Language and life history: A new perspective on the development ...

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Commentary/Locke & Bogin: <strong>Language</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>life</strong> <strong>history</strong>developmental levels follow logically – for example, greatercontingency <strong>and</strong> emotional nuance in cross-generational communicationshould lead (whether phylogenetically or developmentally)to more advanced communication (for details, seeGreenspan & Shanker 2004; King 2004). Future primatologicalresearch along these lines will surely contribute in serious waysto evolution-of-language theorizing.Words are not costly displays: Shortcomingsof a testosterone-fuelled model of languageevolutionChris Knight <strong>and</strong> Camilla PowerDepartment of Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of EastLondon, London E16 2RD, United Kingdom.chris.knight@uel.ac.uk c.c.power@uel.ac.ukhttp://homepages.uel.ac.uk/C.Knight/Abstract: Only by misconstruing the term performative are the authorsable to argue that males surpass females in “performative applications”of language. Linguistic performatives are not costly displays of quality,<strong>and</strong> syntax cannot be explained as an outcome of behaviouralcompetition between pubertal males. However, there is room for amodel in which language co-evolves with the unique human <strong>life</strong>-<strong>history</strong>stage of adolescence.This target article attempts an ambitious synthesis. It is high timethat speculations about language evolution were grounded in anadequate underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the evolution of human <strong>life</strong> <strong>history</strong>.Where the article deals with human growth <strong>and</strong> development itappears authoritative; however, the specifically linguistic sectionsare less convincing.Locke & Bogin (L&B) claim that “performative applications oflanguage ...consistently favor males” (sect. 5.1, para. 3, emphasisin original). In linguistics, the term performative is subject toprecise definition. Austin (1975: 14) stipulates that “there mustexist an accepted conventional procedure having a certainconventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering ofcertain words by certain persons in certain circumstances.” Asa “conventional effect,” the performative force of an utteranceis abstract <strong>and</strong> institutional – quite unlike the material impactwhich an animal signal is designed to produce. Hence, when abride says “I do” during her wedding ceremony, her metamorphosisinto a wife doesn’t depend on how she vocalises thosesounds. Provided the circumstances are appropriate <strong>and</strong> herintention clear, the physical details of her performance – forexample, whether she whispers or stridently declaims – are irrelevant.Speakers’ communicative intentions are accomplishedby being socially recognised (Grice 1989); they are not judgedby reference to physical qualities such as amplitude, stamina,or vigour.L&B make their sexual selection case by claiming that“important aspects of language cannot appear until sexualmaturity” (target article, Abstract). By this they mean thatyoung children lack sufficient “real world knowledge”(sect.10) – presumably regarding sexual behaviour – to be able tomake pragmatic inferences about speakers’ intentions. But thepresence or absence of adult content is irrelevant to the presenceor absence of key features of language such as performativeforce, which is wholly within the capability of four-year-oldsplaying “let’s pretend.” L&B envisage a juvenile phase duringwhich “teasing, joking, <strong>and</strong> gossip” serve “group-orientedgoals” (sect. 9). This is uncontroversial, but how would such processesbe reinforced through an adolescent phase of intrasexual,epigamic selection? Can the authors clarify the circumstances inwhich individualistic male sexual rivalry promotes “grouporientedgoals”?The authors’ evolutionary model gives pride of place to youthsfighting with rap as chimpanzees pant-hoot or caribou bulls roar.Suggesting that “testosterone promotes verbal dueling” (sect. 6),the authors invoke shortages of this hormone to explain whyfemale “performative applications” don’t measure up to those ofmales. However, they then let slip an observation that turns thisextraordinary argument on its head. Adolescent females, theyconcede, gossip against rivals by enlisting “the support of peers,greatly surpassing males in this practice” (sect. 6). Only by systematicallyconflating linguistic performatives with bodily performancesdo the authors succeed in obfuscating the awkward truth:namely, that to enlist the support of peers in manipulatingcollective judgements is precisely to deploy “performativeforce.” Here, we encounter a gender bias in “performativeapplications” that contradicts their entire argument.Gossiping teenage girls, then, compete by enlisting the supportof peers in constructing <strong>and</strong> contesting <strong>perspective</strong>s on theworld. In the case of male-on-male rap, the st<strong>and</strong>ards are different.As one informant puts it: “Don’t hafta make whole bunchsense, long sounds pretty” (see target article, sect. 7, para. 4).So, while, according to the authors, females compete with sociallyrelevant information, males compete by making pretty sounds.Accepting this contrast for the sake of argument, whose strategieswould have driven the evolution of syntactical <strong>and</strong> semantic complexityin speech? Gossiping is a distinctively linguistic skill(Dunbar 1996). Singing is not. Male-on-male vocal competitionmay help explain phonological complexity in the songs of birds,whales, <strong>and</strong>, arguably, hominin youths; it cannot explain themorphosyntactical or semantic complexities of gossip.We readily agree that costly performances are valuable ashard-to-fake indices of individual quality. But how is this relevantto the evolution of language? The issue concerns more than narrowlyvocal abilities. How <strong>and</strong> why did distinctively human verbalabilities become so decisive in social competition among ourancestors? Among nonhuman primates, attention paid to vocalisationsmay be symptomatic of dominance, but it is not causative.The reverse is true of humans. Among hunter-gatherers, socialrelations are best described in terms of “counterdominance”(Erdal & Whiten 1994). In such egalitarian contexts, physicallyunimpressive individuals may gain prestige <strong>and</strong> influencethrough their verbal fluency. Contrary to L&B, the pressure onspeakers is not to show off with spectacular vocal displays.Typically, hunter-gatherers avoid signs of personal ambition orboastful aggression. Most valued are conversationalists skilful atmanaging conflicts <strong>and</strong> securing community-wide consensus.Often, older women have the last word. L&B convey the oppositeimpression by selecting examples of formal oratory typical ofhorticultural “Big Man” societies – as opposed to egalitarianhunter-gatherers who are more likely to be representative ofearly human societies.Unlike animal vocal displays, which are evaluated on an analogscale, linguistic messages are digitally encoded. There is nothingintrinsically costly or reliable about a linguistic sign. The distinctivelyhuman language faculty – language in its “narrow” sense –lacks any counterpart in animal social communication (Hauseret al. 2002), where honesty is underwritten by investment reliablydemonstrating signal quality (Zahavi & Zahavi 1997). L&B envisagelinguistic evolution driven by direct behavioural competitionbetween siblings or adolescent male sexual rivals. But suchdynamics could only drive the evolution of signals that arehonest because they are costly – exactly what linguistic signsare not.In short, the authors show little awareness of the scale of challengefacing any theory of language evolution. To quoteChomsky, language is “based on an entirely different principlethan any animal communication system” (Chomsky 1988,p. 183). As a milestone in the evolution of communication,“language is off the chart” (Chomsky 2002b, p. 146). Above all,what cries out to be explained is the abstract computational principleof digital infinity (Hauser et al. 2002). Instead of attempting290 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2006) 29:3
Commentary/Locke & Bogin: <strong>Language</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>life</strong> <strong>history</strong>this difficult task, L&B focus on features of vocalization that showcontinuity with analog animal displays.Linguistic topics aside, this article offers an important discussionof <strong>life</strong> <strong>history</strong>. Even here, however, a critical issue is neglected.Modern Darwinism takes account of costs as well asbenefits. What about the costs to hominin mothers in producinglarger-brained, larger-bodied offspring? The combination ofreduced length of lactation plus extended childhood can bringreproductive advantage only to mothers who have reliable allocaresupport. But according to these authors, young males areincreasingly engaged in rap-style sexual display. By contrastwith “show-off” hunting (Hawkes 1991), this offers no materialsupport for mothers. Would hunter-gatherer females preferreliable producers of meat – or clever rappers?The idea of the coevolution of adolescence with language <strong>and</strong>symbolic culture is promising; the emergence of pubertalinitiation rituals would be central to any such process (Knight2002; Power & Aiello 1997). But the selective gender biastowards males needs to be corrected. Among African huntergatherers,it is not pubertal males but females who undergo themost elaborate <strong>and</strong> costly initiation rituals.Knowledge of language <strong>and</strong> phrasalvocabulary acquisitionKoenraad KuiperDepartment of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,Christchurch, New Zeal<strong>and</strong>.kon.kuiper@canterbury.ac.nzAbstract: Locke & Bogin’s (L&B’s) main thesis can be extended to theacquisition of the phrasal vocabulary in that the acquisition of muchphrasal vocabulary combines the acquisition of linguistic knowledgewith pragmatics <strong>and</strong> performance <strong>and</strong> in that the apprenticeship systemfor such learning begins to flower in adolescence.Knowledge of language must involve knowledge of a vocabulary,not just for the simple-minded reason that it would not be possibleto say anything without some words to say it with, but also becausesignificant aspects of the rest of the grammar of a language aredriven from its vocabulary, as is now assumed by many modelsof grammar, for example Minimalism (Chomsky 1996).Therefore, one of the central problems for language acquisition,as for explaining the evolution of language, is how contemporarymembers of the species Homo sapiens acquire vocabularyof the kind, in the quantity, <strong>and</strong> at the rate they do, often on thebasis of apparently little exposure. The acquisition of a mature,adult vocabulary is a massive task given that in the case of aliterate person a single-word vocabulary is reckoned to bebetween 60,000 (Fromkin 2000) <strong>and</strong> 150,000 items (Seashore& Eckerson 1940), <strong>and</strong> that the phrasal vocabulary is estimatedto be equal to the single-word vocabulary (Jackendoff 1995) orto be an order of magnitude larger than this (Mel’čuk 1995,p. 169). Even using a conservative estimate of 120,000 total vocabularyitems, this involves increasing the word power by at leastsixteen items per day for every day of a twenty-year-old’s <strong>life</strong>; inMel’čuk’s estimate that would require learning an average ofapproximately ninety items per day.Locke & Bogin’s (L&B’s) hypotheses about human evolutionmight be extended as a partial explanation of the fact thathumans are able to acquire vocabulary so rapidly, namely, thatit lies in placing performance <strong>and</strong> pragmatics within the languagefaculty – that is, intimately connecting the use of language withthe language itself. This is nowhere clearer than in the phrasalvocabulary. Kuiper <strong>and</strong> Tan (1989) have explored in somedetail the pragmatic knowledge that must be known for appropriateusage of the expression He’s old enough to be your father, forexample.This vocabulary item, which is known by many native speakersof English, is highly constrained in its conditions of use. Onelearns it at the same time as one learns about the nature ofsexual relationships. But one may only have heard it once ortwice. The fact that it is embedded in social practice is the linkbetween its acquisition <strong>and</strong> its utility. It is learned because itmay come in h<strong>and</strong>y. Formulae like this abound in a native vocabularywith items ranging from those taught to children as they godoor-to-door on Halloween in North America (Berko-Gleason1980) through to the arcane expressions used when crowning aBritish monarch.Such expressions <strong>and</strong> their use are not confined to oralsocieties, although these are given, perhaps unnecessarily, preferentialmention by L&B. Literate societies contain manysubcultures that are oral societies. Auctioneers (Kuiper &Haggo 1984), supermarket checkout operators, <strong>and</strong> priests alllearn a phrasal vocabulary which is as much part of an oral traditionas is that of illiterate bards (Lord 1960). It is learned inthe same way, as part of being socialised, that is, as part of learningthe script for a particular role (Goffman 1969). Following L&B, itwould be expected that the acquisition of phrasal vocabulary mustexp<strong>and</strong> greatly during adolescence when adult social roles arebeing learned for the first time. It is therefore not surprisingthat many boys who select roles that involve rich adult oral traditionsdo so during this period <strong>and</strong> apprentice themselves toadult men to acquire the necessary vocabulary <strong>and</strong> later to practiseits use. Reon Murtha, horse-race caller, began to practiserace calling in his adolescence (Kuiper & Austin 1990). Manyauctioneers such as champion tobacco auctioneer “Mac” Burnetteare the sons of auctioneers (Kuiper & Tillis 1986). Highschool playgrounds are full of boys imitatively practicing repertoiressuch as those of sports commentators, <strong>new</strong>s readers, <strong>and</strong>st<strong>and</strong>-up comedians. L&B are right to point out that this aspectof language acquisition does not rate in the normal classroom,or in classroom competency tests, but any high school teacherwho is on playground duty can make these observations.It is also not surprising that phrasal vocabulary acquisition, <strong>and</strong>the skills in employing it, are begun in apprenticeship mode inadolescence <strong>and</strong> mature only later in adulthood. As Lord(1960) points out, mastery of the formulaic lexicon in terms ofboth its acquisition <strong>and</strong> its employment takes years to develop.Adult males traditionally reach the peak of their social influencerelatively late. Again this follows from the view that languageacquisition <strong>and</strong> pragmatics <strong>and</strong> performance link throughoutthe human <strong>life</strong> span <strong>and</strong> not just during early <strong>life</strong>.So what then of vocabulary acquisition <strong>and</strong> its place in evolution?The phrasal vocabulary normally combines strictly linguisticknowledge in terms of the phonology, syntax, <strong>and</strong>semantics of a lexicalised phrase, with knowledge of the conditionsfor its use – that is, its pragmatics <strong>and</strong> performancerequirements. Such vocabulary is socially integrated in that itsuse is a function, both productively <strong>and</strong> perceptually, of socialevents which recur, such as the requirement under certain situationsto apologise, thank someone, launch ships, <strong>and</strong> crownkings <strong>and</strong> queens. Those who can do these things in a sociallysanctioned matter have social advantages. Those who cannotare social lepers. Such social advantages clearly provideevolutionary advantages in the way that L&B suggest.If we think of small extended family groups living as huntergatherersin earlier times, many social events would have beenrecurring events (Malinowski 1922/1984). Mostly, therefore, afinite but extensive set of vocabulary items would have sufficedto accompany such events <strong>and</strong> in some measure to createthem. That being so, the capacity to signal appropriately wouldhave had evolutionary advantages for everyone, <strong>and</strong> superiorability – that is, having at one’s disposal a wide range of vocabulary– would have been of value. Wray (1998) suggests that, onthe basis of such needs-based use, analytic decomposition of anincreasing large communal vocabulary would have allowed forthe evolution of grammar. On this analysis, vocabulary cameBEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2006) 29:3 291
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