Grammar as an app

With or without the use of words, human communication has a syntax of its own, i.e. we can use all kinds of communicative tools (face gestures, calls, whistles, clicks, facial gestures, etc.) to create meaning: to tell a story, to refer to the present or past, to talk about possession, to point to an agent in the story, to urge the others to do something, to present information as a finished event, to describe an action that is happening simultaneously, to negate, to exclamate, to express admiration, doubt, prohibition, permission, lack of obligation, possibility, certainty, uncertainty. We have a brain endowed with the ability to generate these contrastive meanings and we use communicative elements accordingly.

Many different scenarios have been proposed for the emergence of human language. In one of them, it is thought that at the beginning there were a series of words that were used without a particular syntax. I think this idea is wrong. Words were born in a context that was already meaningful in terms of communication, or syntax. From the very start, their meaning was connected to their function.

I am aware that the term syntax is traditionally used as one of the main parts of grammar, alongside morphology and semantics. This traditional meaning should not be confused with the one I have described above.

On the other hand, I define grammar as the application of our logical thought to a specific subset of communicative elements: the verbal ones.

The gramamrs of the various human languages bear strong similarities with each other, and this peculiarity has led some people to think that there is some kind of universal grammar from which subsequent ones would have generated. I think this idea is completely absurd. The similarities arise from two main factors:

1) all human languages and their grammars are based on the logical structure and symbolic possiblities of the human brain, which are to be understood as universal.

2) grammars do not emerge in complete isolation: there is a high degree of convergence between them.

Another aspect to consider is the role of our speech capacity, i.e. our capacity to produce sounds. I'll be talking about this in a forthcoming post.

Universals of human communication

For many years, linguists (especially in the US) have discussed concepts such as Language Universals and Universal Grammar (UG), in an attempt to find features or patterns shared by all languages in the world. The idea seems interesting but... is there anything really 'universal' in language? In a recent article, Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson have reviewed the concept of language universals, offering a great deal of examples that contradict even the most basic of the universals proposed by Greenberg and other linguists. According to the authors of the article, the only thing that can be established is a series of statistical tendencies (following Greenberg's nomenclature) that may be inferred from typological analysis. As for Chomsky's UG, I personally think it is one of the most irrelevant concepts ever devised in linguistics.

So it seems that there might be nothing really 'universal' about human language, but what about human communication? In two recent posts (here and here), I put forward some ideas about the origin of language and grammar. In my opinion, the main difference between human and non-human 'language' is the fact that we can use the narrative/descriptive vs imperative contrast in our utterances; in fact, there's no way we can produce an utterance ouside these parameters. If I say a word or a sentence, I'm either narrating/describing something or telling someone to do something, or maybe a combination of both, whereas in non-human communication, it is not clear that this contrast is used meaningfully, or consciously. At first, I thought of it in terms of 'language' or 'grammar', but then I realized that it is present in both verbal and non-verbal types of human communication. Whenever we communicate, with words or with gestures, we are actually creating narrative, descriptive or imperative contexts, and our listeners have an ability to decode this variety of meanings. The grammatical components associated with this contrast, e.g. the various moods (imperative, optative, indicative, etc.) were probably preceded by a non-verbal 'grammar' that set the foundations for human oral language as we know it. Without this previous development, which may have originated at a very early stage in our development as a species, our verbal communication would be limited to a simple set of calls.

Now, what about universals? Is it possible to find them at the level of human communication? I can see at least two possible candidates:

1. All human groups use verbal language, unless their members are physically impaired to develop this ability, e.g. deaf and dumb people.

2. In all types of human communication, both verbal and non-verbal, a significant contrast is established between narrative/descriptive and imperative contents.

Sources of the pictures, (added on Jan31, 2010): 1st and 3rd, from Inimagine; 2nd picture, from this interesting article in PNAS.

The birth of grammar

It was in the papers recently (as you can see here or here): according to some researchers, there is a species of monkeys, known as Campbell's monkeys, who have developed a complex system of alert calls which, in some of its features (e.g. meaningful combination of distinctive units), would resemble some form of syntax. Of course, this discovery has caused some stir among the linguistic community, and now there's an ongoing debate about this question: "Are these monkeys, actually, using syntax?", a question which, probably, cannot be answered.

Campbell's monkeys use their language as alert calls, whenever there is a potential danger in sight, e.g. an approaching predator or a falling tree. They use a variety of calls (at least six: Boom, Krak, Hok, Hok-oo, Krak-oo, Wak-oo) and combine them in different ways to convey meaning. Let's imagine one of these alert situations: a group of monkeys are eating fruit from a tree, and then one of them sees a leopard a few metres away. As an immediate response he shouts an alert: Hok-oo Krak Boom! (I've invented the combination just to use it as an example). On hearing this, the other monkeys react and run for safety. The situation is clear: there is a message and a reaction to the message. Now, what does the message involve?

This series (Hok-oo Krak Boom!) can be understood at least in two different ways:

1. as an imperative: run from the approaching leopard!
2. as a narrative/description: a leopard is approaching!

Maybe the monkeys do not go as far as interpreting the utterance one way or the other. But, for us, linguistic utterances do have a form. In interpretations 1 and 2 above we have the same situation, and roughly the same meaning, but different language. An imperative is not the same as a narrative. Let's imagine our human ancestors milions of years ago. Maybe at some point they started to develop an ability to distinguish between imperative and narrative/description. Let's see another example from the animal world: bees.

It is well known that bees use body language to explain location of food sources to other bees in the hive. They perform what is sometimes referred to as a 'dance': a series of vibrations of their bodies in various positions that the other bees can interpret as a maningful message. The question is: is this language? How could we translate this waggle dance into human language. Let's see an example:

1. I have found some nice pollen in the southwest.
2. Go to the sothwest to get some nice pollen!

Number 1 is a narrative, number 2 an imperative. Again, bees are not likely to care much about these details, but for us humans, they make a difference. A linguistic difference.

In my post about the birth of language I talked about grammar as the application of logical thought and our capacity for abstraction to a particular problem: the growing amount of linguisitc units facilitated by our rich verbal ability, inherent to humans. I thought of individual units meaning 'red rock' or 'go to the river!', and then a later development where abstractions such as 'nouns', 'adjectives' or verbs' would be used as a more economical and efficient way of storing linguistic units. One of the first examples that came to my mind was the use of imperatives, as the most basic verb form. However, the examples from the animal world (see above) have shown me that the implemenation of narrative/descriptive mechanisms could perfectly be at the same level of abstraction. Of course, in our languages of today we are used to a complex array of verb features (mood, voice, tense, aspect) which offer an endless range of possiblities, but when I think of the first steps of human language, it seems to me that the difference between these two basic moods, which I call 'imperative' and 'narrative/descriptive', could have been quite relevant. What was the first 'mood' that gave birth to the original forms of verbal expression? Was it the need to tell the others what they should do? Or was it the need to narrate things? Was our first alert call understood as 'climb the tree (because there's a lion approaching)!' or simply 'there's a lion approaching!'? Difficult to know.
Last update: 4-Oct-2020.
Note: The images in this post are all paintings by the French artist Henri Rousseau, aka 'Le Douanier' Rousseau.

Language as it happens

In linguistics, and probably elsewhere in the human sciences, there is nothing more imperfect than a theory that is in search of perfection. Many linguists spend their entire academic life working on abstract entities that they call 'languages', or 'grammars'. They apply a given theory (structuralism, generative grammar, etc.) or try to devise a new one, which is probably as artificial and detached from reality as the ones before it. What for? Are they trying to unveil the hidden secrets of language by means of rules and parameters? Are they trying to find a flawless description of human languages?

I see linguistics differently. A casual conversation between people, no matter where it takes place or what it is about (people chatting in the street, on the bus, families gathering round a table to talk about the old times and the new, a mother talking to her baby, a child trying to communicate with words), tells us more about language than many books written by theoretical linguists.

Human language is a treasure, and it's alive.

(Alternatively, we can use because instead of and in the sentence above; another option is with but, especially if we are addressing a theoretician).

Word diffusion

In the framework of traditional historical linguistics, also called Comparative Grammar, the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) words has been the basis for the reconstruction of PIE society and culture. An analysis of the economy, social structure and technological level of this human group is a relevant tool in order to determine the chronology of IE languages and peoples. For example, by determining the presence of common PIE vocabulary for agriculture or stock breeding, some authors have concluded that the speakers of PIE were the members of a post-Neolithic society. A classic in this type of research is Émile Benveniste’s Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes (1969), in two volumes. Even though it is written in the framework of the traditional IE paradigm, I must say this book is worth reading, especially because of the author’s impressive erudition and depth of analysis. More recently, J.P. Mallory has also summarized the main points in the reconstruction of PIE society (see J.P. Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans, 1989, pp. 110-127). He gives examples of reconstructed PIE words which can be considered ‘general’, that is, present in a relevant number of IE languages. These words belong to the fields of environment (for example the names of trees), the economy (words for “sheep”, “pig”, “horse”; only a few words connected with agriculture, e.g. *agros), the concept of ‘settlement’, technology (pottery, metallurgy, sewing, words for “wool”, “wheel”, etc.) and social organization (kinship terms, words for “chief of the clan”, etc.). After reviewing these examples, Mallory reaches the following conclusions:

(p. 126): “... we can see that the presence of words for pottery, domestic animals and agriculture in the Proto-Indo-European lexicon argues that the community was at least Neolithic and that it would be senseless to assign the Proto-Indo-European to the earlier hunter-gatherer societies of the Mesolithic”.

(p. 127): “..., we might then assign a notional date of about 4500 BC as the earliest probable time for the culture reconstructed from the inherited vocabulary of the Indo-European languages”.

(p. 127): “In the broadest terms then, the Proto-Indo-Europeans were a Late Neolithic or Eneolithic society which began to diverge about 4500 to 2500 BC”.

These conclusions seem to be based on solid ground. Or maybe not...

First, a brief excursus. We all know that television is a 20th century invention. Like many other technological innovations, it spread quickly from the place were it was invented (Great Britain) to the rest of the world. And the name of the invention travelled as well, adapting to the various languages. This phenomenon is called diffusion in linguistics. There are many examples of the diffusion of the word “television” in many languages: Spanish televisión, Tagalog telebysion, Mongolian телевизор (“televisor”), Swahili televisheni, Bahasa Indonesian televisi, Turkish televizyon, etc. Something similar happens with other recent technological developments (computer, video, DVD, etc.), which have quickly spread around the world. It is obvious that the similarity between English television and Tagalog telebysion is no proof of the common origin of both languages. Let’s try to imagine a linguist defending that proposal on the basis of this vocabulary! But diffusion is not only a recent or contemporary phenomenon. There are many examples of terminology diffusion in the 19th century, or the 18th century, or in the Middle Ages, or in the time of the Roman Empire, and in prehistory. We can deduce that the diffusion of technological innovations such as agriculture or the wheel, which had a major impact in pre-historical societies, was accompanied by the corresponding terminological diffusion. Could it have happened otherwise? By applying this concept to the study of PIE, it is becoming clear that some of the supposed common vocabulary in pottery, livestock, sewing, etc, can be explained quite satisfactorily in terms of diffusion. In other cases, it is not even necessary to use this method. Authors such as Mario Alinei, Xaverio Ballester, Francesco Benozzo and Gabriele Costa have given many examples of how the list of ‘common PIE society/culture terms’ can be reinterpreted in terms of diffusion or other criteria. In fact, we can say that all the classical interpretations, one by one, can be refuted. And not only that. This new paradigm (the Paleolithic Continuity Theory) also seems to provide answers for cases which were not explainable following traditional criteria.

The main result of this re-interpretation of PIE society/culture terms is obvious: they offer no confirmation of traditional IE chronology, for which they were the main basis. In previous posts I have mentioned evidence from archaeology, population genetics and anthropology which also seems to point in the direction of a Paleolithic origin of PIE. Which means, for example, that the first humans who populated Europe from about 40000 BC were already speakers of Indo-European languages (Celtic, Italic, Germanic, etc.), or speakers of languages belonging to the other families (Uralic, Basque, etc.) which are nowadays present in Europe.

The impurity of language (II)

The other day I published a post called The Impurity of Language (link). I would like to focus on one of the sentences I wrote in that post. I quote it here:

Human language is a communication tool and it seems to be designed as something quite impure, built upon hybridization and infinite flexibility.

It was not originally intended as a definition of human language, but it looks like one. Today I would like to clarify some of the concepts involved in this sentence.

- HYBRIDIZATION.
The concept of hybridization, i.e. the mixture of people who speak different dialects, must be understood from a diachronic perspective. At the time when human language began there were no grammar books or electronic translators, there were no school teachers telling people how they had to speak or write. At those earlier stages of human language, there was nothing similar to the entities we call ‘languages’, with their grammars, dictionaries and distinctive names (English, Spanish, etc.). Humans had a need for communication and they were developing an extraordinary new tool called language. Contact between people, both inside their community or in an inter-community context, involved a continuous process of interaction, re-invention, adaptation. This is how language was born and how it developed in the early times. The process of hybridization is not an anecdote: it is the central, most relevant event in the formation of human languages. The problem arises if we analyse language solely from the perspective of today. We live in societies where the dialect of the ruling elite has become the standard form of language, relegating the role of hybridization as a marginal one, or in some cases something impure which is not to be desired. Many linguists make the mistake of analysing our standard languages as if they were the core of language, when in fact they are a relatively modern phenomenon in a process that began millennia ago.

- INFINITE FLEXIBILITY.
In some linguistic theories, human language is seen as the result of an inborn mechanism (Universal Grammar) that is projected in the various languages of the world, all of them describable in terms of rules.

Now, is there something like a Universal Grammar? Can it be described? Can a possible description of UG be the ultimate one?-- No matter how perfectly you think you have described Universal Grammar one day, the following morning there might be something new waiting at your doorstep.

Human speech is not easily analysable in terms of rules and structure. It takes place in real communicative situations and it develops through a continuous process of adaptation. A still life of a language, like the ones typically used in theoretical linguistics, can only be a very limited account of this process.

Last edit: 25 September, 2008

The impurity of language

For many centuries, grammarians and linguists have tried to analyse language as a perfectly organized set of rules. In the 20th century, concepts such as ‘structure’ or ‘universal grammar’ have been introduced as further developments in this tradition. In many articles or books about linguistics, especially in the Chomskyan tradition, we find plenty of formulae and mathematical-looking explanations, where parameters and rules of all kinds are proposed in order to describe the grammars of the various human languages. In the Chomskyan view, it is supposed that LANGUAGE exists as an abstract mechanism explainable in terms of rules. In my opinion, this is an inadequate account of human language. Let’s take pidgins for example. A pidgin is a type of language that emerges in situations where there are speakers of different languages who need to communicate with each other. They appeared, for example, in the colonies of the Caribbean and in Africa. From the perspective of structuralism or generative grammar, pidgins are seen as something ‘imperfect’, some kind of disturbing irregularity or exception: pidgins don’t follow strict principles, they are impure, non-systematic. But this is not the only possible view, there are other ways to look at this phenomenon. For example one in which pidgins are not the marginal chapter in the handbooks of linguistics but an important event in the formation of languages. Human language is a communication tool and it seems to be designed as something quite impure, built upon hybridization and infinite flexibility. Trying to see language as an immaculate set of rules and lexicon is simply a great delusion. Language exists in real life, escaping all definition or classification. It is in the hands of some linguists that it actually dies. Some linguists have argued that the human speech capacity is like a body ‘organ’, or at least an inborn mental mechanism which is present in all of us. I agree with this view of language as a peculiarly human, highly complex ability, which probably emerged as an adaptation of our species. But let’s take a look at other human organs, for example our back. No doubt, our back was not designed for our modern way of life, for example when we sit for hours in front of the computer screen and have back-ache as a result. Our body is more suited for running in nature than for sitting. Nevertheless, we prefer to stick to our everyday routine, maybe adding some types of ‘remedies’ (gyms, diets, doctors, medicines, etc.) but in any case leading a life that is far from the life that our body was designed for. Something similar happens in linguistics. Languages were not born to be analysed as perfect sets of rules, as many linguists seem to believe. They are something else. Something human, impure.

Last edit: 9 Aug, 2008