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Sound patterns and conceptual content of the first words

  • Peter F. MacNeilage
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New Perspectives on the Origins of Language
This chapter is in the book New Perspectives on the Origins of Language

Abstract

Two simple possibilities, one for the origin of sound patterns of languages and one for the origin of their linkage with concepts, are suggested, both based on behaviors observable today. The sound patterns may have been those of present-day babbling, definable as one or more instances of a rhythmic alternation of a closed and open mouth, produced by a mandibular elevation/depression cycle, accompanied by vocal fold vibration, and linguistically meaningless, though giving the perceptual impression of a consonant-vowel (CV) sequence. An example is bababa. Babbling is one of innumerable instances of “fixed action patterns” in nature – innate behavior repertoire components with “form constancy” (e.g. rodent grooming, mating rituals), which provide an initial framework for species-wide motor adaptations. Babbling may have evolved in the manner of many other adaptations noted by the discipline of evolutionary developmental psychology (“Evo Devo”) whereby a genetically determined change in development (ontogeny) in effect “formulates new phylogeny” (Goodman & Coughlin 2000, p. 2445). The simple possibility for the initial linking of sound patterns with concepts is that it occurred in the context of a particular language-related genre present today: “baby talk,” a communicative matrix specific to the parent-infant dyad. The key to understanding this putative development lies in an explanation for the consistent presence across the world’s languages of nasal consonants in maternal terms and non-nasal forms in paternal terms, both in baby talk (e.g. mama, papa) and in the probably derived parental terms of language proper (e.g. mother, father). The maternal term may have been invented when the female parent decided that a mother-directed infant nasalized demand vocalization stood for her, and the paternal term may have developed later with a necessarily perceptually contrastive non-nasal structure.

Abstract

Two simple possibilities, one for the origin of sound patterns of languages and one for the origin of their linkage with concepts, are suggested, both based on behaviors observable today. The sound patterns may have been those of present-day babbling, definable as one or more instances of a rhythmic alternation of a closed and open mouth, produced by a mandibular elevation/depression cycle, accompanied by vocal fold vibration, and linguistically meaningless, though giving the perceptual impression of a consonant-vowel (CV) sequence. An example is bababa. Babbling is one of innumerable instances of “fixed action patterns” in nature – innate behavior repertoire components with “form constancy” (e.g. rodent grooming, mating rituals), which provide an initial framework for species-wide motor adaptations. Babbling may have evolved in the manner of many other adaptations noted by the discipline of evolutionary developmental psychology (“Evo Devo”) whereby a genetically determined change in development (ontogeny) in effect “formulates new phylogeny” (Goodman & Coughlin 2000, p. 2445). The simple possibility for the initial linking of sound patterns with concepts is that it occurred in the context of a particular language-related genre present today: “baby talk,” a communicative matrix specific to the parent-infant dyad. The key to understanding this putative development lies in an explanation for the consistent presence across the world’s languages of nasal consonants in maternal terms and non-nasal forms in paternal terms, both in baby talk (e.g. mama, papa) and in the probably derived parental terms of language proper (e.g. mother, father). The maternal term may have been invented when the female parent decided that a mother-directed infant nasalized demand vocalization stood for her, and the paternal term may have developed later with a necessarily perceptually contrastive non-nasal structure.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. Introduction ix
  5. Part 1. General perspectives and issues on language origins
  6. Historical, Darwinian, and current perspectives on the origin(s) of language 3
  7. The origin of language as seen by eighteenth-century philosophy 31
  8. Cognitive and social aspects of language origins 53
  9. Part 2. At the roots of language
  10. Reconstructed fossil vocal tracts and the production of speech 75
  11. Paleoanthropology and language 129
  12. Material culture and language 147
  13. Gestural theory of the origins of language 171
  14. Part 3. Communication and language origins
  15. Primate communication 187
  16. FoxP2 and vocalization 211
  17. Brain lateralization and the emergence of language 237
  18. Sensorimotor constraints and the organization of sound patterns 257
  19. Symbol grounding and the origin of language 279
  20. Part 4. Linguistic views on language origins
  21. Sound patterns and conceptual content of the first words 301
  22. Brave new words 333
  23. On the origin of Grammar 379
  24. Arbitrary signs and the emergence of language 407
  25. On the relevance of pidgins and creoles in the debate on the origins of language 441
  26. Part 5. Computational modeling of language origins
  27. Modeling cultural evolution 487
  28. How language emerges in situated embodied interactions 505
  29. Emergence of communication and language in evolving robots 533
  30. Evolving a bridge from praxis to language 555
  31. Index 579
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.144.13mac

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. Introduction ix
  5. Part 1. General perspectives and issues on language origins
  6. Historical, Darwinian, and current perspectives on the origin(s) of language 3
  7. The origin of language as seen by eighteenth-century philosophy 31
  8. Cognitive and social aspects of language origins 53
  9. Part 2. At the roots of language
  10. Reconstructed fossil vocal tracts and the production of speech 75
  11. Paleoanthropology and language 129
  12. Material culture and language 147
  13. Gestural theory of the origins of language 171
  14. Part 3. Communication and language origins
  15. Primate communication 187
  16. FoxP2 and vocalization 211
  17. Brain lateralization and the emergence of language 237
  18. Sensorimotor constraints and the organization of sound patterns 257
  19. Symbol grounding and the origin of language 279
  20. Part 4. Linguistic views on language origins
  21. Sound patterns and conceptual content of the first words 301
  22. Brave new words 333
  23. On the origin of Grammar 379
  24. Arbitrary signs and the emergence of language 407
  25. On the relevance of pidgins and creoles in the debate on the origins of language 441
  26. Part 5. Computational modeling of language origins
  27. Modeling cultural evolution 487
  28. How language emerges in situated embodied interactions 505
  29. Emergence of communication and language in evolving robots 533
  30. Evolving a bridge from praxis to language 555
  31. Index 579
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