Babel's Dawn. Edmund Blair Bolles
three-sided structure supports a communicative function unknown elsewhere in the animal world: mutual consideration of a topic. When we think with words, we think about something: the topic. When we converse with others, we have a topic in mind even if it keeps changing as the conversation rambles on. The kind of communal knowledge created through the exploration of a topic is the fundamental gift of language. The formal study of language usually concentrates on the abstract elements (notably syntax and symbols) that organize sentences, so linguists rarely worry about how these elements originate. But a look into speech origins quickly shows that the keystone supporting the whole triangle is our ability to join with one another in considering a topic.
Psychologist/anthropologist Michael Tomasello describes an example of the difference between human helpfulness and the rugged individualism of apes:
. . . when a whimpering chimpanzee child is searching for her mother, it is almost certain that all the other chimpanzees in the immediate area know this. But if some nearby female knows where the mother is, she will not tell the searching child, even though she is perfectly capable of extending her arm in a kind of pointing gesture. She will not tell the child because her communicative motives simply do not include informing others of things helpfully.
Why aren’t chimpanzees motivated to help? There is a straightforward, Darwinian explanation for the ape’s mum’s-the-word behavior. Individuals don’t help non-kin. There is nothing in it, no survival or reproductive advantage, for the informed adults to help the whimpering child of another. And yet humans typically do help out whimpering children, even if the child is a stranger. An adult, happening upon a solitary, unknown, whimpering child, is very likely to stop and ask what is wrong, take charge, and stay with the child until the problem is resolved. This activity strikes us as perfectly natural, normal behavior, even though it is contrary to so many practices of other animals.
No, this tour is not about to challenge the theory of evolution, but it does say we need a good evolutionary account of how a species of ape with no motive to assist others outside the family became a species that takes such group helping for granted. How is it that our old behavior—ape behavior—seems shocking? Six million years ago, apes already had the physical ability and the brains to offer some help to one another, yet they did not help. The first part of the rise of speech, therefore, was the evolution of the speech triangle and a willingness to share what you perceive.
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