Tom Bartlett On The Origins Of Language

Tom Bartlett wrote to: SYSFLING on 6 Jul 2021, at 15:02:

Following from Christian's explanation of the connections between symbolisation and projection and Bea and David's further comments, I'd say it's an example that relates beautifully to the origins of language. What is the vervet monkey, for example. doing with its call — making an instinctive noise or saying something? If its call says danger — to those who are conditioned to recognise this — at what point does this move from an identifying relation to a verbal process? Does it depend on the intention of the speaker, the understanding of the hearer, or both? In other words, at what point to we transition from instinctive reactive noise to shared symbolism and then from the call saying something (identifying) to the speaker saying something (verbal)? And at what point in our linguistic evolution and development (phyologenesis and ontogenesis) do semiotic noises as minor clauses (including holisms) develop the systemic regularities that index mood?

Maybe some of these questions are hinted at in the Mapudungun tale?

Blogger Comments:

The instance under discussion is from Mapudungun mythology: And the serpent chanted: 'kay, kay, kay'. In the story, this verbal projection creates (the existence/happening of) flooding rain.

[1] To be clear, this is the connection between 'x realises y' (symbolisation) and 'x says y' (projection).

[2] To be clear, this mythic symbolism is concerned not so much with the origins of language, but with the deep epistemological observation that what humans construes as 'reality' is actually meaning created of experience by the lexicogrammar of language. A similar point is made in Abrahamic mythology:

[3] To be clear, what is "instinctive" is the biological reaction to the threat, which, according to Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, is the firing of neurones correlating specific perceptual categorisations with specific inherited values. This is distinct from the choice of call, according to situation, which is socio-semiotic, not biological.

[4] To be clear, confusingly, the wording its call says danger construes symbolisation with a verb that prototypically construes verbal projection.

[5] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, there is no such move, because vervet protolanguage does not involve verbal processes. This is because verbal processes prototypically project locutions, which are lexicogrammatical, and protolanguage does not have a lexicogrammatical stratum. It is only in language that verbal processes can project protolanguage and non-semiotic sounds.

[6] To be clear, in terms of Halliday's taxonomy of system-&-process (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 507-10), this is the evolutionary trajectory from biological systems ("instinctive reactive noise") to socio-semiotic systems, and within the latter, from protolinguistic systems ("shared symbolism" = "call meaning something") to linguistic systems ("speaker saying something"). What's missing here are social systems, located between biological and socio-semiotic systems. For Halliday, these involve the exchange of value, but not symbolic value, such as those mediated through the exchange of pheromones in eusocial insect species. These might also be said to include phenomena that induce mental processes in conspecifics without symbolising meaning, such as a peacock's tail inducing, in a peahen, a desire to mate. (This is virtually Darwin's interpretation; for Wallace, a peacock's tail symbolises fitness, and so would be deemed socio-semiotic, not social).

[7] To be clear, on the SFL model, systems are established and altered, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, by instances. Instances of "semiotic noises as minor clauses" establish the systemic opposition with major clauses, and different functions of instances of minor clauses establish contrasts within the minor clause system. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 162):