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KUpsyc418-NLPsyOps

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recursion

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            What is it that separates man from beast?  The uniqueness of humanity stems from strictly human creations: government, philosophy, war, science.  All of those are based on one thing: the ability of humans to accumulate knowledge and customs across generations and cultures through language. Language is a symbolic system with arbitrary relationships between words and their meaning, which are combined with principles and rules to form meaningful statements. Why are humans the only animal with language?  Many vertebrates make sounds and obviously to communicate with each other; one key difference has been that their communication lacks the property of recursion.  The European starling, Sturnus vulgaris, has been successfully trained to learn grammar that includes recursion.  One unique property of human language that is now shared with a bird.

            Recursion, or discrete infinity, in language is the use of a finite set of rules and components to yield an infinite number of expressions (Hauser, et al., 2002).  Recursion is no longer a uniquely human ability (Gentner, et al., 2006); therefore, the differences between human language and animal communication arise from quantitative physiological differences.  These differences are found in memory, sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional systems, and linguistic computations (i.e. syntax and grammar).  It should be noted that no natural examples of recursion in animal communication have yet been observed.  Meanwhile, further seperation between man and animal is present in their ability, in the case of humans, and inability, in the case of animals, to produce and effectively communicate theorectical or intangible ideas.  Within this finite set of tools including recursion, intangible thoughts and ideas become an expressible means of addressing: past or future moments in time, far away locations and even the non-psyhical such as feelings. 

            Memory is essential for the learning of a gloss and grammar in the acquisition of language.  Animals have a memory and the ability to learn, but laboriously learn associations between objects and words- vocabulary. It has been shown that with extensive and arduous vocabulary training, non-human primates can learn glosses with about 200 words (Hauser, et al., 2002), while children have vocabularies of about 1,500 words by age 4 (Rathus 2006) and the average high school student graduates with a vocabulary of sixty-thousand words (Hauser, et al., 2002).  Children unconsciously acquire the grammar of the language they are immersed in up until a critical period; afterwards it is much more difficult to learn the syntax rules of a language (Hauser, et al., 2002).  Vertebrates have the ability to acquire a vocabulary, but the human brain has evolved to easily acquire and store vastly more new words and their associative definitions. 

            In order for vocal imitation of a sound to occur, the sound must first be processed by the temporal cortex, and then sent to the mirror neurons in the pre-motor area in the prefrontal cortex, which then communicate with the pre-motor areas that are involved with respiration, the tongue, larynx, and jaw, which then synapse onto the respective motor areas to produce the sound.  All vertebrates have temporal and prefrontal cortexes with pre-motor areas, but the brain regions are much more developed in humans.  Dolphins and some song-birds have been shown to possess the ability to imitate sounds well, while non-human primates lack this talent (Hauser, et al., 2002).  The problem for the primates lies in their under-developed vocal cords and Broca’s area (part of the pre-motor area).  Children are born with the ability to distinguish all possible phonemes of human language and then learn which phonemes are important to distinguish and which ones are inseparable in meaning.  Chinchillas and macaques show that they can in fact distinguish similar human phonemes (Hauser, et al., 2002).  The ability to distinguish and create distinct sounds has evolved in nearly all vertebrates because of its usefulness for survival.  Humans evolved to have an excellent ability to distinguish sounds (phonemes) and then the ability to imitate them very well.

            Humans have a vastly more complex conceptual-intentional system for language than other vertebrates.  Scientists have unsuccessfully attempted to teach non-referential (abstract) vocabulary to animals, e.g. “truth” or “freedom.”  Animals seem to only have the ability to learn associative relations between words and concrete objects or actions.  Non-human primates have been taught verbs and nouns which they use to create rudimentary agrammatical sentences.  Most words in the human language do not describe the actual physical world, or even have a definitive meaning, e.g. “but,” “and,” “then”.  Humans are also the only animals with the ability to speak and understand events that have happened in the past, are happening in the present, and will happen in the future.  The power of human language and the human mind is that we are not trapped to the present: we can run simulations of actions in our minds and predict consequences with out having to learn by trial and error. The abstract nature of language allows us to communicate ideas about the past or future. So although some vertebrates have the ability to associate words with meanings, it is much less complex than human learning of words and their associative concrete and abstract meanings. 

            The faculty of language in the narrow sense has been previously defined as uniquely human (Hauser, et al., 2002).  Noam Chomsky refers to recursion as the core property of the FLN and that it “appears to lack any analog in animal communication” (Hauser, et al., 2002).  European starlings have been proven to learn recursive grammar with the property of “discrete infinity.”  The pattern taught to the birds has a pattern of recursive imbedded grammars.  The ability to classify and distinguish expressions of recursive center-embedded grammars (e.g. “he thought that, she thought that…) is not uniquely human (Gentner, et al., 2006).  Important to the study was that the pattern was context-free, meaning that all confounds that may have arisen from certain external clues or finite-state patterns were accounted for.  The ability to understand and apply recursion has been proven to no longer be a uniquely human talent.

            Chomsky accounts for children’s relatively unconscious acquisition of language as “innate dispositions” or “universal grammar” (Hauser, et al., 2002).  It seems as though the human brain is born with a generic template of grammatical principles that is ‘filled in’ with the rules and structure of the language of the environment children are brought up in. Over millennia, the human brain has evolved to create vast neural networks between the temporal cortex (Wernicke’s area) and the prefrontal cortex (Broca’s area) - the two most important area’s of the brain for language.  A major difference between the human brain and other vertebrates is the extensive development of the neo-cortex and the prefrontal cortex.  These brain regions are the most recently evolved and responsible for critical thinking, planning, and problem solving.  Part of the human ability to learn grammar and syntax comes from critical thinking that leads to advanced pattern recognition.  Language is not learned in the same manner as other factual information, behaviors, and patterns.  Human capacity for recursion and universal grammar originate from extensive evolution of the human brain, specifically the temporal, prefrontal, and neo-cortices. 

            Through the continuation of knowledge and truth from generation to generation by means of language, the human race has separated itself from the rest of the animal kingdom.  Recursion, the primary distinction between human language and animal communication, has been taught to a species of bird, but it has yet to be observed in natural animal communication, although it remains a possibility.  Many vertebrates have the necessary components of language – memory, sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional systems, and recursion.  Through evolutionary processes the human brain is predisposed to acquire language with minimal effort. Some vertebrates can imitate sounds well, develop a rudimentary vocabulary, or even learn recursive patterns of grammars, but no animal species naturally communicates with a system of language that possesses the property of discrete infinity. For now, humans can remain content as they stand alone at the top of the animal kingdom as the lone possessor of language. 

 

  1. Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, W. Tecumseh Fitch. “The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?” Neuroscience. Nov 2002. Vol 298, 1569-1578.
  2. Timothy Q. Gentner, Kimberly M. Fenn, Daniel Margoliash, Howard C. Nusbaum. “Recursive Syntactic Pattern Learning by Songbirds.” Nature. 27 April 2006. Vol    440, 1204-1207.
  3. Spencer A. Rathus. Childhood: Voyages in Development. Thomson Learning, Inc. 2006. Canada.

 

I have given us something to start with. Above is a paper that describes how recursion, an important property of language, has been successfully taught to a species of bird. The paper answers a majority of the components of the question being asked. I think everyone should make changes to this draft, by adding at least two references of their own to further develop a complete and coherent answer to this assignment.

 

answer

 

A good answer to this question would start by describing the basic mechanisms that lead to evolutionary change as identified by Darwin. There should be an appropriate reference to those mechanisms, and an explanation of the terms that Darwin used (not simply a “laundry list” of the mechanisms as described by Darwin).

 

A definition of language should probably follow. As noted in class and described in the Ulbaek article (also discussed in class), language is not “one thing,” but rather a collection of skills, abilities, etc. Given that many things, not one thing (e.g., an opposable thumb) had to occur for language to occur, one could argue that “language” per se did not evolve, but the ability to use the tool we call language DID evolve…

 

…or perhaps, given the material discussed in Ulbaek, language is simply a spandrel (see the work of Gould)…

 

…the article by Cangelosi & Parisi (1998; discussed in class) also describes the limits of the evolution of language: the ability to produce language had to occur along with the ability to perceive language. Having one ability without the other would not yield any benefit…

 

…case studies of Genie and other children who were raised with no to minimal exposure to language might offer some evidence relevant to this issue…

 

…one might elect to answer this question in the same way that the French Academy of Sciences did (circa 1866)…

 

…some might find the debate between Chomsky, Fitch, & Hauser (these authors appear in various orders on various papers) versus Pinker & Jakendoff in the journal Cognition to be of interest…

 

…genetic evidence (i.e., FOXP2) might provide others with evidence to address this issue…

 

…evidence from Bickerton on creole and pidgin languages might also offer insight….

 

There are obviously many ways that this question can be answered; you might think of still other approaches. I suggest you find one approach that interests you, and contribute to that line of writing. (Not all of the above points need to be in the answer, they are simply there to get you thinking about this question.) You should also occasionally see how the point you are working on fits in with what else is being written. At one time, your contribution might make a good introduction, but at a later time, your point might offer a unique piece of counter-evidence to a point raised elsewhere in the document. Don’t be afraid to write, revise, and write some more. One well-written point is much more valuable that a dozen comments that are superficial, poorly explained, and not accompanied by an appropriate example.

 


 

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