the life logistic
The reading material for this week is: Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2002). On the Evolution of Grammatical Forms. In: The transition to language, 2, 376–397.
Grammaticalisation is a process of language change in which lexical forms change into grammatical forms, such as inflections or auxiliaries. The process is discussed only very briefly in Fitch (2010), and its role in the language evolution debate, according to Fitch, should be similarly small:
Once language is off the ground, it is easy to see how grammaticalization provides grist for the syntactic mill, but it fails to address the basic questions of how the more general properties of syntax arose.
It is, of course, quite hard to determine when that is, ‘when language is off the ground’. Particularly from a linguists perspective, this shelves an important issue rather than solving. Language is a complex system with different parts and aspects that may all have their own evolutionary history, arising in response to different pressures. It is good to keep in mind that Fitch’s view is not the only possible view.
It’s also important to realise that this is often a contentious area in language evolution research: phenomena like grammaticalisation are often seen as the purview of historical linguistics or language change, and some researchers would argue that this should be of little interest to language evolution. However, selective pressures and adaptive processes that we observe in what is traditionally siloed into historical linguistics can have crucial implications for our understanding of the evolution of language. In Hurford (2011), for example, the well-documented process of grammaticalisation in language change is characterised as “a gradual cultural alternative to any putative ‘syntax mutation’.” The reading for this week, Heine and Kuteva (2002), can be placed in this same tradition.
Heine and Kuteva’s (2002) perspective is firmly rooted in linguistics, which is a considerable shift from Fitch’s perspective as a biologist. The study of grammaticalisation was initially used to study language change, but not the origins of language. To the contrary, many linguists (implicitly or explicitly) take uniformitarianism of language structure to be a true principle for human languages: the structures of different languages are assumed to be not radically different from one another, and not radically different than they may have been thousands of years ago. The concept of uniformitarianism is potentially problematic where the origins of language are concerned, but not necessarily. Let us have a brief look at the history of the term.
Hurford (2011) sketches the history of the term uniformitarianism, and the two possible interpretations we can give it:
“The idea was applied systematically in geology before it was applied to language. James Hutton, known as the father of modern geology (and an Edinburgh man), argued that the processes that shape the earth have been constant throughout the ages (Hutton, 1788). This does not mean, of course, that the nature of the earth has been constant for all time. Once, the earth did not even exist, just as languages once (much more recently) did not exist. Static uniformitarianism, applied to language, is the doctrine that languages have always had the same essential nature. If we believe that the language capacity and languages evolved, this doctrine is untenable.
Dynamic uniformitarianism, akin to Hutton’s geological vision, applied to languages, holds that the cognitive and social pressures that shape languages have always acted according to the same fundamental principles. This is tenable in the face of evolution. The cognitive, and particularly the social contexts in which these principles apply may differ, and therefore the principles will yield different outcomes. Analogously, in geology, the laws of physics have been constant through the shaping of the earth. But the recent earth is a lot cooler than the early earth, yielding different geological phenomena. Again analogously, it is reasonable to suppose that natural selection has operated since the beginnings of life. But the nature of life on earth has changed since life started. So too with languages.”
The same two accounts are sketched in Heine and Kuteva, though they describe it as uniformitarian processes versus structures.
Recently Emerging sign languages are important and fascinating for many reasons, and a case study grammaticalisation in action: the readings linked here discuss two newly emerging sign languages: Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) and Al Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL).
Here is a short video (a fragment from a PBS documentary about the origins of language) that shows you the history of NSL, and shows you some NSL signers. [N.B. the documentary presents language acquisition in a way that you may or may not agree with (the ‘window for language’), but keep in mind that this video was intended for a general audience.]
Hurford, J. R. (2011). The origins of grammar: language in the light of evolution II (Vol. 2). Oxford University Press.