[PLEASE PLACE ALL OFF-TOPIC COMMENTS HERE. THEY WILL NOT BE POSTED IN THIS THREAD]
Some readers have been very critical of the thesis presented by the book Why Only Us by Noam Chomsky and Robert C. Berwick. Berwick jokes that Chomsky deserves only 5% of the credit for the book.
The thesis seems to be that language developed very recently and rapidly, in either a single, or a small number of genetic mutations. Commenter Mug of Pee condemned this theory saying:
VIQ is heritable and varies continuously. the very lowest VIQ humans are no smarter than chimps at language.
imagine that the first anatomically modern humans were verbal idiots…. then the utility of language selected for higher and higher verbal ability, language evolved. and the same thing would happen in any large brained species with a vocal apparatus similar to that of humans. homo erection spoke, just really badly.
the idea that a single mutation produced the language faculty is 100% AUTISTIC.
First of all, humans with the linguistic ability of a chimp are probably always those with organic mental retardation, meaning disabilities caused by the overriding effect of single mutant genes or chromosomal abnormalities. You never see anyone with familial retardation (i.e. low IQ caused by the extreme end of normal variation) who resembles a chimp linguistically. This is important because it suggests that the difference between man and ape may not be “continuous” as Mug of Pee suggests, but discrete.
In other words, what Chomsky and Berwick are arguing is that prior to about 175 kya or so (give or take perhaps 125,000 years), humans not only had less verbal ability, but a different kind of verbal ability. In other words they seem to think language is almost a binary ability. You either have it or you don’t.
Specifically, if we cloned a human from 175,000 years ago, and taught them English, they could acquire a vocabulary almost as big as ours, but if we said to them: “bird ate worm”, they might picture this in their mind:
In other words, they would understand all the words of the sentence, but they would forever be separate concepts. They would never be able to see the big picture.
By contrast, after the genetic mutation(s) occurred, when you say “bird ate worm” they would picture this in their mind:
The difference between these two interpretations is what Chomsky calls “merge”, the ability to glue different concepts together to form a bigger concept. And then once you merge multiple concepts into one, you can then merge the multifaceted concepts themselves together to create an even more complex thought “bird ate worm at night” giving rise to almost infinite levels of creativity.
If I understand Chomsky and Berwick’s thesis correctly, this capacity to merge ideas is what makes human verbal ability not just quantitatively different from pre-human communication, but qualitatively different too.
Of course all this is based in part on the somewhat discredited idea of “the great leap forward”, the notion that cultural progress in ancestral humans occurred in a sudden largely upper paleolithic explosion, rather than a gradual transition over millions of years. More and more scientists believe in gradualism, leaving Chomsky and Berwick in the minority.
But this “merge” ability Chomsky describes extends beyond just language. According to Berwick, humans are the only animal that makes multifaceted tools, for example a pencil with an eraser at the end. With one side you write and with the other side, you correct mistakes. Apparently the two men believe such tools were impossible to conceive before “merge” mutated into existence.
Here’s Chomsky talking about “merge”:
Pumpkin Person 
[ By contrast, after the genetic mutation(s) occurred, when you say “bird ate worm” they would picture this in their mind: ]
I cannot see the bird eating the worm in my mind pumpkin and I did read the sentence properly. I do not see many things in my mind when I read. I am Aphantasic remember? unable to see images in my mind.
I believe language developed like in a baby, not all at once. Bable at first but yes a threshold is needed to get to the Bable but humans that were better at babbling became selected for more complex language. Exactly how races evolved by selecting, even mate selection for intelligence. Mate selection for language. The best babblers procreated most, better hunting. Langauge had to have existed before humans left Africa to become caucasoid, mongoloid and negroid.
But you can put all them together.
words maybe can be understood as ”pictures”, symbolic ones.
or [n..t]
Imagination is just like the combination of some visual skills of spatial intelligence with intrapersonal/default network activation, or not.
It’s a kind of visual-spatial intrapersonal/autobiographical ”intelligence’ [whatever it is].
When I read I hear the words and I abstract the meaning. I do not see the text. I hear the text. I mean I do not see the text latter to remember it. I remember pumpkin talked about birds and Chomsky in my subconscious and that triggers 3-4 verbal words and I come back to the blog to participate. I have no vision of the text any more than seeing the bird in my mind. I abstract the meaning is best I can put it.
[redacted by pp, march 10, 2018]
a single mutation in that single mutation chomsky claims would produce a linguistic idiot according to chomsky and nothing else would be wrong with him. [redacted by pp, march 10, 2018]
Right, but that doesn’t mean broader genetic disorders also couldn’t damage the same linguistic system
[redacted by pp, march 11, 2018]
organic denotes either known mutation or brain trauma.
familial denotes many genes of small effect.
Thanks Captain Obvious
it wasn’t obvious to you.
sad!
where are these organic retards who can’t acquire language?
it wasn’t obvious to you.
Huh? Did you not comprehend my article? I specifically said any human with chimp language would be organic not familial.
where are these organic retards who can’t acquire language?
You don’t own a mirror?
no. you didn’t comprehend your article.
“bird ate worm at night”
lmfao
much LESS subtle and abstract than chomsky’s politics. MUCH. and it should be ignored because it’s patently ridiculous.
They argue that the original “human revolution” theory reflects a profound Eurocentric bias. Recent archaeological evidence, they argue, proves that humans evolving in Africa some 300,000 or even 400,000 years ago were already becoming cognitively and behaviourally “modern”. These features include blade and microlithic technology, bone tools, increased geographic range, specialized hunting, the use of aquatic resources, long distance trade, systematic processing and use of pigment, and art and decoration. These items do not occur suddenly together as predicted by the “human revolution” model, but at sites that are widely separated in space and time. This suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviours in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World.
Between these extremes is the view – currently supported by archaeologists Chris Henshilwood,[21] Curtis Marean,[22] Ian Watts[23] and others – that there was indeed some kind of ‘human revolution’ but that it occurred in Africa and spanned tens of thousands of years. The term “revolution” in this context would mean not a sudden mutation but a historical development along the lines of “the industrial revolution” or “the Neolithic revolution”.[24] In other words, it was a relatively accelerated process, too rapid for ordinary Darwinian “descent with modification” yet too gradual to be attributed to a single genetic or other sudden event. These archaeologists point in particular to the relatively explosive emergence of ochre crayons and shell necklaces apparently used for cosmetic purposes. These archaeologists see symbolic organisation of human social life as the key transition in modern human evolution. Recently discovered at sites such as Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point, South Africa, pierced shells, pigments and other striking signs of personal ornamentation have been dated within a time-window of 70,000 – 160,000 years ago in the African Middle Stone Age, suggesting that the emergence of Homo sapiens coincided, after all, with the transition to modern cognition and behaviour.[25] While viewing the emergence of language as a ‘revolutionary’ development, this school of thought generally attributes it to cumulative social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary processes as opposed to a single genetic mutation.[26]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity#Late_Upper_Paleolithic_Model_or_“Revolution”
Like richard Klein who I’ve discussed in the past, chomsky came of age when the “revolution” theory was much more accepted so that’s his mindset
Occupy Wallstreet.
Kony 2012
Zeitgeist Movement
Ron Paul Revolution(backwards LOVE in revolution)
(08 crash causes Food prices increasing 60 percent in the middle east, Arab Spring)
Revolution is Dumb and stupid. (Quote Animekitty)
Sigh
We’re not talking about that kind of revolution
Stay on topic please
It’s commonly accepted that a mutation to one of a handful of genes (one of them being FOXP2) can cause widespread impairments in language. What’s interesting is that these impairments are oddly specific (difficulty pronouncing consonants, inability to properly use verbs, reversed word orders).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KE_family
However, people so affected also have low IQ, thus suggesting perhaps a continuous aspect???
DNA sampling from Homo neanderthalensis bones indicates that their FOXP2 gene is a little different, though largely similar to those of Homo sapiens (i.e. humans).
Neanderthals, an archaic human species that dominated Europe until the arrival of modern humans some 45,000 years ago, possessed a critical gene known to underlie speech, according to DNA evidence retrieved from two individuals excavated from El Sidron, a cave in northern Spain.
You never see anyone with familial retardation (i.e. low IQ caused by the extreme end of normal variation) who resembles a chimp linguistically.
peepee just made this up.
pathetic.
Debunk me then
it’s not significant even if it’s true, because by the time humans were physically indistinguishable from oprah their language was a ferrari. this means that even if people were bred for lower and lower VIQ they would have to stop being human and start to look like oprah before they lost the ability to speak. oprah could act in the planet of the apes without makeup. chomsky’s theory is that for a long time there were people who looked human but could speak. that’s a retarded theory.
…but couldn’t speak…
English has no inflection in its tones the way the romantic languages do or any major language does. This is why translation software is not so good and Chomsky may be missing emotions in his merger theory of language.
When translated Cognito Ergo Sum in Latin becomes I think therefore I am.
segmenting the translation in google
sum = I am
cognito ergo = Aware of the
cognito ergo sum = Aware of the I am
The merger idea where recursion happens that creates nested loops of word hierarchies. The first word being most important because it unravels the meaning efficiently the nesting is too expensive for linear conceptions first but structure first. emotions create the nesting, to begin with. An algorithm for directing a nesting process would be Chompskys genetic “revolution” but nesting could well be multiple genes in multiple groups, mate/group selection depending on how nesting happens to produce language the basis is heavily predictive of emotion being part of the process. Emotions being a main part of nesting you can improve multiple genes, not just one gene. Emotional intelligence. Russian Nesting Dolls. (Aware of the I am) inflection.
Kitty, for Latin, normally you use the verb cogito for I think or I am aware. If you want to say I try to learn , you could say cognosco, which would make a nice variation. But cognito, means known, so it could never be concatenated with sum wich is an active voice. Like « known, therefore I am » doesn’t make any sense.
English language is not a tonal language. But it has strong accentuation, particularly the english speakers accentuate and stretch the different syllables even more than Italians or Russians. English is very good for music.
Generally I don’t understand the series of numbers you write, but I think it makes a nice combination and contrast with philos comments.
Familial Retardation, also called socio-cultural or cultural-familial retardation, refers to a state of mild mental retardation that is believed to be the result of environmental factors, usually related to some types of psychosocial disadvantages; lack of prenatal care, impoverished circumstances, poor diet, lack of …
one can imagine the mean of the distribution of verbal ability has moved up from homo erectus to today but there’s still dispersion about the mean.
maybe the first humans were like jimmy buzzard.
Its funny how pumpkin wants to talk about proto human languages and not the 500 pound gorilla in the room. (Not oprah).
Loose thoughts:
What would be the neurological mechanism of the merge faculty? Where does it happen in the brain?
Might there be higher merge faculties waiting to be unlocked by evolution, leading to cognitive styles we can’t imagine?
Around the 52:30 mark in this video, Chomsky’s co-author discusses the neurological mechanism:
he’s LYING or stupid.
chimps and gorillas DO combine words for a sense which neither has by itself. it’s just that they combine few words and without any order.
he’s confusing a mathematical property of language with ability for language.
“triangles” is just another way of saying that all parsing is in pairs. this is FALSE, but he doesn’t care. is he a jew? can’t find his bio.
the low VIQ are known for short, grammatically simple sentences, not just a smaller vocab. a chimp and a gorilla are just an extreme case of jimmy buzzard. “i’m openin’ a boutique” is a simple S V O sentence.
even some dogs can understand the composition of commands.
“merge” is NOT what he claims it is at all.
From Wikipedia:
Washoe and her mates were able to combine the hundreds of signs that they learned into novel combinations (that they had never been taught, but rather created themselves) with different meanings. For instance, when Washoe’s mate Moja didn’t know the word for “thermos”, Moja referred to it as a “METAL CUP DRINK”.[21] However, whether or not Washoe’s combinations constitute genuine inventive language is controversial, as Herbert S. Terrace contended by concluding that seeming sign combinations did not stand for a single item, but rather were three individual signs.[22] Taking the thermos example, rather than METAL CUP DRINK being a composite meaning thermos, it could be that Washoe was indicating there was an item of metal (METAL), one shaped like a cup (CUP), and that could be drunk out of (DRINK).
Triangles?
perception action feedback hierarchy
Just another way of describing sophisticated nesting.
That my artificial intelligence project was about in 2007.
Nesting is like one of the most important things for Intelligence and also for what Carl Jung discovered about personality that I just made sense of here.
Logic nesting 130 and verbal nesting 132 add up to my general nesting 130.
Looking at nesting the definition it just means integrated or tangled in complexity. Rolled up weaving. Inside the inside the inside of the inside. Deeper dependencies. Folding within the folds.
Processing speed still slow but that would be more to do with perceptual problems. Seeing, hearing. But I just have to think more abstractly to get things done because I can invent an idea that solves a problem without needing to calculate fast. But that does not work in video games. You need to react immediately. I just can’t react immediately. But I am nested in other areas that do not require reacting fast and there I am more abstract and able to understand. But I must still go slow at academic speeds like lectures. I sometimes have trouble reading. People can write books that are just too obscure and do not know how to explain clearly instead of just data that has no structure to it. The structure should guide the reader to the points. Example being that nesting is a cool concept but should not be overused as in comment formats in this blog. In book form, examples of nesting in many forms should be given that complement how intelligence and personality work without the word and this creates structure showing main points that create new understanding not data trivia and in nonrepetitive ways. In the first sentence, I said I have problems with speed. I can’t read if the book is not trying to teach something new because there is a proper way to do this that other ways just makes me feel taxed out.
”imagine that the first anatomically modern humans were verbal idiots…”.
This seems inimaginable…
”verbal idiots” only if they had basic problems to communicate or to understand words.
Pre historical humans had lower verbal IQ if they were compared today BUT IQ analyse and compare basically the human capacity to accumulate cultural knowledge and to manipulate them.
[but… most of this ”capacity” is more involuntary than deliberated]
Lower seems relative here, what is lower today in the pre historical past was the appex of human intelligence, giftedness. What is higher today, probably will be lower in the post historical 😉 human future…
”In other words, what Chomsky and Berwick are arguing is that prior to about 175 kya or so (give or take perhaps 125,000 years), humans not only had less verbal ability, but a different kind of verbal ability.
…
In other words they seem to think language is almost a binary ability. You either have it or you don’t.”
Still today, 😉 😉
Human language have becoming more futile with a invention of excess of intrincate rules and words with a very similar meaning, if not basically the same thing, that ”just” sophisticate communication. Good for poetry, not so for efficiency. BUT the major problem is not the sophistication itself, but the sophistry.
”Specifically, if we cloned a human from 175,000 years ago, and taught them English, they could acquire a vocabulary —almost as big as ours—-, but if we said to them: ”
Are you sure**
Maybe they are capable to see big picture of the same categories of things OR that they can see this complex big picture BUT at sensorial/non-verbal way, just like when a cat look at the bird eating a worm. The cat know what s/he is seeing, know in non-verbal way, s/he only don’t know associate and enlarge this event in its brain//mamind.
Human language is the progressive process of marking-perceptions, just like when we mark or highlight with a pen the topics of hypothetical text.
So MAYBE the question is not that pre historical humans could not see the big picture of complex associations but that they can’t TRANSLATE this from the non-verbal perception to verbalized or marked perception.
And ”even” they were not capable to do this at non-verbal ways, they [likely] still had pretty well developed ”compensatory” skills, i mean, the most basic verbal skills very well developed and useful to their evolutionary scenarios.
Current and or remniscent hunter gatherers human tribes would be very similar to earlier humans**
”The cat know what s/he is seeing, know in non-verbal way, s/he only don’t know associate and enlarge this event in its brain//mamind.”
I mean, if a cat no have a interest to watch a bird eating a worm so…
Have or not interest is important to understand why someone like to pay attention to given subjects and others not. Intelligence is mostly derived or operated via self-interest. Humans have a large and diversified set of interests, from the most personally related or interested to the least.
Human can catch the big picture also because we are those here in this planet who pay attention to immediately-irrelevant stuff.
The key is recursive thinking (this shows up in mathematics and programming languages, not just human languages). Are chimps not capable of recursive thinking? This would explain why they’re not capable of language.
Maybe there’s some parts of IQ that measure recursive ability and some that do not. Any part that measures recursion would give chimps an IQ of 0, but the other parts wouldn’t…
Chomsky explains how language grows in the brain (that verbal IQ tests do not measure because everyone’s grammar is different in every person.)
Verbal intelligence is associated with access to long-term memory.
Math intelligence is associated with access to working memory.