The pivotal role of metaphor in the evolution of human language

Abstract

There is broad agreement among evolutionary linguists that the emergence of human language, as opposed to other primate communication systems, is characterised by two key phenomena: the use of symbols, and the use of grammatical structure (Tomasello 2003). In this paper, we show that these two defining aspects of language actually emerge from the same set of underlying cognitive mechanisms within the context of ostensive-inferential communication. We take an avowedly cognitive approach to the role of metaphor in language change, setting out how general capacities such as the recognition of common ground, the inference of meaning from context, and the memorisation of language usage, can together lead to the conventionalisation of metaphors, and thence to systematic changes in language structure, including the development of grammatical linguistic units from formerly meaningful elements through grammaticalisation (Hoefler and Smith 2009). We show that the relevant cognitive competences are general-purpose mechanisms which are crucially not specific to language; they also underpin non-linguistic communication, where the same processes lead to the emergence of apparently arbitrary symbols.

Integrating Cognitive Linguistics and language evolution research

“…The first requirement is an inferential capacity that makes use of common ground and the communicative context to expand a pre-existing system of constructions (for recent accounts see Smith and Höfler 2014;Scott-Phillips 2014). Once this inferential capacity is in place, the process of cultural evolution frees up a communication system's ability to explore new functional spaces where contentful constructions take on a more procedural role.…”

Models of language evolution and change

“…147 In such experiments, the referents are usually chosen from a small, pre-defined set, but recent theoretical work supported by computational models 149 suggests that this 'drift to the arbitrary' 150 in shared communication systems is a much more general process, underpinned by the so-called metaphorical use of signs, which are used to represent meanings slightly different from their motivated meaning but still inferable from the communicative context. 61 Experimental approaches have also been used to confirm the results of earlier computational models, most notably in relation to iterated learning across chains of participants. In the most celebrated of these, participants were asked to learn an 'alien' language of random strings paired with a set of structured meanings; they were tested on their learning, and their answers were used as the training data for the next participant.…”

Metafora, metonímia és pragmatikai következtetés a grammatikalizációs jelentésváltozásban

“…Az előző ponthoz hasonlóan a metonímia fogalmához kapcsolódóan is ismertetem a történeti példa egy vonatkozó megközelítését (Bybee 2007). Az 5. pont olyan elképzeléseket (Hopper-Traugott 1993;Heine-Claudi-Hünnemeyer 1991;Kearns 2002;Höfler-Smith 2009;Smith-Höfler 2015) gyűjt össze, amelyek ötvözik a grammatikalizációs jelentésváltozás metaforán, illetve metonímián alapuló elemzését. Végül a 6. pontban a vizsgált jelentésváltozás egy mind a metafora, mind a metonímia fogalmát elvető megközelítésére (Pinto de Lima 1999) láthatunk példát.…”