language

Weren’t hard enough on Tom Wolfe, author of The Kingdom of Speech From Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True: This weekend, National Public Radio (NPR) host Scott Simon interviewed renowned author Tom Wolfe about Wolfe’s new book The Kingdom of Speech. You can hear the five-minute interview here. I just now listened to it, but several exercised readers emailed me yesterday complaining about Wolfe’s criticisms of evolution—criticisms that weren’t called out by Simon. Oh dear. “Anti-science” strikes again. Jerry treats us to a long rant about the facts of “evolution” (as he understands them). But if interviewers like Simon derailed the discussion by stopping for demands for fidelity to same we would never get to hear what Wolfe has Read More ›

From Tom “Bonfire of the Vanities” Wolfe’s interview with NPR on his new book, The Kingdom of Speech: The Kingdom of Speech is Tom Wolfe’s first non-fiction book in 16 years. Wolfe tells NPR’s Scott Simon that speech is “the attribute of attributes,” because it’s so unrelated to most other things about animals. “We’ve all been taught that we evolved from animals, and here is something that is totally absent from animal life,” he says. More. … On whether he’s worried that creationists will begin to cite his work as scientific proof I wouldn’t think so, because there’s not a shred of whatever that depends at all on faith, on belief in an extraterrestrial power. In fact, I hate people who go Read More ›

At Aeon: I consider humans the only linguistic species. We honestly have no evidence for symbolic communication, equally rich and multifunctional as ours, outside our species. But we do have something evidence for something:  the summer silly season. See, for example: Orangutan copies human speech? Must be BBC. Must be summer. The fascinating thing about today’s naturalist science is the way so many key claims are either unfalsifiable (multiverse) or obvious hype (orangutan, above)—or they assume, without any particular basis, a path of history (apes are entering the Stone Age) or geography (galaxies out there teem with life). I (O’Leary for news) volunteer as a writing instructor. “Might be true” is a standard for fiction. An important standard. It distinguishes Read More ›

  Readers will remember that Tom Wolfe’s book, the Kingdom of Speech, is coming out amid summer fanfare. From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Views: Great minds, as you know. As I’ve said before, it’s the Thomas Nagel/Stephen King/Tom Stoppard Principle: When you reach a certain rare level of achievement and acclaim, you earn the right to speak your mind plainly in defiance of the bullies and censors. We look forward to reading Wolfe. More. In the past, it has been agreed that there are only 20 chairs. 19 chairs must be occupied by Darwin followers. The 20th chair is permitted to someone they can ricochet off. Suppose we added more chairs? Does it matter if some of the Read More ›

Linguist Noel Rude on Tom Wolfe: Just read Tom Wolfe’s The Origins of Speech: In the beginning was Chomsky. It was so interesting and so well written I couldn’t put it down. Michael Denton, you might remember, enlisted Noam Chomsky in his recent critique of Darwin, even as now Tom Wolfe sees Daniel L. Everett as demolishing Chomsky. American linguistics–which in the 20 th century pretty much meant world linguistics– was dominated on the one side by structuralism and on the other by functionalism (the terms generally have mutated into cognitive; linguistics). Denton shows biology to have been similarly split in the 19th century. And, as Denton also reminds us, the biological functionalists supported Darwin whereas the structuralists doubted this Read More ›

  People know American author Tom Wolfe best for Bonfire of the Vanities and Radical Chic. He coined phrases for people who sense that something is wrong with the decades-long descent. Many probably don’t know that he doubted Darwin’s hegemony would last ages before the Royal Society began to wonder. He gave it forty years. A trend spotter, he has a nose for that kind of thing. From his forthcoming book promo, The Kingdom of Speech: The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH Read More ›

From Mark Pagel at New Scientist: If H. sapiens has always had language, could other extinct human species have had it too? Some believe that Neanderthals did – which would imply we both inherited it from our common ancestor some 500,000 or more years ago. This theory is consistent with the discovery that FOXP2, a gene that is essential to speech, is identical at two key positions in humans and Neanderthals but different in chimpanzees. But a single gene is not enough to explain language. And recent genetic evidence shows that the Neanderthal brain regulated its version of FOXP2 differently.What’s more, language is inherently symbolic – sounds stand for words that stand for real objects and actions. But there is Read More ›

Does a man have the right to identify himself as a woman and enter their locker rooms and bathrooms, demanding equal rights for their self-identification?  Does a person have the right to identify herself as a native American and, when filling out forms for employment or college, indicate her ethnicity as such, even though she is not?   Should the force of law support such self-identifications which contradict the physical facts and insist that society accommodate any such self-identifications? Where is the line between socially protected self-identification in conflict with physical facts and delusion?  Can physically unrelated people identify themselves as family and represent themselves as such on legal forms?  Can an adult self-identify as a child and thus obligate his Read More ›

Note to self: Toss out dictionary Recently, we looked at the way Richard Dawkins made Darwinian evolution sound so easy that people who don’t want to do much thinking—but do want to feel up-to-date—embraced it. And it has been easy for them to persecute dissenters with a good conscience because, in fairness, most of them never had enough real grasp of the issues to understand why there could be any dissent. Or sufficient curiosity to wonder. A great package, if you like, for union science teachers, especially “aren’t I good?” girls. Much of that has to do with Dawkins’ skill with language, which is not at all the same thing as having correct information or great ideas. But it usually Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: There is considerable controversy over what structures in the brain restrict all human languages to the same deep structure. Some linguists reject an innate neurological organ devoted specifically to language. Conceiving that it is only the brain’s general abilities that are “pre-organized,” they envisage language as a learned skill based on a “functional language system” and design constraints, distributed across numerous cortical and subcortical structures. Yet however it is derived during development, there is no doubt that a unique deep structure underlies the languages of all members of our species. It is because of the same underlying deep structure that we can speak the language of the San Bushman or an Australian aborigine, and they Read More ›

From Nathaniel Scharping here: The words and body language we use during social interactions belong to a set of mutually understood categories. When people deviate from this set of normative behaviors, we sense that something is off. And if something isn’t right, we don’t feel comfortable. More. That makes sense. Actual human interactions are much more complex than pop psychology. This is something to keep in mind: “I think that none of the behaviors described as creepy in our study were actually tied to danger,” McAndrew wrote. … McAndrew also asked participants whether they thought creepy people knew they were, well, creeps. The response was overwhelmingly “no,” indicating that no one thinks people are willingly trying to be creepy. Instead creepiness Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views : In Chapter 10 of his new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton argues for the proposition that language and the higher intellectual faculties — the gifts that uniquely make us human — arose by saltation. In other words, they are gifts — sudden ones. Denton’s view, as he makes clear, has precedents reaching from Alfred Russel Wallace to linguist Noam Chomsky. In a nice coincidence, Chomsky and MIT colleague Robert C. Berwick are just out with a book of their own, from MIT Press, provocatively titled Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. To be sure, Chomsky and Berwick are not advocates of Denton’s structuralist take on the theory Read More ›

From Digventures: Among the elaborate horses, bulls, bears and hunters, there are some other rather less captivating designs – small geometric motifs, etched onto the walls. Until now, they’ve not received much attention. But as it turns out, these humble designs conceal a much more intriguing mystery. Von Petzinger and her photographer-husband visited 52 caves across Europe recording every instance of these symbols that they could see. They found new, undocumented examples at 75% of the caves they visited, and found the symbols far outnumbered the human and animal images. But the amazing thing was that however many caves they visited, they found the same 32 shapes being used again and again and again. The fact that the same 32 Read More ›

In fact, it’s unlikely that people at New Scientist are going to do much of that themselves; it sounds more like a message intended for Everyone Else. Reviewing two new books for the Christmas trade, CultureLab: WITH the year drawing to a close, it’s time to throw out old ideas and bring in the new. Two mind-stretching books, The Secret of our Success by anthropologist Joseph Henrich, and The Crucible of Language by cognitive linguist Vyvyan Evans, will help you do just that. Both contain powerful ideas. The first forces a rethink of what makes humans special: the answer is not that we are terribly clever or able to do much with our big brains on our own. The second Read More ›

This got funded: From Sciencedaily: Chitchat, small talk could serve an evolutionary need to bond with others Well yes, but what is the word “evolutionary” doing in this sentence? A real science comes bolstered with specifics, not speculations. Many of us expect that our early ancestors gossiped plenty. But it is precisely what has not evolved that causes us to think so. Anyway, Princeton University researchers report in the journal Animal Behaviour that social primates use vocalizations far more selectively than scientists previously thought. They found that ringtailed lemurs (Lemur catta) living in groups primarily call and respond to the individuals with which they have close relationships. While grooming is a common social-bonding experience for lemurs and other primates, the Read More ›