Interaction and iconicity in the evolution of language

Pleyer, Michael; Hartmann, Stefan; Winters, James; Zlatev, Jordan

doi:10.1075/is.18.3.01ple

Cited by 27 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…In particular, as illustrated in the discussion above, we have partly neglected the differences within the field of biolinguistics and usage-based approaches, respectively. As Balari and Lorenzo (2018) point out in their discussion of different ontological commitments regarding the status of language and the issue of modularity, “many middle ground positions exist that complicate the picture.” In addition, we have not discussed challenges that face both approaches equally, for example the question of how to integrate multimodality (Pleyer et al, 2017; Wacewicz and Zywiczynski, 2017) and embodiment (Ferretti et al, 2018; see also Gomez-Marin and Ghazanfar, 2019) into accounts of language evolution. The same holds for the challenges of integrating language evolution research with evo-devo research, a project that is still very much in its infancy (e.g., Benítez-Burraco and Boeckx, 2014).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing a Consensus on Language Evolution? Convergences and Differences Between Biolinguistic and Usage-Based Approaches

Pleyer

Hartmann

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Two of the main theoretical approaches to the evolution of language are biolinguistics and usage-based approaches. Both are often conceptualized as belonging to seemingly irreconcilable “camps.” Biolinguistic approaches assume that the ability to acquire language is based on a language-specific genetic foundation. Usage-based approaches, on the other hand, stress the importance of domain-general cognitive capacities, social cognition, and interaction. However, there have been a number of recent developments in both paradigms which suggest that biolinguistic and usage-based approaches are actually moving closer together. For example, theoretical advancements such as evo-devo and complex adaptive system theory have gained traction in the language sciences, leading to changed conceptions of issues like the relative influence of “nature” and “nurture.” In this paper, we outline points of convergence between current minimalist biolinguistic and usage-based approaches regarding four contentious issues: (1) modularity and domain specificity; (2) innateness and development; (3) cultural and biological evolution; and (4) knowledge of language and its description. We show that across both paradigms, researchers have come to increasingly embrace more complex views of these issues. They also have come to appreciate the view that biological and cultural evolution are closely intertwined, which lead to an increased amount of common ground between minimalist biolinguistics and usage-based approaches.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing a Consensus on Language Evolution? Convergences and Differences Between Biolinguistic and Usage-Based Approaches

Pleyer

Hartmann

2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…(Bankieris & Simner 2015;Sidhu & Pexman 2017) • What is the role of iconicity in the cultural evolution of language? (Verhoef, Kirby & de Boer 2015;Tamariz et al 2017;Pleyer et al 2017) • How are new vocal depictions created and interpreted? (Assaneo, Nichols & Trevisan 2011;Dingemanse 2014;Perlman, Dale & Lupyan 2015) • Which words are most iconic, and why?…”

Section: In Conclusion: Challenges and Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

Dingemanse

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Ideophones (also known as expressives or mimetics, and including onomatopoeia) have been systematically studied in linguistics since the 1850s, when they were first described as a lexical class of vivid sensory words in West-African languages. This paper surveys the research history of ideophones, from its roots in African linguistics to its fruits in general linguistics and typology around the globe. It shows that despite a recurrent narrative of marginalisation, work on ideophones has made an impact in many areas of linguistics, from theories of phonological features to typologies of manner and motion, and from sound symbolism to sensory language. Due to their hybrid nature as gradient vocal gestures that grow roots in discrete linguistic systems, ideophones provide opportunities to reframe typological questions, reconsider the role of language ideology in linguistic scholarship, and rethink the margins of language. With ideophones increasingly being brought into the fold of the language sciences, this review synthesises past theoretical insights and empirical findings in order to enable future work to build on them.

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“…In a CxG framework, there are two additional foundational capacities for the evolution of PL1 and its elaborations in PL2. The first is the importance of iconicity in language structure and acquisition [111,112], which has also been suggested to play an important role in the emergence of protolinguistic forms of communication, especially in the gestural domain [105,[113][114][115]. Interestingly, great apes seem not to be able to spontaneously comprehend iconic gestures [116,117].…”

Section: The Phylogenetic Timescalementioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing a protolanguage: reconstructing prehistoric languages in a usage-based construction grammar framework

Hartmann

Pleyer

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Construction grammar is an approach to language that posits that units and structures in language can be exhaustively described as pairings between form and meaning. These pairings are called constructions and can have different degrees of abstraction, i.e. they span the entire range from very concrete ( armadillo, avocado ) to very abstract constructions such as the ditransitive construction ( I gave her a book ). This approach has been applied to a wide variety of different areas of research in linguistics, such as how new constructions emerge and change historically. It has also been applied to investigate the evolutionary emergence of modern fully fledged language, i.e. the question of how systems of constructions can arise out of prelinguistic communication. In this paper, we review the contribution of usage-based construction grammar approaches to language change and language evolution to the questions of (i) the structure and nature of prehistoric languages and (ii) how constructions in prehistoric languages emerged out of non-linguistic or protolinguistic communication. In particular, we discuss the possibilities of using constructions as the main unit of analysis both in reconstructing predecessors of existing languages (protolanguages) and in formulating theories of how a potential predecessor of human language in general (protolanguage) must have looked like. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

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Interaction and iconicity in the evolution of language

Cited by 27 publications

References 44 publications

Constructing a Consensus on Language Evolution? Convergences and Differences Between Biolinguistic and Usage-Based Approaches

Constructing a Consensus on Language Evolution? Convergences and Differences Between Biolinguistic and Usage-Based Approaches

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

Constructing a protolanguage: reconstructing prehistoric languages in a usage-based construction grammar framework

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