Development of Language from Rituals

Development of Language from RitualsTo what extent has row evolved from complex rites? Is ritualistic conduct a necessary step in the training of complex speech?This essay willing examine the possibility of a connection mingled with rituals and ritualistic behavior and the development of terminology, with some analysis of ritual behaviour in the animal world as well as curtly examining the extent to which gentleman use of delivery today is itself ritualistic.The motilitys above atomic number 18 by no means simple to result, nor then is any app arent motion relating to the rail line of the speak word. How just now language itself came about is a principal which countless historians, phylogenesisists, biologists and linguists wear tried, totally over many years, to answer without conclusive success. J. G. Penner, in his book Evolution Challenged by Language and Speech, in the appropriately named chapter How did language and speech originate? A confession of igno rance demonstrates this most effectively by quoting no less than 35 eminent experts, renowned in their single fields, all essentially saying the same thing that an perceptiveness of ex coiffurely how language evolved is beyond human comprehension. Any attempts to explain it, it would appear, dejection neer be much more(prenominal) than speculation.The evidence (that there is no evidence) is sure enough compelling. In light of this, it would seem appropriate and wise to proceed with an figureing that whilst we brook attempt to answer these questions, the approach, will, by necessity, be stringently suppositional in essence. That said, the lack of concrete scientific evidence should non be a reason to discredit all theories completely this essay will attempt to look some of the more persuasive theories in analyse the link among ritualistic behaviour and the development of language.In washbowl Haimans essay Perspectives on Grammaticalization, he starts by positing the c oncept of a rituals evolution into polarityals using the casing of a staple rite performed by sucking louses the mating ritual of the dancing fly. Originally the virile dancing fly would present the female with a smaller on the spur of the moment insect wrapped in silk. The purpose was for the male to use the opportunity presented by the females preoccupation and engagement in unwrapping the nap to mount her, achieving his instinctual aim of copulation and impregnation. Over many years, the dead insect itself became superfluous, and now, whilst the ritual itself remains the same, the silk parcel presented to the female is empty. This, Haiman explains, has transformed the nature of the ritual inasmuch as the presenting of the empty wrapping alone has evolved into a process which serves purely as a mating signaling.The above caseful serves to demonstrate the evolutionary complexities and potential for development in ritualistic behaviour, however, in order to fix the orig ins of the spoken word it would make more sense to consider our close-hauled prelate cousins. In The Talking Ape How Language Evolved Robbins Burling poses the questionHow did we go through from an ordinary primate that could not talk to the st shake off human primate that cant shut up? (p.4)1Chimpanzees and Bonobos are clearly to a fault a great deal get along along the evolutionary scurf than the dancing fly, but Burling provides a very similar example of the development of signal, or ritualisation, in the evolution of lip-curling in primates. As he explains, the recantation of the lip as a precursor to biting would originally declare been a simple movement in order to facilitate the action mechanism of biting itself and nothing more were the lip not to be moved, the imitate would bite it. Over millions of years, the curling of the lip would read been universally recognise as a precursor to aggressive behaviour an imminent bite. inseparable selection would favour a) t hose clever enough to recognise this warning sign of aggression and escape without harm, and b) those who were clever enough to curl their lips and repel aggressors without needing to squeezeThe sign would kick in then evolved from a purely instrumental act into a conventional communicative signal. By evolving into a communicative symbol, the retract lip became useful for both the aggressor and his potential victim later on some thousands of generations, the behaviour became almost, or fully automatic. (Burling pp.14-15)2Burling explains this process of ritualisation as a logical progression of what is widely considered to be an important concept in the development of language comprehension. It is entirely when the entailment of a given signal is mum that it becomes a sign of communication, and thus potentially an ancestor of spoken languageThe ritualization of the lip twitch turned an instrumental act into a communicative signal, but ritualization could not even begin until the twitch was understood. separate animal signals began much as did the retracted lip. Only later on import is discovered in instrumental gestures or candidizations can they be ritualized into stereotypic signals. (p.15)3In what we mean by ritual, then, we may perhaps use thaumaturgy Haimans definitionA ritual is identified as one when it ceases to be a purely instrumental act and becomes a signthe ritualized activity is regularized so that its form is relatively independent of (emancipated from) its original stimulus. (p.5)4Using this approach then, the question arises, and it is one that has puzzled scholars from all disciplines for thousands of years How did these signals evolve into spoken language? If we adhere to the logic of the argument presented by Burling, based upon comprehension and ritualisation, it can be put down to the process of evolution, namely natural selection. However, as Burling argues, there is a fundamental difference amid the inheritance of prefat orial animal signals, such as those described above, and the development of the spoken word. immanent selection may well have favoured those with the ability to comprehend patent or audible signs, but spoken language could never have been passed on genetically it would have had to be learnt by the members of each straight generation. This is one of the most vital differences between us and our simian relatives. What distinguishes us from apes, more than anything else, is the ability to communicate via spoken language, as opposed to signals, or visible language (p.122)5.Acknowledging all the while how difficult his task is, Burling attempts to answer the question of how audio signals unquestionable from visual ones, going on to seek various theories including the beginnings of verbal communication as a development of vocal accompaniment to music, and motherese, the cooing vocalisation of mothers toward their children.Burling makes a significant distinction between human language and human screams, sighs, sobs, and laughter (p.16)6. Our own audible cries, howls, giggles and snorts, along with our visible scowls, smiles, and stares, he argues, are directly descended from the primate calls of the apes, and indeed convey far more relation to the latter than to spoken language. To Burling, our own primate calls are, being solely based on instinct and governed directly and purely by emotion, inherent and genetically passed on from generation to generation (indeed, from our simian ancestors to us). Oral Language can only be learned anew.In Language in the informal of Evolution Volume 1, The Origins of Meaning, James Hurford explores further the difference between learned and unlearned signals, but he make fors a different tack to Burling when it comes to the significance of primate communication in the origin of spoken language. Whilst agreeing with the principle of the separateness of learned and inherent communication, Hurford does not impel quite such a ra dical division between primate calls and spoken language. He sees language as having evolved from a mixture of what is native and what is learnedI see enough common ground between primate calls and human utterances not to give up the idea that the evolution of human language built upon the pre-existing use of arbitrary signals by animals to do things to each other (p.119)7Indeed, Hurford sees the unlearned primate calls themselves as a direct ancestor of spoken language. He uses the analogy of the advance(a) wonders of nanotechnology having developed only as a result of the evolution of basic nether region Age tools. There would be no computers or spacecraft had it not been for those rudimentary early tools, however primitive they may have been. Hurford goes on to point out the role of emotion in governing the segmentation of spoken communicationHuman language is a unique course occurring case of learned and arbitrary symbolic communication, about objects and events in a shared external world. Alongside modern human language, and accompanying it in utterances, we find elements of the kind of non-referring communication that we have just surveyed in animals. some(prenominal) aspects of speech, such as speed, loudness and pitch range, are iconically connected with the affective mood of the speaker, and these correlations are found across all languages with little variation. You can tell when a speaker is excited, even if you cant understand a word he is saying. These aspects of human language behaviour are largely unlearned, and come instinctively. They have been called paralanguage, implying that they do not conk out to a language system proper. (p.120)8Hurford quite correctly draws attention to the concomitant that what he describes as paralanguage can significantly alter the nature of the communication itself without changing a single word. A vast range of intonations can radically change spoken language, and these variances in pitch, expression and emphasis, which oft serve to indicate an emotion on the speakers behalf, have, as Hurford says, been shown to be very similar in spoken dialects all over the world, which would appear to indicate that they are indeed inherent (i.e. non-learned). It is in increase our use and knowledge of the learned aspect of language that we have full-grown apart from our primate relations and their ritualised, instinctive, signal-based communication.Burling however, in his absolute insistence on the mutual exclusivity of learned primate calls (human and simian) and spoken language, appears in effect to have shut himself off from being able to reach a determinant conclusion about how exactly language came to evolve from the early, ritual-based, genetically transmittable form of communication into the complex dialects spoken by humans today. He does little to hide the obvious difficulty he finds in qualification the leap from the ordinary primate that could not talk to the strange human primate that cant shut up.Hurford takes a more inclusive view, and whilst acknowledging that language proper is undeniably distinct and separate from paralanguage, he declares that uniquely complex human language could not have evolved without the kindly ritualized doing-things-to-each-other scaffolding found in many other social species, including our nearest relatives, the primates (p.120)9.Given the limits of this essay it is only possible to explore to a certain depth a limited range of theory on the ritualistic origins of language, but the conclusion Hurford reaches appears to be a rational and intelligent one.Burling may be himself unable to convincingly bridge the gap between pant-hoots and human verbal discourse, but like Haiman, he does at least declare that the roots of human language lie in ritualised behaviour.Haiman casts an intriguing horizon on the extent of ritualisation in language today. Certainly we may take Hurfords paralanguage, the contextualisation of spoken utter ances dependent on variables such as pitch, intonation and volume as an example of ritualisation occurring from instinctive signal transmission. Having demonstrated, with his example of the dancing flies, an example of ritualisation resulting from repetition, Haiman expands the concept and explores the phenomenon of ritualisation occurring from what he calls grammaticalization the transformation of the significance of verbal markers. Quoting Brophy and Partridge, he provides an example of soliders so inured to the word fuck, that its effect is practically reversedSo common indeed was the word fuck in its adjectival form that after a short time the ear refused to acknowledge it and took in only the noun to which it was attachedIt became so common that an effective way for the soldier to express emotion was to omit this word. Thus, if a sergeant said acquire your f***ing rifles it was understood as a matter of routine. But if he said Get your rifles there was an immediate implicati on of emergency and danger. (Brophy and Partridge 1931 16f) (p.9)10This look at a handful of theories relating to one of the most widely considered topics of language does, for all the various differences within, seem to point towards the fact that ritualistic behaviour was indeed an important, if not necessary step in the development of complex language as we know it today. The terms ritual and ritualisation are widely exculpated to interpretation, but a brief glimpse at some of Haimans theories and examples of the ritualisation of modern language goes at least some way towards demonstrating the presence and significance of ritual still present in our spoken language today.BibliographyBoysson-Bardies, B (1991) How Language Comes to Children MIT Press, CambridgeBurling, R (2005) The Talking Ape Oxford University Press, UKEllis, A Beattie, G (2005) The psychological science of Language and Communication Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hove and London, UKHurford, James R (2007) Languag e in the stir up of Evolution Volume 1, The origins of Meaning Oxford University Press, UKKrebs, J.R Davies, N.B (Ed) (1984) Behavioural Ecology An Evolutionary glide slope Blackwell Scientific Publications, OxfordMcWhorter, J (2001) The Power of Babe A Natural business relationship of Language William Heinemann, LondonPagliuca, W (Ed) (1994) Perspectives on Grammaticalization John Benjamins Publishing Company, capital of The NetherlandsPenner, J.G (2000) Evolution challenged by language and speech Minerva Press, London1Footnotes1 Burling, R (2005) The Talking Ape2 ibid3 Burling, R (2005) The Talking Ape4 Pagliuca, W (Ed) (1994) Perspectives on Grammaticalization5 Burling, R (2005) The Talking Ape6 ibid7 Hurford, James R (2007) Language in the Light of Evolution8 Hurford, James R (2007) Language in the Light of Evolution9 ibid10 Pagliuca, W (Ed) (1994) Perspectives on Grammaticalization