Anthropology.net

Language is a product of culture. Or is it? Which came first — language or culture? That’s like asking if the chicken or the egg came first. But cultural behavior has been documented in animals who do not have language systems, like gorillas who have intricate systems of processing plants. Richard Byrne summarized this behavior,

“Gorillas do not make tools in the wild… but several of their food-processing skills consist of highly structured, multi-stage sequences of bimanual action, hierarchically organized and flexibly adjusted to plants of highly specific local distribution and these abilities are near-ubiquitous among the local population. In terms of intricate complexity, gorilla plant-processing actually exceeds anything yet described in chimpanzees, unless tool-use per se is taken to be intrinsically more complex than non-tool-use. Gorilla, like Pan and Pongo, apparently sometimes relies for its survival on elaborate, deft and intricate feeding skills that are highly unlikely ever to be discovered by a solitary individual.”

This example is just one of many. It documents that culture can be created, persist and change without language. It does so through mimicking and augmentation. So it is generally assumed that culture came first, and language emerged as a system of formalized symbols, sounds, gestures used a means of communicating culture.

Why am I mentioning this at all? Well, we’ve seen, read and reviewed a couple of recent studies investigating cultural evolution and patterns in linguistic diversity. Most notably is the paper by Atkinson et al., where Simon and team showed that language evolves in bursts. Additionally, Deborah Rogers and Paul Ehrlich showed that cultural things have functional and symbolic elements, the former of which is under naturally selective pressures.

Despite these advances, there are some who still think that culture and everything related with culture is nothing but noise. I don’t know where they get this idea from. Even John Herschel and Charles Darwin understood that extant ‘languages descended from a common ancestor,’ and, ‘the formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.’ This observation was made before the publication of The Voyage of the Beagle and without a doubt helped lay the framework for the theory of evolution. The irony is that these vocal objections come from someone who specializes in studying material culture.

Anyways, I digress. John Whitfield, a science writer and blogger behind El Gentraso, has published a feature in the latest issue of the open access journal PLoS Biology where he summarizes “… the Curious Parallel of Language and Species Evolution.” As anthropologists, we should appreciate the remarkable tangents between the dynamics of linguistic change and biological evolution. Because of these similarities, it is possible to use tools and frameworks used in studying biological evolution to study how language changes… even how cultures evolve. Furthermore, it is very possible that we may soon see a synthesis of theories, one that folds in both both biological and cultural evolution.

Whitfield summarizes research by Simon Kirby, which I didn’t know about but find fascinating.

“Kirby has asked subjects to learn a nonsense language and then teach it to new subjects, and so on. He found that the randomness quickly became regularized, as people unconsciously shaped words into something easier to remember and use, and devised rules to come up with words for things they hadn’t seen. Such a process may be at work in the spontaneous emergence over the past few decades of two sign languages—Nicaraguan Sign Language and Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. Each of these has moved rapidly from a system of gestures to a fully fledged language with conventions for grammar and sentence structure. Kirby plans to use them as a test bed for his ideas about how structure in language can rapidly emerge.”

In the piece, Whitfield also got to ask Mark Pagel‘s what his thoughts are with synthesizing ‘the two’. Pagel is an evolutionary biologist. He was one of the coauthors of the paper with Simon Greenhill and Atkinson. He’s also published an earlier paper with Atkinson titled, “Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history.” Pagel responded saying,

“Languages are extraordinarily like genomes. We think there could be very general laws of lexical evolution to rival those of genetic evolution.”

Alex Mesoudi agrees. He told Whitfield,

“If there’s a model system for cultural evolution, then probably the people working on language have got it, because there’s so much data… Cultural change and biological change share the same fundamental properties of variation, selection and inheritance.”

William Croft is a bit more cautious but also understands that,

“these are two different instantiations of a general theory of evolutionary change. These are early days, but such a theory will give us insights that you can’t get just by looking at one domain.”

So what do you think — is it possible to synthesize the two? Or do they exist as two inherently different entities that change under different conditions?

Oh, you may also be interested in this related video discussion between Paul Ehrlich and Carl Zimmer — where Ehrlich advocates that cultural evolution needs its own theoretical framework aside from evolutionary biology. Strange proposition, especially because he used a natural selection framework in his latest PNAS paper.

Pagel, M., Atkinson, Q.D., Meade, A. (2007). Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history. Nature, 449(7163), 717-720. DOI: 10.1038/nature06176

Byrne, R.W. (2007). Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 577-585. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1996

Whitfield, J. (2008). Across the Curious Parallel of Language and Species Evolution. PLoS Biology, 6(7), e186. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060186

The linguistic diversity of the Caucasus is a unique phenomenon, similar to that of New Guinea. There are approximately 6,000 languages spoken throughout the world currently and about 820 (~14%) of them are spoken in New Guinea. In the Caucasus, you can expect to find representative languages from the Kartvelian, Abkhaz-Adyghe, Lesgian, Nakh, Indo-European, Avar-Andi-Dido, Andi, Dido/Tsez, Lak-Dargwa, Turkic language families. This image to the right documents the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the Cacasus region:

Curiously, neighboring regions, such as the Middle East and Europe, do not exhibit such a diverse array of languages. In a review piece, Bernard Comrie writes about the, “Linguistic Diversity in the Caucasus.” Linguistically diverse regions are important in understanding cultural evolution. Comrie describes these regions to be critical accretion zones — areas where population growth has added new layers in geneology, societal structure, etc. which has all effected the variation in the languages of the Caucasus.

Comrie describes the languages and their affiliations along with their divergences and convergences. He’s also offered up some useful resources, such as this map of languages in the area. If you would like a copy of this paper for academic purposes, let me know and I’ll email you it.

Comrie, B. (2008). Linguistic Diversity in the Caucasus. Annual Review of Anthropology, 37, 131-143. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123248

I’ve been extremely busy this last week. Busy with finals and organizing my graduation ceremonies to keep up with blogging. I finally got some time to catch up, take a deep breath and dive into the backlog of anthropology news. I’ve found some interesting things and will blog about it now that my life isn’t in overdrive.

For those interested in Mesoamerican linguistics, is this interactive exercise in learning how to read and speak in Mayan. I found it off of Digg and it comes from the “Cracking the Code” initiative which I mentioned in April. This exercise is based off of Stela 3, which is currently on found on a pyramid at the Maya site of Piedras Negras in northwestern Guatemala, more information about Stela 3 can be found here. In this excercise, you’ll see ancient Maya glyphs from Stela 3 on the left and to the right are the phonetic transcriptions of the glyph and sound bite (spoken by Barbara MacLeod). Accompanying notes help translate each glyph’s meaning. You’ll get a good taste of how the language sounds and flows, as well as some insight into hieroglyphic languages.

Here’s a screenshot of the interactive Flash application:

About 9 months ago, I shared some news of language extinction and the conservation efforts of K. David Harrison and David Anderson. My coverage was far from a thorough treatment of the subject, partially because I know little about the problem and the ways to remedy it. Fast forward to today, where I come across this video posted by Simon Greenhill on his blog HENRY.

The video is an interview of well spoken linguistic anthropologist K. David Harrison, by host Mark Molaro. In the video, David touches on many aspects, such as ownership of a language and what he considers ‘the greatest conservation challenge’ of humans. For anyone interested in the subject, I recommend you check out this 26 minute interview. Harrison integrates cultural issues as well as the importance of knowledge locked in unknown languages that can be useful to other disciplines such as botanists and zoologists.

Ownership of a language is a critical concept to understand. Speakers of widely spoken languages such as English, French, Chinese, Spanish, may not consider much ownership to their language. But to those who are one of the few speakers of a dying language, such as Chulym where only 30 or so speakers are alive, feel more attached to their language — it is something they identify with.

Harrison also outlines ‘the greatest conservation challenge’ of humans. See, every 2 weeks or so a language dies off. In contrast, species are going extinct at a much slower rate and yet a monumental conservation effort is put into saving this from happening. But studying, saving and/or curating languages aren’t given the same dedication as ecological or archaeological conservation. It is ironic that language, perhaps the most complex monument to human genius, has been ignored in our efforts to conserve the rest of the world.

Support is required from outside to conserve language, and with that a change in the ways we approach language is needed. Harrison suggests that while curating a language is critical to the conservation, understanding the folk taxonomy, a.k.a. the folksonomy, is also imperative. He brings up examples of different single word terms to refer to different reindeer in some Siberian languages. When translated, these single words unravel into elaborate, information packed phrases. He uses that to explain how often times there is a lot of local knowledge hidden lesser spoken language, that can span millennia. Harrison advocates that other researchers entertain the possibility that languages are an untapped resource for knowledge.

But to do that, a restructuring of how we consider discovery is needed. We, as academics, are largely stuck in this colonial paradigm of how discovery is approached. Many zoologists, botanists, even anthropologists and archaeologists discover new things without absorbing native knowledge. It is an awfully imperial way of looking about it, if Western culture doesn’t know about it the rest of the world never know about it! But who’s to say local peoples didn’t know about a certain plant or animal for ages prior to the “Western discovery”? We need people to acknowledge the vast body of knowledge out there, locked in indigenous, endangered languages.

Harrison wraps up his talk emphasizing how language is an infinite system, and I couldn’t agree with him more. He’s put particular consideration on local knowledge, but there is also a lot of knowledge that can be extracted from language — such as human migrations, which will have gaping holes if languages are allowed to erode at the rates they are now.

Robert Stainton at the University of Western Ontario and Jessica de Villiers of The University of British Columbia have recently conducted a study which aims to measure and define pragmatic capabilities of autism patients, specifically those with Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD. Previously, one of the defining features of ASD patients was the deficiency or absence of pragmatic systems, particularly the ability to understand and use language appropriately by societal standards. ASD interferes with the ability to utilize language in practice, interfering with systems such as Entailment, Deixis, Implicature, and Presupposition. As a result, ASD patients have difficulty understanding sarcasm, irony, and abstract language.

According to Stainton, some ASD patients have shown no difficulty in understanding and using literal pragmatic systems, such as reference to specific media in nondescript terms. Although these patients are unable to grasp abstract systems such as metaphors, they show potential in literal pragmatics.

These researchers do not contest the well-established claim that people with ASD have difficulty with non-literal pragmatics, such as metaphors (“Juliet is the sun”) or irony/sarcasm (“Boy, is that a good idea”). They have, however, found that many speakers with ASD do not show the same difficulty with literal pragmatics. An example is the phrase, “I took the subway north” from a transcript of a conversation with a research participant with ASD. The use of the word “the” could indicate there is only one subway in existence going north. “The subway” could also be referring to a subway car, a subway system or a subway tunnel. Taking account of the context and the listener’s expectations, however, the individual using the phrase was able to convey the specific meaning he intended. That is, he used pragmatics effectively.

As autism is one of the most difficult neurological disorders to understand, Stainton’s research provides an important benchmark to its scientific comprehension. The breakthrough in noting ASD patient understanding of literal pragmatics has lead to the development of a rating scale of pragmatic abilities which can be used for clinical assessment. Considering the mysterious nature of autism, multidiciplanary approaches such as Stainton’s may become the standard for research in the field.

About a week ago, Michael from Greater Blogazonia broke the news of the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS) database release. Following suite was Mark from The Ideophone, and Simon from HENRY. All three are lingustic anthropology focused blogs that I follow and trust, and they all praised this database. I’ve been poking around the database for the last seven days or so, and I’m really impressed. It is an awesome resource, executed really well, and under a creative commons license.

As I understand, the elevator pitch for WALS, is it is adatabase on all human languages. Over 2,500 languages are categorized. The structure of the database was compiled by phonological, grammatical, lexical data from over 50 different authors, which is a truly monumental effort. One of the coolest features is the integration of each language’s geographic origin using Google Maps. For anyone who wants to see where a language is spoken and what its relations are to neighboring languages, this visualization technique is perfect. For example, if you’re curious to see the distribution of and diversity of Indo-European languages, you’ll be presented with this index page:

I won’t rehash the excellent reviews done by other anthropology bloggerss, but I will close with what Mark of The Ideophone said,

“WALS Online is a formidable linguistic resource done well. It bears all the hallmarks of a well-executed web application that is here to stay for years to come.”

I humbly tip my hat to the people at the Max Planck Digital Library, and the authors who worked together to create this resource. As you may know, I’ve been working by myself to develop a similar project, but one that databases all the known hominin fossils. I’ve been working with integrating the Google Maps API into the project to show where fossils have been found, kinda to give an impression on the spread different hominids had. Synthesizing all the data is a monumental effort, and I’m impressed to see what WALS has done. I’ve got a lot to learn. I hope other anthropologists can see how great of a resource this is, and how releasing it under a liberal license, helps people learn and use the data.

Daniel Tight at the University of Minnesota has announced the completion of his dissertation, “The Role of Perceptual Learning Style Preferences and Instructional Method in the Acquisition of L2 Spanish Vocabulary,” on Linguist List. The abstract details a study which measured the effectiveness of preferred learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) in 128 intermediate-level L2 college Spanish students. Each of the students’ first language was English. Students studied 36 vocabulary words: 12 in their preferred learning style, 12 in a less-preferred style, and 12 in mixed modality instruction. An additional 12 non-studied words were used as a control. The results showed that individual learning style preference bears minimal relevance to L2 vocabulary acquisition, particularly when compared to mixed modality instruction.

Results of a repeated-measures ANOVA indicated that subjects performed equally well on the vocabulary posttests, regardless of learning style preference. Overall, mixed-modality instruction was more beneficial than instruction in a more-preferred modality, which in turn stimulated greater learning than instruction in a less-preferred modality. Such differences were statistically significant on the 1-week and 1-month posttests. Further analysis revealed, however, that differences between the more- and less-preferred modalities were primarily an artifact of the large number of visual learners, combined with an overall effectiveness of visual instruction for all subjects, rather than a product of style matching in general.

Although these style preferences have for years allowed students to individualize learning experiences, it appears the most effective method is to combine visual, kinesthetic, and auditory media. At least, for L2 concrete noun acquisition. Sounds like a great way to keep Broca, Wernicke, and your occipital lobe busy before a Spanish midterm.

For those of you out there interested in Mayan archeology and culture, or even those out there interested in how linguists crack codes, tomorrow night PBS’s NOVA will be airing a special on how the Mayan language was deciphered. The show is called, “Cracking the Mayan Code.” It airs tomorrow night at 8 p.m. on most PBS stations, but to double check what time it plays on your local PBS channel use this little applet to find out. The about page for the program describes the documentary as an inside story of how the decoding was done.

The problem with figuring out Mayan language has been that there really isn’t anything to compare too. Unlike Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Mayan writing system does not really have an equivalent Rosetta stone to help compare and contrast meanings behind the symbolic hieroglyphs. Actually, that’s a bit misleading… most Mayan texts were destroyed by mandate from Bishop Diego de Landa. But the good bishop did leave some element of translating written Mayan language… when he was composing his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, he included a very sketchy and rather erroneous “summary” of Maya hieroglyphics. That summary hasn’t been really by useful, because the Bishop assumed the symbols were used as an alphabet, and just documented the phonetic representation of some of the symbols. So in a way he unwillingly preserved for us a source to begin figuring out how the written language sounded when spoken.

Some critical breakthroughs were made by J. Eric Thompson and Yuri Knorosov in the mid 20th century. While their conclusions were largely opposing, they both made headway in explaining how the Mayan writing system used symbols to represent signs and concepts. Thompson thought that the glyphs only related to astronomical affairs, while Knorosov contested that conclusion. She understood the written language as an amalgamation of signs for complete words and symbols for syllables. She believed the system was capable of conveying any word in the Maya language, and much more robust than Thompson’s understandings. Tatiana Proskouriakoff, also helped figure out commonalities in the Mayan language. She looked at stellae, and was able to figure out repeated symbols. To her, these repeated symbols were the names of rules.

In the early ’80′s, David Stuart made some monumental discoveries in deciphering Mayan written language. He currently runs a weblog called, Maya Decipherment, where he writes on deciphering the language. You should definitely check it out and add it to your RSS reader. He’s also announced the airing of this PBS show too. I’ll be interested to read what he thinks of it, since it seems as if his work will make a cameo on this show.

Oh yeah, Simon Martin, one of the coauthors of this book, “Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya,” is also gonna be commenting on Maya inscriptions. As will the late Linda Schele of the University of Texas at Austin, Peter Mathews of the University of Calgary, and Michael D. Coe of Yale University…. so it seems like there will be a thorough representation of all the great minds in Mayan linguistics. Unlike many History Channel and Discovery Channel specials, I trust NOVA ones… and I think this one will be a very complete and informative documentary to watch.

As always, if you do end up seeing it, please don’t hesitate to write a comment on this post’s thread about your thoughts and opinions.

National Geographic News has just published an article about the recent symposium in Alaska regarding a possible connection between Yeniseic languages in Siberia and Na-Dene languages in the Americas. John Roach’s article, Siberian, Native American Languages Linked — A First, highlights the recent work of Edward Vajda, who defended his connection during the February symposium. Vajda goes deeper than cognate lists in his parallels, providing several corresponding grammatical systems, particularly verb prefix structure. Ket, his primary Siberian source, is the only living Yeniseic language (which remains highly endangered) and bears some striking grammatical similarities to Navajo. Yeniseic languages have a unique verb prefix system: unique enough that Vajda could not find a corresponding system throughout Northern Asia. Na-Dene was the closest family geographically with a similar system. Johanna Nichols, a groundbreaking Historical Linguist and Linguistic Anthropologist, attended the symposium and made comment. Roach quotes:

With the exception of the Eskimo-Aleut family that straddles the Bering Strait and Aleutian Islands, this is “the first successful demonstration of any connection between a New World language and an Old World language,” Nichols said.

Vajda has not yet published his findings, so the extent of his linguistic claims is not yet clear. However, based on Roach’s summary of his discussion, there are two major points of controversy. First, Roach states that Vajda found “several dozen” cognates. Whether or not the comparative method for linguistic reconstruction was used remains to be seen. Regardless, a cognate list under 50 seems a bit thin to solidify a connection at all, let alone begin reconstruction. Furthermore, the public at this point has no access to the words to assess their status as true cognates. Without a doubt, a consistent and corresponding element of grammatical structure is a strong argument for a common ancestor, but we must consider the systems of linguistic change, particularly sound change (which requires cognates), as a central factor.

A second point of controversy is the matter of depth: how long ago does the proposed connection date back? Vajda makes no direct claims, but states that this would be the oldest known language link if it corresponds to the late Pleistocene migrations evident in the archaeological record. Unfortunately, the field of linguistics currently has no reliable absolute dating techniques, and relative dating such as glottochronology, has been widely discredited. In this case, it seems the lack of cognates would help secure this relationship as an old one. If that were indeed the case, a volume of cognates would become evident in the reconstructions of Proto-Yeniseic and Proto-Na-Dene. Whether or not Vajda has taken this into consideration remains to be seen. At any rate, Nichols is not convinced of a 10,000 year-old connection:

“I don’t think there is any reason to assume the connection is [10,000 years] old … this must surely be one late episode in a much longer and more complicated history of settlement,” she said.

At this point it is very difficult to make any generalizations. Vajda has not yet published his findings, but merely opened the door to discussion on the topic. Until he does, the foundation of our support or criticism is unknown.

Despite the fact that I’ve seen some really impactful primate related research lately, I’ve completely neglected updating Primatology.net with it. I can’t believe it has been almost three months since I’ve posted there! I should really resume posting there. Actually, I was considering putting up this following blog post over there, since it has to do with differences in neuroanatomy of the primate brain… but because these comparative studies are in the context of identifying specific architectural differences in the human brain related to language, I think posting it here is more fitting.

If you’re a reader of Neurophilosophy, you may have an idea of what research I’m referring too, the new Nature Neuroscience paper from James Rilling and team. Before I jump into this paper, “The evolution of the arcuate fasciculus revealed with comparative DTI,” please let me share another recent paper that gives some introduction about what I’m gonna talk about.

See earlier this month, Current Biology published a paper, “Communicative Signaling Activates ‘Broca’s’ Homolog in Chimpanzees,” where researchers not only confirmed that the Broca’s area as an important area of the human brain for language comprehension, but also chimpanzees have similar activity in the homologous area of their brains when communicative signals are produced or heard. The Broca’s area has long been thought to be one of the specialized functional areas of the brain for language comprehension. In fact was discovered almost 150 years ago by a physician named Pierre Paul Broca, who conducted an autopsy of patient with a speech deficit. Broca was able to determine the patient had a syphilitic lesion in the left cerebral hemisphere and identified this area as his namesake.

If you’ve heard anything about Broca’s area, it larger in the left hemisphere of the brain. Comparing activity levels between the two hemisphere, during language-related tasks, have shown the left hemisphere Broca’s area is more active. That’s due to the lateralization of the brain, which I’m sure you’ve heard of.

Anyways, the results of this study have important implications in figuring out the functional and structural differences of the human and chimpanzee brain. Why? Well, for starters, the linguistic abilities of humans have been thought to be unique to us for a while. This is a really big misconception because research on signing apes and other communicating animals, have begun to show us that we’re not alone in our abilities to symbolize information and exchange it by way of complex sound and gesture.

In order to investigate the differences of the activity between Broca’s areas in humans and related structure in chimpanzees, Taglialatela et al., put three chimpanzee subjects in PET and fMRI machines and stimulated to vocalize by putting treats just out of their reach. They then recorded the activity of the subjects would vocalize in frustration. They were able to see the very same the neuroanatomical structures associated with the production of communicative behaviors in humans, fire in chimpanzees.

Now, of course that doesn’t mean chimpanzees are gonna be reciting Shakespeare anytime soon. This leads me to the first paper I mentioned today, the one from Rilling and crew. Rilling et al., did a comparative anatomical study on the structure of arcuate fasciculus, a large white matter tract, in humans, chimpanzees and macaques. The arcuate fasciculus functions as a linker between Broca’s area and another language associated area of the brain, Wernicke’s area. The researchers used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a type of noninvasive medical imaging that’s a lot like MRI but it compares and contrasts the local characteristics of water diffusion within tissues.

While the arcuate fasiculus of the rhesus macaque, the chimpanzee, and the human linked up to the frontal cortex — including with Broca’s area, it was observed that the human arcuate fasiculus is much larger. It more spreads deep into the middle temporal lobe, leaving the classical Wernicke’s area. In chimps, the arcuate fasciculus made very superficial connections to the temporal cortex regions homologous to Wernicke’s area. Macaques showed a much lower extend of this integration. Rilling commented,

“We know from previous functional imaging studies that the middle temporal lobe is involved with analyzing the meanings of words. In humans, it seems the brain not only evolved larger language regions but also a network of fibers to connect those regions, which supports humans’ superior language capabilities.”

This following diagram was published in Rilling et al.’s paper and illustrates their results:

So from these two papers, the evolution of specialized language areas maybe active in both chimpanzee and human brains but as the human brain diverged from other primate counterparts, major re-wiring at the arcuate fasciculus accompanied the massive expansion of brain size. Ultimately the area that is associated with understanding word meaning, Wernicke’s area, has been strongly connected with Broca’s area.

Rilling, J.K., Glasser, M.F., Preuss, T.M., Ma, X., Zhao, T., Hu, X., Behrens, T.E. (2008). The evolution of the arcuate fasciculus revealed with comparative DTI. Nature Neuroscience DOI: 10.1038/nn2072

TAGLIALATELA, J., RUSSELL, J., SCHAEFFER, J., HOPKINS, W. (2008). Communicative Signaling Activates ‘Broca’s’ Homolog in Chimpanzees. Current Biology, 18(5), 343-348. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.01.049