognitively natural ways of linearizing the
fundamental elements in a transitive clause. (Kemmerer 2012:52)
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Word order
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Agent/subject saliency (1)
Two principles appear to affect the word order proportions: subject
saliency, and verb–object juxtapositioning
According to Kemmerer (2012), subject saliency reflects how the
brain understands core transitive events in which the agent is the
head of a causal chain affecting the patient
Agent saliency is evidenced in empirical studies (Cohn & Paczynski
2013; Cohn et al.2017):
information about the agent compared to the patient facilitates
prediction of action in the future
agents are longer viewed in visual depictions than patients
visual depictions primed by agents are processed faster compared to
depictions primed by patients
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Word order
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Agent/subject saliency (2)
Nominative-accusative languages are cross-linguistically more frequent
compared to ergative-absolutive languages (Bickel et al.2015; Nichols
1993)
Bornkessel et al. (2004): ERP, reception of dependent object clauses in
which the syntactic and semantic roles are ambiguous until the end of
the sentence
…dass Betram Surferinnen gratuliert hat.vs.…dass Betram Surferinnen
gratuliert haben.
A combination of a biphasic negativity after 400 ms and late positivity in
the latter sentence type
Results suggest that the first argument is automatically processed as an
agent until further analysis shows otherwise
Similar results by Bickel et al. (2015) who investigated Hindi.
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Word order
Agent/subject saliency and Broca’s
area (1)
Kemmerer (2012) speculates that the two dominant word orders reflect the
ways in which Broca’s area processes actions in general.
Broca’s area is a very controversial topic and it appears that today nobody
really knows precisely what Broca’s area is, nor where it is.
Nevertheless, theorizing and research continue (as they should).
Broca’s area is highly multifunctional: motor skills in tool use (Hopkins et al.2017),
production of nonverbal motor behaviors (Hupfeld et al.2017), nonverbal
action understanding (Fazio et al.2009), imitation (Kühn et al.2013), music
(Elmer et al.2018), visuospatial perception (Bahlmann et al.), speech,
language, etc.
„These findings have prompted a search for a common functional denominator, and
some of the major candidates currently being debated are cognitive control,
sequence processing, and hierarchical processing.”(Kemmerer 2012:55)
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Word order
Agent/subject saliency and Broca’s
area (2)
In short, SOV and SVO would reflect the temporal structure of the
causal action chain which is coded in Broca’s area, and which is
enabled through a phylogenetically older system of sequential and
hierarchical organization of bodily movements and actions.
Kemmerer (2012:62) admits his theory is speculative: „Although this
proposal is grounded in a wealth of empirical studies, it is admittedly
a bold and speculative attempt to bridge the gap between
linguistic typology and cognitive neuroscience. Whether it is on the
right track remains to be seen, but hopefully it will stimulate further
research on the interaction between the cross-linguistic
representation of action and the functional architecture of Broca’s
area.”
EMBODIED SYNTAX: Word order
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Conclusions (1)
While I have given no direct evidence for exaptation in language evolution,
relative synchronic embodiment of particular linguistic functions suggests
that exaptation is a more plausible evolutionary scenario than modularity.
Animal studies suggest that at least some animals have symbolic
communication (in the Saussurean sense). Furthermore, at least some
animals display syntactic capacities within their communication systems.
These results stand opposed to the discontinuity theories of language
evolution.
There is strong evidence for the embodiment of particular lexical-semantic
phenomena. This includes concrete and action words, as well as abstract
words. Bilaterality of the processing of concrete meanings suggests that
functional laterelization was not a prerequisite for concrete words. Many
studies reported somatotopic association between action verbs and brain
activation.
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Conclusions (2)
Animacy appears to rely on robust mechanisms of biological motion
detection suggesting that it might have been an early semantic
phenomenon. Furthermore, the typical agents are animate or
specifically human. The typical patient appears to be inanimate.
Transitivity studies also show connections to the visuomotor/sensorimotor
brain system involved in action production and understanding.
Processing of prototypical semantic transitivity appears to be highly
embodied. Thus, transitive events might have been one of the first
experiences to have been linguistically lexicalized. Syntactic transitivity
could also be relatively embodied, however, further studies are
needed. It appears that syntactic transitivity phylogenetically arose
from semantic transitivity.
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
Conclusions (3)
The principle of agent/subject saliency could suggest that
rudimentary syntactic components might have been an early
phenomenon in language evolution, i.e. if agents were lexicalized,
they were probably linearly placed first. This is supported by the
cross-linguistic dominance of SOV and SVO word orders, the
neurocognitive saliency of agents, the prevalence of Nom.-Acc.
relative to Erg.-Abs. languages and neurophysiological studies
showing that the first argument is automatically analysed as the
agent. Kemmerer (2012) suggested this reflects how Broca’s area, or
parts of the visuomotor system, process prototypical transitive events
in which the starting focus is on the agent.
Linguistisches Kolloquium 2019/20, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 18/11/2019
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