Stuff You Should Know" Sure animals talk in their own way, with chirps and grunts and the like, but only humans can form words. It is this, some evolutionary psychologists contend, that is what truly separates us from the rest of the species on the planet. But why us?"
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always this Charles W. Chucker Bryant and uh that makes this stuff you should know? Is your seat? Okay, Frank, the chair is letting me down again. Yeah, he'll do that. Cher he recently fell in with a bad crowd and I do too, from the way he's making me said, So I'll just I'll lean forward. He's become unreliable. Who is it that messes with him? I don't know. Somebody who has no idea how to sit in a chair properly. That's how you need to get next, not just your own mic cover, but your own chair. Yeah. I think it's a strickling guy from tech stuff. It would be very cool as if you had it lower down from the ceiling like it was stored up there, and then hang like the sort of damocles over everybody else's head while they were recording. We'll look into that, Chuck. Have you ever heard of a little place called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yeah, okay, go eggheads. UM. So M I T is like the hotbed, the center of the linguistics field, among many other fields I didn't know. Yeah. Um Noam Chomsky is there. UM. And there's another guy whose name escapes me right now, but he recently made some headlines because he, I guess, got a grant and had his house wired with fish I cameras in every room with really high tech audio equipment to and from the moment his newborn son came home to the age of five. This guy recorded ninety thousand hours the whole five years of this kid's life. UM, in an effort to see how language acquisition develops in children. That's pretty cool, and this child specifically, it is very cool. There's a really clumsily titled UM Fast Company article called M I T. Scientists captures ninety thousand hours of video of his son's first words Comma, grafs it, comma what graphs it? He and then he grafts it. Yeah. The editor was like, I'm going home, yeah exactly so UM. But anyway, there's some video and some audio clips in there where you can hear like this condensed like over five years or over like a six month period. Or something like that. That's like the kid going from like gaga to water and you can hear it like evolve. Interesting. Did they learn anything from that? I don't know if they have quite yet. And plus I mean like this is one child, but it's at the very least very very interesting. Um. But the the idea that you can learn something about the evolution of language and human beings from language acquisition and children is a hotly contested idea. UM, you wrote what I think is a very fine article. Thanks. You did a good job with this. How did language evolve? It was shorty you were talking about, though not how we acquire language skills as as um kids, but as a species. How did humans acquire language? Because we're the only ones that can say things like this, But you go to great lens to point out that we're not the only ones that communicate. True, I wouldn't say great links that sort of al It was like two or three sentences, Sure animals communicate. Well, no, it is. It is very true, and I think it was a good thing to start off with because humans can often be very um homocentric. You know, so you say birds chirp, porpoises go right, Yeah, uh, there are community. We're the only ones who converbialize. That's right, right, Yes, we talk words. And we don't know exactly how this evolved for sure, because, um, there's a problem when it comes to things like evolution. There's not a ton of evidence. A lot of times like hard evidence. Um, I read this one guy's paper. There's a lot of papers on this. Yeah, this is a really First of all, I want you to just be very quiet. Do you hear that off in the business the explosion? Yes, we're standing in the midst of a mine field. Linguistics is a mine field, and they love like linguistics. People really love language and talking about it like and putting down people who disagree with them. So we should tread lightly here, we should. Um. But one guy's paper that I read today meets some university paper. He said that ideally, if we're going to study something like these neurological changes that happened in the brain, we would have, um, a large number of petrified whole brains representing lots of species over lots of time. But we don't have that. Unfortunately, they're big gaps. Uh. And even even even not taking into account gaps, we don't have fossilized brains. Yeah, the closest thing we have is a fossilized skull, which we can analyze and be like, well, there is kind of room for a big enough brain maybe for language. Yeah, what's that called cranial indocasting? I think so, Um, that's a that's a good term for it. And people won't even know if I'm wrong. Um. What they do have a little bit of evidence on is that the shape of our vocal tract um wasn't until about a hundred thousand years ago, wasn't able to even able to make um, the vocalizations of the modern speech sounds. So it wasn't even possible, Although that doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't language, because it just could have been a much more primitive version of what evolved of grunts. Yeah, exactly, and I did see someone. Even though that's all this was poo pooed by most people. Uh, some people think that spoken language of all from sign language, and that our modern gestures are holdover from that, which I thought was interesting, but most people go, now that's not true. Um. I ran into another one. And what you're talking about, um, for everybody listening, is called a proto language, and evidence of a proto language supports one theory, which we'll talk about in a minute. But um, one idea for proto language is that we started talking using on a monopeia, which would make snap crackling pop like the oldest words on earth, you know. Um. But well, I guess we should probably get into it now, Like what are there basically two competing theories for how we whire the language as a species? Right? Yeah? And I like both of them. I noticed at the end You're like, why can't we all just get along as far as linguistics go? Because I'm not a linguist, and so I'm not gonna sit here and poople and argue um because I'm not smart enough. I don't know enough about it. But the first Josh is um that we adapted to survive, so we learned how to speak. Then that's kind of the simplest way to say it. Um. The example I gave in here is uh. And then we'll talk about who you know, who are the leaders in this whole category that believed this? But uh took took's hunting on the range on the plains in the Savannah, and took took um thunder scares away the deer, so Took Took goes hungry. So then later on Took took his already maybe learned to grunt about like the deer being being nearby to his buddy. Who's his friend? Did we name every name my friend? Oh more Morty. Yeah, so he's already learned how to tell Morty that deer nearby, so shut up, right, because Morty talks incessantly. Uh So, now all of a sudden, he learns that thunder and bad weather might scare deer away, so he goes hungry. So he learns now, I've got to learn like what bad weather looks like coming in and how to tell Morty, hey, pick up the paste, dude, because bad weather is coming and we don't want to go hungry again. So that was just one of the stepping stones in evolving speech, right, And it is kind of like, um, the the idea behind it is that the speech evolved out of the combinations of these things, like you're saying, yeah, so you put them together and all of a sudden, huh that makes a lot of sense. I'm able to describe some larger portion of the world around us. Yeah, And that's got more complex. The language had to like as they learn more things, right, like we settled down and sure culture would have had like a you jimpact on something like that. Yeah, and keeping children alive apparently, like once we settled in villages, A lot of people think that language really took a leap forward because we had to, you know, keep the species alive by protecting the kids. Um. I guess also the idea that you could warn somebody about something, right that isn't necessarily just something you could point at and be like, you know, let's get out of here through gesture, something maybe further away, something that you couldn't see right then, that would that would lead directly to um to a trait that was that led to survival, which is the whole basis of natural selection, which means that people who could do that would be able to go reproduce, and that trait would survive and be passed along. And I imagine reproduction and all needed its own language as well, right, you know, I'm like, hey, mama, although in Quest for Fire it pretty much just happened, didn't I haven't seen that so long. I think that was the first movie I ever saw in showtime and Yeah, there wasn't a lot of words going on. It was like, you know, the ladies are down by the river bending over, filling up water buckets and or you know, water pods and man comes along and just you know, takes care of business. Yeah? Is that? Is that an ancient phrase? Takes care of business? TCB YEA. So I remember Quest for Fire and another movie. Um, we're out on showtime at about the same time a movie is called Caveman and it started Ringo Star. Is that his picture that is in this article? Yeah, don't you like my caption? Yeah? That's I couldn't. I couldn't tell just by looking at it, but um yeah, the caption, I think is what gave it away. These were the old days where I would like the highlight of my week was writing really clever picture captain star articles. I would go home and say, look at this one, Emily, it's pretty good. Someone might get this joke. So there's a production still of from Caveman of Ringo Star standing there and the caption is this cave by Caveman gets by with a little help from his friends, beautiful Matty guest producer Mattie. Yeah, so that's adaptation theory that basically we figured out that we could survive better and more robustly by talking to one another, and language evolved in fits and starts through there. Right. Yeah. And who who's gradually I should say gradually? Yes? Um? And that's Stephen Pinker, who's a great dude. Yeah. Pinker and Bloom in their paper Natural Language and Natural Selection. Uh. I mean there are a lot of people who agree with them and have written quote unquote the book on this since then, or several books. It's very dense subject. Makes my mind melt a little bit. Um, and Pinker and Bloom basically say, uh, this is the case. It makes sense. This is just standard Darwinian natural selection. What's the problem. I don't have a problem with it. Why doesn't everybody just get on board? Uh? Well, because there's another competing theory, and there are all sorts of sub theories, but these are the two big big daddies. Um, and this is no nom Chomsky and um. Evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould, and they think that it was a spandrel or an axaptation. So you know what a spandrel is well in biology or for real in architecture. But please explain. Okay, Well, Stephen J. Gould um coined the term spandrel, as you point out in the article. Um, and it's just perfect actually in this application, because the spandrel, architecturally speaking, is um this triangular area that inevitably is created when you put two arched domes next to another at right angles, and it looks like if you're looking at it looks like purposeful design, like ornamentation. But it's actually a byproduct you can't get around. And that's what a spandrel is. As far as Gould is concerned, the product of another evolutionary process right and language supposedly was as far as gold and chomp scare concern just kind of came about as the result of other stuff, specifically toolmaking. Yeah, Darwin calls it pre adaptation and later became acceptation. And which one do you like more, pre adaptation or acceptation? Acceptation is a little hard to say, so I'm gonna go predation. It sounds so like important for us, you know. Um. But a quick example of that, and this is the one most often cited, is that, uh, there's a theory out there that bird feathers were originally meant to keep birds, warm, and flying came about after that as a spandrel makes sense. Well's the problem exactly. So you said that our brains adapted to where we could they got larger, to where we could make tools, and things in language came about because of the result of that. And this isn't just kind of I mean, it's not like they're like, well, we can run, so we can talk. Um. There's specific areas of the brain that are associated with both toolmaking and tool use and language. UM. And there's actually two. There's um Broker's area and there's more. Nikki's area and Broker's area was named after a French neurosurgeon named Paul Broca, and in eighteen sixty one he um described the patient named Tan. Tan wasn't the guy's real name. No one knew his real name. Um. He was the only thing, the only syllable he could pronounce that he could form was Tan. So they're like, well, that's your name, pal Um. And after he died, Brokea opened up his skull and looked at his brain and found a huge lesion on the area now named broke A's area, and that's come to be associated with speech production. The weird thing about Tan is he could understand spoken language. If you're Tan, you look um, you look kind of Tan. I think maybe you should stay out of the sun. He could notice stay out of the sun. He wasn't There wasn't anything wrong with him other than he could not produce speech. Well, I bet he was really ticked off with his name. Then I can say his Tan. They're like, we'll just call you Tan, And he said he was probably like Nor, Yeah, it's ignacious anything but Tan. Yeah. I mean, I I imagine the guy probably was like, you know, half mad by the time he died, just out of frustration. Well, stroke patients. You know, my grandfather had a stroke and tried to speak in his head. He was saying words, but it would come out as gobbledygook and he would get really frustrated. It was very sad. So now that was your grandfather. So what it sounds like your grandfather UM had a problem with was his were Nikki's Area. Yeah, and that was named after a German neuro surgeon who found that UM his patients who could speak but they weren't making any sense, had lesions on the area now known it is were Nicky's Area. So if you put the two together, broke his area which is involved in speech production, and we're Nikki's area, which is involved with UM speech comprehension, language comprehension. You have normally talking people like us. Yes, and we first saw we're Nikki's area. I think it was Ricky, we're Nikki the guy, we're Nikki's area, and broke his area. UM, and the temporal, parietal, and UH occipital lobes of the brain physically connected for the first time in Homo habilis or habilis. So wait, what was it? What's that called where you examine sculls to see if there was probably some brain there. UM. I believe that it's called cranial indocasting. Nice, I think so. So they think that UM that this This would make a lot of sense if Homo habilis UM was the first one to talk, because they also often associate Homo habilis is the first one to use tools. Right, this is this isn't question I found recently it's to come under question that possibly UM the oldest tools, the older one tools which are like UM scrapers, hammers, UM I think brain crushers, right, basically just stone tools that are used to like skin meat off a bone. They're like two point three million years old. They think that they might be slightly older than Homo habilists. Then the other problem with linking language and humans and Homo habilis is we're not we're not sure we're on habiliss same tree. Oh yeah, But nonetheless, Homo habilist does have the cute nickname a handyman. I've never heard that because he was supposedly the first tool users, and that makes sense. Yeah, it's better than Bob the Builder, but there's still that that link right there between tool use and um language, right, which they think is makes him in her much more advanced than the Australia Eopithecus who came before homoobilist. So um, the whole reason why this is important is because they're trying to nail down where language first came about. And if you subscribe to Gold and Chomsky, it just all of a sudden it was there and people were talking to each other. Yeah, it was like one one mutation happened and then all of a sudden people were able to speak and they were like, oh man, I've been wanting to get some stuff off my chest for generations. Um, if you listen to Pinker and Bloom or you know what, I feel bad for Bloom. If you listen to Bloom and Pinker, Um, I mean we know about that, don't we. Uh. If you listen to Bloom and Pinker, then it took, you know, a very long time for language to evolve, and gradually by putting combinations together. The thing is Ghoul before he died said you know what, there's not nearly enough time for language to evolve. And what's more, if there was some sort of gradual evolution of language, then chimps should show some sort of propensity towards language. They do, but apparently not in any way that any linguist who's saying would it would call actual language the beginnings of language. Um, it's communication, but not actual language, right, like you mentioned at the beginning of the article. Sure, but um, Bloom and Pinker point out, So chimps and humans diverged about six million years ago. That's three hundred thousand generations for language to evolve. That's plenty of time, they say, and Gould from beyond the Grace says, no, it's not as he did. Okay, Uh, well you know what Pinker actually said about that in his defense was look at the high racks h y r a X. It is um because people say, well, we see in the DNA the high Racks shares the DNA with the African elephant. And if you look at a higher because it looks like a large rat, oh, it looks nothing like an elephant. So he's like, just because you share all that DNA doesn't mean that you're gonna evolve the exact same way. Yeah, so that makes sense. Yeah, and some people pose and I sort of agree that they're not mutually exclusive. You don't have to have one without the other. Uh. It may have been acceptation, and then from that point it may have very much been a matter of natural selection because the better you were communicating, the better you were surviving. I like that idea too. Um. I don't think that though, if you put Stephen Pinker in um Chomsky in the same room that they would be like, you know this, this all this works together. I think like they're tracing it back to the origin point, the moment where it began either as a either it began to evolve or just appeared as a result of a incredibly sophisticated machine that just started performing another function as a result of its sophistication. And it's all kind of conjecture anyway, But there's still I mean, there's still support. There's support for different ones like UM, like brain plasticity, neural plasticity. The fact that our our brains can be restructured and reorganized supports the idea that language evolved gradually, right, and they just started to build and building building, Possibly that's how our brains became larger, right, chicken and the egg thing. But people also say, like, if large brain equals things like speech, then why don't like whales and things like that with much larger brains and things like speech. That's another great argument too, uh. And then mirror neurons UM kind of lends support to the idea that it's just it's just a spandrel of brain function because toolmaking and UM and speech both used the same areas, right, and then both um and then toolmaking lights up when you watch somebody use tools, and when you're using tools yourself in the broker's area. Interesting, yeah, or friend, samir neurons they're back. Have you got anything else? There's a lot of scrippling over there. Oh yeah. So one of Chomsky's big points is that, uh, that grammar or the language is innate, which makes it biological not cultural. Okay, UM is universal grammar, which is that like if he always says that if if a Martian anthropologist came down and studied all human languages, that they would he would reasonably conclude that all of that information is based on an internal structure rather than culture. Basically, um and the the key to universal grammar supposedly is recursion, which is like me saying, like, I'm gonna go to the store, the one down the street, you know, the one that has the really good hot dogs. I'll be back in a little bit. It's taking um. It's adding phrases within phrases. There's no other um. There's no other community cation in any animal species that would include this, which makes that human. And supposedly all human languages contain recursion. Except there's a challenger now called Paraha. It's Amazonian. There's like five people who speak it, really, five hundred and one, including the one um M I T trained linguist who studied it for thirty years, is the only one who knows it who's now saying this thing. They don't have recursion, so universal grammars wrong. Therefore Chomsky's whole thing is wrong. There's a pretty cool article on Chronicle of Higher Education that's worth reading called Angry Words. You know that's a big deal right now, is disappearing languages. And I don't think I think these people are As far as I got from the article, they seem like they are fine. There's not that many of them, but they're not being encroached upon any further. I think they're protected. Interesting. They're just kind of living out there their existence and doing their thing. Actually, no, I'm Chomsky is in the bushes behind them with the blowgun. Well that's that's all I got. That's good stuff. This could have been like ten hours long. Yeah. Easy for linguists out there, they're like, oh, what a broad overview. That's exactly what this is like. Um, if you want to learn more and you want to see this picture of ringo start just as a caveman, you should read the article written by one Charles W. Bryant called how did Language Evolve? Uh? Type that into the search bar at how stuff works dot com and it will bring it up. Uh. And I said search bar. So it's time for listening, mate, Josh, I'm gonna call this we saved another life apparently again, Hey guys and Jerry, I thought I would We'll say hey Matt. Since Matt's here today, I thought it would tell you a little about how your podcast has quite literally saved and changed my life. I'm seventeen and living a small town of Galesburg, Illinois, but consider myself a citizen of the world. Uh. From when I was six months young ten years after Ghostbusters, my family exactly, My family and I have traveled back and forth from Illinois to Barcelona, Spain, every two years. This last time back in the US, I fell in love with your podcast and have listened almost religiously every morning for almost three years. Then one day my faith was solidified. While listening and walking my dog cheap Ee, I crossed the street. I should probably c o a walking. This guy's really hitting all the points here. Um, walking with headphones is a dangerous thing. Uh. If one of you died because of a headphone walking incident, I would never forgive myself. Back to the story, A car was unbeknownst to me, hurtling down the street at me, I started crossing when all of a sudden buzz how flies work had just begun. Remember the loud buzz. It really flipped me out and I jumped backwards just as the car flew by me. Oh no, it was Um, it was from the fly remember help me? And he said that scared him enough to jump back and didn't even see the car. So we saved this dude and cheap ee, which is pretty exciting. That was a while ago, but recently, actually two days ago. You have changed the course of the rest of my life. After listening to the Sauna and Viking podcasts, I have fallen in love with Scandinavia so much so that I'm going to be a foreign exchange student in Finland for the entirety of next year. That's awesome. So we inspired uh Noah to go to Finland because of the SOUNDA and Viking casts enjoyed the really so much love and many thanks. And that's from Noah f F nice Noah Finster Finkelstein, that's his name now it is um. Thanks for that. No, we're glad you're alive. We hope you have a very good time in Finland. Um and uh, we're glad cheap. He's doing well too. I bet no one never comes back like in a sinister way or now. I bet he loves it so much that he's like, I'm here nice until winter hits exactly. UM. If you we always love hearing how we've saved your life or enriched your life or something like that. UM, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. 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