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2007 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

6. Distributed Language: Biomechanics, Functions, and the Origins of Talk

verfasst von : Stephen J. Cowley

Erschienen in: Emergence of Communication and Language

Verlag: Springer London

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Abstract

Emphasizing that word-forms are culturally selected, the paper takes a distributed view of language. This is used to frame evidence that, in ontogenesis, language emerges under dual control by adult and child. Since parties gear to each other’s biomechanics, norm-based behaviour prompts affective processes that drive prepared learning. This, it is argued, explains early stages in learning to talk. Next, this approach to external symbol grounding (ESG) is contrasted with ones where a similar problem is treated as internal to the agent. Then, turning to synthetic models, I indicate how the ESG can be used to model either populations of agents or dyads who, using complex signals, transform each other’s agency.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Emergence of a Communication System: International Sign

Nächstes Kapitel The Recruitment Theory of Language Origins

While lacking space to develop the argument, my view is that much human affective expression has strategic functions akin to those described by Ross and Dumouchel (2005).

Especially in cultures with well established written traditions it is often assumed that infants ‘acquire’ a particular code by gaining control over a distinct set of word-forms and associated shared meanings. Related views dominate linguists working in, especially, whatMatthews (1993) calls the American descriptivist tradition: while some appeal to innate systems that facilitate ‘acquisition’ others prefer to invoke general learning mechanisms (for discussion, see Cowley, 2001).

Interindividual coupling is typically explored in terms of metaphors such as ‘synchronization’ (Condon, 1979) ‘attunement’ (Fogel, 1993) ‘accommodation’ (Giles, Coipland & Coulpland, 1991) and ‘empathy’ (Preston & de Waal, 2002). This is unfortunate because, ascowley (1995; 1998; 2006) argues, its main functions arise because it evokes real-time response or, in terms developed in this paper, biobehaviour.

Even in air traffic control, pilots depend heavily on the myth that language functions as a shared code (Hutchins, 1995b). This belief enables them to use verbal patterns as carriers of Shannon-information. For example, a pilot may utter ‘flaps zero’ as a step in landing a plane: the basis of this, it transpires, lies in imposing additional information on the display of an air speed indicator. It depends on a network of beliefs and artefacts –not a shared code. The example recalls how Micronesian sailors impose information on the stars. They use this to adjust their rowing so that, with striking reliability, they make landfall by doing (what they call) waiting for a floating island.

Deacon (1997) andTomasello (1999); (2003) represent important exceptions to this general trend. However, as Cowley (2002) objects, they too assume that neural representations correspond to linguistic units. Indeed, Cowley (2004b) argues that it is only in order to save this picture that Tomasello is obliged to posit a ‘social-cognitive adaptation’.

In English translation, she says “no” (5 times), “I don’t want it”, “I’m going to get you”, “Where’s your father now”, and “your father’s coming”.

The robot records the time spent interacting with each individual and is programmed in such a way that at different time thresholds (e.g. 50 hours), it tells a child a secret.

If it proves impossible to develop such models, this would favour the view that language differs from anything else in biology or engineering.

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Titel: Distributed Language: Biomechanics, Functions, and the Origins of Talk
verfasst von: Stephen J. Cowley
Verlag: Springer London
Buch: Emergence of Communication and Language
Print ISBN: 978-1-84628-491-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-84628-779-4

Copyright-Jahr: 2007
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-779-4_6

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