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capri0mniFor a long time now, linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and other such accademic-type windbags experts have insisted that what sets humanity apart from everything else is that we can talk. Even in the Bible Adam is considered special because he gets to name everything. To be mute is to be "dumb." And because we have speech and can name things, that gives us the right to do whatever we want to those who don't have speech.
And yet, as someone who has seen herself as worker in words for as long as she can remember, I've oft felt like a second-class citizen imtellectual world. It's never been said in so many words, but the message has been loud and clear: Language sets us apart from (and above) every other living thing, but what you do with it -- making up these poems and stories -- really isn't all that important; it's the playtime after we've done the real work of tallying up taxes and making laws and instruction booklets for DIY houses and rocket-powered granade launchers; it's the fancy decoration on the otherwise totally functional desk."
But I never really bought the idea that speech (and therefore complex thought) is solely an attribute of human beings. While it may be true that the utterances of dogs, cats, horses, and other beasties are not quite as abstract or complex as human words, I never believed that that meant they didn't have the capacity for language in their brains. Dogs, after all, learn that the names we give them refer to themselves and not all dogs. And what is a name except the most abstract of words?
And then, one day, I witnessed a pair of mockingbirds harrassing a pair of crows, trying to chase them out of their territory and away from their nest. But the calls these mockingbirds were using weren't just any outpouring of rage and fear (the birdie versions of "AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!" -- they were perfect imitations of a crow's caw. In other words, out of all the bird calls they had stored in their memories, they had picked the one that perfectly matched the "audience" they were trying to communicate with. If that's not language (even if rudimentary), what is?
That raised the question: "If language isn't what's unique about humans, what is?" I've witnessed animals respond to language; I've witnessed animals use language. But humans are the only ones I've witness gather in large groups and go all slack-jawed and wide-eyed as one or a few individuals did all the talking. In other words, humans are the only creatures I've seen who tell stories. And I've never found a reference to any human culture that didn't have storytelling.
So, instead of storytelling and poetry being the afterthought of language -- the decoration around the desk -- what if storytelling came first? What if language evolved in the human brain so that we could tell better and better stories? And then, after we had this complex and abstract language, we developed the ability to tally up taxes, make laws and instruction manuals for DIY houses and rocket-pwered granades?
So you can imagine how tickled I was to hear this piece on NPR's "All Things Considered" last Wednesday night: What Comes First: Speech or Thought?
(Warning: it's a RealAudio file, and for those who don't have or want to download RA [or just don't want to listen to it]: the gist is this: a recent study of five month-old babies shows that these children of English-speaking parants can understand a conceptual distinction that's expressed in Korean, but not in English (whether something in a container fits loosely or snugly), but the English-speaking grown-ups that were tested just didn't get it. This strongly implies that, just as infants have the capacity to produce the sounds of any language [until they start learning just one], so too they have the capacity to understand the concepts expressed in any language [until they start learning just one]).
So if ideas come before words, isn't it natural to think that stories came before words? Perhaps the first stories were told through dance, pantomime or painting before someone ever said: "Once upon a time..."
And yet, as someone who has seen herself as worker in words for as long as she can remember, I've oft felt like a second-class citizen imtellectual world. It's never been said in so many words, but the message has been loud and clear: Language sets us apart from (and above) every other living thing, but what you do with it -- making up these poems and stories -- really isn't all that important; it's the playtime after we've done the real work of tallying up taxes and making laws and instruction booklets for DIY houses and rocket-powered granade launchers; it's the fancy decoration on the otherwise totally functional desk."
But I never really bought the idea that speech (and therefore complex thought) is solely an attribute of human beings. While it may be true that the utterances of dogs, cats, horses, and other beasties are not quite as abstract or complex as human words, I never believed that that meant they didn't have the capacity for language in their brains. Dogs, after all, learn that the names we give them refer to themselves and not all dogs. And what is a name except the most abstract of words?
And then, one day, I witnessed a pair of mockingbirds harrassing a pair of crows, trying to chase them out of their territory and away from their nest. But the calls these mockingbirds were using weren't just any outpouring of rage and fear (the birdie versions of "AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!" -- they were perfect imitations of a crow's caw. In other words, out of all the bird calls they had stored in their memories, they had picked the one that perfectly matched the "audience" they were trying to communicate with. If that's not language (even if rudimentary), what is?
That raised the question: "If language isn't what's unique about humans, what is?" I've witnessed animals respond to language; I've witnessed animals use language. But humans are the only ones I've witness gather in large groups and go all slack-jawed and wide-eyed as one or a few individuals did all the talking. In other words, humans are the only creatures I've seen who tell stories. And I've never found a reference to any human culture that didn't have storytelling.
So, instead of storytelling and poetry being the afterthought of language -- the decoration around the desk -- what if storytelling came first? What if language evolved in the human brain so that we could tell better and better stories? And then, after we had this complex and abstract language, we developed the ability to tally up taxes, make laws and instruction manuals for DIY houses and rocket-pwered granades?
So you can imagine how tickled I was to hear this piece on NPR's "All Things Considered" last Wednesday night: What Comes First: Speech or Thought?
(Warning: it's a RealAudio file, and for those who don't have or want to download RA [or just don't want to listen to it]: the gist is this: a recent study of five month-old babies shows that these children of English-speaking parants can understand a conceptual distinction that's expressed in Korean, but not in English (whether something in a container fits loosely or snugly), but the English-speaking grown-ups that were tested just didn't get it. This strongly implies that, just as infants have the capacity to produce the sounds of any language [until they start learning just one], so too they have the capacity to understand the concepts expressed in any language [until they start learning just one]).
So if ideas come before words, isn't it natural to think that stories came before words? Perhaps the first stories were told through dance, pantomime or painting before someone ever said: "Once upon a time..."
