Re: lexicon

Quoting Sally Caves <scaves@...>:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
>
> > Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> >
> > > On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 12:24:50AM +0100, michael poxon wrote:
>
> > > > I'm not sure anyone knows what language was created for (does
> > > > there have to be a reason?) - but in any case that kind of
> > > > argument tends to imply a wilful act of creation. I think you'll
> > > > find that 'arts' came before everything, and included language.
>
> I basically agree, but I would emend 'art' to 'ritual.'  My flip remark
> to
> Garrett the other day that words were used for mystical purposes before
> they
> were communicative was not entirely flip.  I remember reading somewhere
> the
> various theories about language acquisition.  Ritual purposes may have
> been
> the oldest.
>
> Mark wrote:
> > > Only if you include Creation as an art and take literally
> > > something like the Genesis story of God creating through words.
>
> This seems a little extreme.
>
> Mark wrote:
> > > But if we restrict the discussion to Human language and Human
> > > art, then there's no doubt that language came first; it's
> > > a built-in instinct, whereas art is a cultural construct.
>
> Doesn't "culture" go hand in hand with "language" and "ritual"?  How can
> you
> separate any of these?  For heaven's sake, LANGUAGE is a cultural
> construct.
>
> Andreas wrote:
> > How can we be sure of this? Who says there can't have been cultural
> constructs
> > before hominids learned to speak? One might think that chimpanzees'
> "tool
> > traditions" might classify as cultural constructs, and chimps don't
> speak.
>
> True.
>
> But what if everything evolved together for humans?  Why does there have
> to
> be a before and after sequence?  I've even heard language described (I
> think
> by Chomsky himself) as evolving along with human motor skills.  In
> theory,
> the fine-tuning of the nervous system for hand movement and fingers
> (to
> build things) evolved along with the fine-tuning of the tongue...that
> both
> came from the same advanced brain developments.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to convey here - by form you seem to
be arguing against what I wrote above, but in content you seem to be
supporting me; if, as you and Chomsky suggest, "language" and "culture"
developed simultaneously, that would _prove_ that "language" does not
necessarily precede "culture" (sinking Mark's claim for good), but as I assume
you realize the truth of this suggestion cannot be regarded as certain,
wherefore, AFAICT, we're back to my point - we simply _do not know_ in what
sequence these things arose and with which, if any, causal relationships.

Grammarcheck would have hated the above sentence ...

> Andreas again:
> > (Lest someone invokes the experiments regarding teaching captive
> chimps to
> > speak, let me point out that chimps out in the jungle certainly does
> not
> speak
> > anything like a Human Language, and it's they who have the "tool
> traditions",
> > by which I mean the fact that certain groups use tools/techniques that
> are
> > learnt from the earlier generation and does not occur in other
> groups.)
>
> Yes, but they don't also have by far the developed manual motor skills
> that
> humans do, and concomittantly the same lingual developments.  They can
> make
> and use tools, but they aren't building rafts, building fires, or
> making
> ritual drawings in caves.  Clearly the ability to think in abstractions
> is
> there, but the sign language that chimps and gorillas use with humans is
> a
> human/simian relationship.  It's been observed that few of these
> animals
> teach the sign language to their infants.  It's not as though we can
> plant
> the discovery in them, turn them back into the wild, and voila!  the
> chimpanzees will teach this technology to their fellow chimpanzees in
> the
> jungle, vastly expediting their development.  My point is that I can't
> think
> of tool-making and language as a "before" and "after" scenario.  Who
> knows
> why our fellow apes did not or cannot evolve the way we did?   Who knows
> why
> *we* did so?
This seems to be rather beside the point, does it not? My little paranthesized
piece above was just intended to block a possible line of attack from people
who believe that human-simian sign language indeed is something comparable to
human language - since you apparently do not, we should be in agreement!

Or are you trying to say that you won't classify these chimpanzee "tool
traditions" (I assume there ought to be an accepted term - any one know?)
as 'cultural'? If so, the chimps would lack both cultural constructs and
language, and so be entirely irrelevant. Which of course would prove nothing
about when and why humans acquired these things.

                                                        Andreas

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