The comparative neuroprimatology 2018 (CNP-2018) road map for research on How the Brain Got Language

Arbib, Michael A.; Aboitiz, Francisco; Burkart, Judith M.; Corballis, Michael C.; Coudé, Gino; Hecht, Erin E.; Liebal, Katja; Myowa‐Yamakoshi, Masako; Pustejovsky, James; Putt, Shelby S.; Rossano, Federico; Russon, Anne E.; Schoenemann, P. Thomas; Seifert, Uwe; Semendeferi, Katerina; Sinha, Chris; Stout, Dietrich; Volterra, Virginia; Wacewicz, Sławomir; Wilson, Benjamin

doi:10.1075/bct.112.23arb

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In sum, the proposal is that bodily mimesis was the key cognitive precondition for sign-based communication, which is uniquely human and a stepping stone in the evolution of modern human systems of communication, including language 3 . Notably, mimesis theory does not have strong commitments on the specifics of the neural implementation of this cognitive capacity, but it is in principle compatible with Arbib's approach (Mirror Neuron Hypothesis [8], recently updated to Cognitive Neuroprimatology [24]), which stresses the role of the mirror neuron system (see esp. [11]).…”

Section: First Signs: Mimetic and Primary-iconicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pantomimic fossils in modern human communication

Żywiczyński

Wacewicz

Lister

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Bodily mimesis, the capacity to use the body representationally, was one of the key innovations that allowed early humans to go beyond the ‘baseline’ of generalized ape communication and cognition. We argue that the original human-specific communication afforded by bodily mimesis was based on signs that involve three entities: an expression that represents an object (i.e. communicated content) for an interpreter . We further propose that the core component of this communication, pantomime, was able to transmit referential information that was not limited to select semantic domains or the ‘here-and-now’, by means of motivated—most importantly iconic—signs. Pressures for expressivity and economy then led to conventionalization of signs and a growth of linguistic characteristics: semiotic systematicity and combinatorial expression. Despite these developments, both naturalistic and experimental data suggest that the system of pantomime did not disappear and is actively used by modern humans. Its contemporary manifestations, or pantomimic fossils , emerge when language cannot be used, for instance when people do not share a common language, or in situations where the use of (spoken) language is difficult, impossible or forbidden. Under such circumstances, people bootstrap communication by means of pantomime and, when these circumstances persist, newly emergent pantomimic communication becomes increasingly language-like. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

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Section: First Signs: Mimetic and Primary-iconicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pantomimic fossils in modern human communication

Żywiczyński

Wacewicz

Lister

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…While language as a complex expressive system is undoubtedly a derived trait of humans, some critical cognitive building blocks of the human communication system are shared with animal communication (e.g. Hauser et al ., ; Arbib et al ., , ; Levinson & Holler, ; Engesser et al ., ). In the study of language origins, comparative researchers have typically focused on these distinct cognitive building blocks and investigated their presence in the gestural, vocal or facial communicative acts of non‐human species.…”

Section: Cognitive Mechanisms Identified In Non‐human Gestures and Vomentioning

confidence: 99%

Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations

et al. 2019

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The presence of divergent and independent research traditions in the gestural and vocal domains of primate communication has resulted in major discrepancies in the definition and operationalization of cognitive concepts. However, in recent years, accumulating evidence from behavioural and neurobiological research has shown that both human and non‐human primate communication is inherently multimodal. It is therefore timely to integrate the study of gestural and vocal communication. Herein, we review evidence demonstrating that there is no clear difference between primate gestures and vocalizations in the extent to which they show evidence for the presence of key language properties: intentionality, reference, iconicity and turn‐taking. We also find high overlap in the neurobiological mechanisms producing primate gestures and vocalizations, as well as in ontogenetic flexibility. These findings confirm that human language had multimodal origins. Nonetheless, we note that in great apes, gestures seem to fulfil a carrying (i.e. predominantly informative) role in close‐range communication, whereas the opposite holds for face‐to‐face interactions of humans. This suggests an evolutionary shift in the carrying role from the gestural to the vocal stream, and we explore this transition in the carrying modality. Finally, we suggest that future studies should focus on the links between complex communication, sociality and cooperative tendency to strengthen the study of language origins.

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“…It began as the Mirror System Hypothesis (MSH; Arbib 2005Arbib , 2012Arbib , 2016 and now continues as Cognitive Neuroprimatology (CNP; Arbib 2018). In his work, Arbib and his collaborators (see especially Arbib et al 2018) rely on a broad range of interdisciplinary data, which particularly prominently includes comparative data from extant primates (unlike in many other language evolution accounts, not limited to great apes but extending to macaques and other monkey species) as well as results of research on human visual-bodily communication, including both co-speech gesture and sign languages.…”

Section: Michael Arbib: the Language-ready Brainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language in Language Evolution Research

Wacewicz

Żywiczyński

Hartmann

et al. 2021

BioLing

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Many controversies in language evolution research derive from the fact that language is itself a natural language word, which makes the underlying concept fuzzy and cumbersome, and a common perception is that progress in language evolution research is hindered because researchers do not ‘talk about the same thing’. In this article, we claim that agreement on a single, top-down definition of language is not a sine qua non for good and productive research in the field of language evolution. First, we use the example of the notion FLN (‘faculty of language in the narrow sense’) to demonstrate how the specific wording of an important top-down definition of (the faculty of) language can—surprisingly—be inconsequential to actual research practice. We then review four approaches to language evolution that we estimate to be particularly influential in the last decade. We show how their breadth precludes a single common conceptualization of language but instead leads to a family resemblance pattern, which underwrites fruitful communication between these approaches, leading to cross-fertilisation and synergies.

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The comparative neuroprimatology 2018 (CNP-2018) road map for research on How the Brain Got Language

Cited by 4 publications

References 27 publications

Pantomimic fossils in modern human communication

Pantomimic fossils in modern human communication

Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations

Language in Language Evolution Research

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