The Articulate Mammal (14 page)

First, the G-sound in GEESE differs quite considerably from the G in GOOSE. This is because of the difference in the following vowel. The speaker appears to anticipate (subconsciously) the EE or OO and alter the G accordingly. Second, the vowel in GEESE is shorter than in a word such as GEEZER. The speaker is anticipating the voiceless hissing sound of S in GOOSE rather than the voiced, buzzing sound of Z in GEEZER, since in English (and some other languages) vowels are shortened before voiceless sounds (sounds which do not involve vibration of the vocal cords).

Therefore a speaker does not just utter a sequence of separate elements:

Instead he executes a series of overlapping actions in which the preceding sound is significantly influenced by the sound which follows it:

Such overlapping requires considerable neuromuscular co-ordination, particularly as the rate of speech is often quite fast. A normal person often utters over 200 syllables a minute. Meanwhile, simultaneously with actually uttering the sounds, a speaker is activating phrases of two or three words in advance in their phonetic form. This is shown by slips of the tongue, in which a sound several words away is sometimes accidentally activated before it is needed. The linguist who once said PISS AND STRETCH in a lecture for ‘pitch and
stress’ was already thinking of the final-SS of ‘stress’ when he started to say the first word. And the person who said ON THE NERVE OF A VERGEOUS BREAKDOWN had also activated the syllable ‘nerve’ before she needed it.

If humans only spoke in three or four word bursts, perhaps the prior activation of phrases would not be very surprising. What
is
surprising is that this activation is going on at the same time as the planning of much longer utterances. Lenneberg (1967: 107) likens the planning of an utterance to laying down a mosaic:

The sequence of speech sounds that constitute a string of words is a sound pattern somewhat analogous to a mosaic; the latter is put together stone after stone, yet the picture as a whole must have come into being in the artist’s mind before he began to lay down the pieces.

Sometimes, sentences are structurally quite easy to process as in THE BABY FELL DOWNSTAIRS, THE CAT WAS SICK, AND I’VE RESIGNED. At other times they are considerably more complex, requiring the speaker and the hearer to remember quite intricate interdependencies between clauses. Take the sentence IF EITHER THE BABY FALLS DOWNSTAIRS OR THE CAT IS SICK, THEN I SHALL EITHER RESIGN OR GO MAD. Here, IF requires a dependent THEN, EITHER requires a partner OR. In addition, FALLS must have the right ending to go with BABY, and IS must ‘agree’ with CAT – otherwise we would get *IF EITHER THE BABY FALL DOWNSTAIRS OR THE CAT ARE SICK … This whole sentence with its ‘mirror-image’ properties must have been planned considerably in advance.

These examples show that in most human utterances, the amount of simultaneous planning and activity is so great that it seems likely that humans are specially constructed to deal with this type of coordination. But what type of mechanism is involved? In particular, how do humans manage to keep utterances in the right order, and not utter them in an incoherent jumble, as they think of them? How do most people manage to say RABBIT quite coherently, instead of BARIT or TIRAB – examples of misordering found in the speech of brain-damaged patients?

Lenneberg (1967) suggests that correct sequencing is based on an underlying rhythmic principle. Everybody knows that poetry is much easier to remember than prose because of the underlying ‘pulse’ which keeps going like the ticking of a clock:

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

(ti-tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-ti-tum)

THAT FLOATS ON HIGH O’ER VALES AND HILLS

(ti-tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-ti-tum)

Wordsworth

There may be some underlying biological ‘beat’ which enables humans to organize language into a temporal sequence. Breakdown of this beat might also account for the uncontrollable acceleration of speech found in some illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease. Lenneberg suggests that one-sixth of a second may be a basic time unit in speech production. He bases his proposals on a number of highly technical experiments, and partly on the fact that around six syllables per second seems to be the normal rate of uttering syllables. However, some people have queried the notion of a fixed ‘pacemaker’, and suggested that the internal beat can be re-set at different speeds (Keele 1987). This may be correct, since with practice speech can be speeded up, though the relative length of the various words remains the same (Mackay 1987).

INTELLIGENCE, SEX AND HEREDITY

Can studies of the brain clarify how language relates to intelligence? A bit, but not very much. Intelligence is a complex fabric of interwoven skills. Exactly where (if anywhere) each is located is highly controversial. The most we can say is that certain aspects of intelligence, such as judgements of space and time, are largely independent of language. Sufferers of a strange disorder known as Williams Syndrome lack spatial awareness, and find it hard to draw a picture of an elephant or a bicycle. Instead, they draw bits and pieces which
they cannot assemble. In contrast, their speech is fluent: ‘What would you do if you were a bird?’ one sufferer was asked. ‘I would fly where my parents could never find me. Birds want to be independent’ was the answer (Bellugi,
et al.
1991: 387).

Sex differences in the brain are also important for language. Women, on average, have greater verbal fluency, and can more easily find words that begin with a particular letter. Men are better at spatial tasks and mathematical reasoning. These variations probably reflect different hormonal influences on developing brains (Kimura 1992).

Heredity is another topical issue (Gopnik 1997; Stromswolo 2001; Fisher 2006). Can language defects be handed down from generation to generation? Dyslexia, or ‘word blindness’, often runs in families. So does another puzzling language problem. Several families have been found of whom a proportion of their members cannot put endings on words, the most famous of whom are known as the ‘KE family’ (Gopnik 1994; Gopnik
et al.
1997). ZACKO was given as the plural of the nonsense word ZAT by one sufferer, and ZOOPES as the plural of the nonsense word ZOOP. Those affected have to learn each plural separately, and they find it impossible to learn a general rule such as ‘Add-S’. They also find it hard to use pronouns, and tend to repeat full nouns, as: ‘The neighbours phone the ambulance because the man fall off the tree. The ambulance come along and put the man into the ambulance’ (Gopnik and Crago 1991). At first, optimistic researchers hoped that they had found a gene for language, and even provisionally labelled it the SPCH1 gene. Later, it was realized that the affected members in the KE family (and some other families) had a cluster of language problems, as well as some non-linguistic ones. The defective gene, eventually labelled FOXP2, is still being investigated by researchers, and the details are proving complex (Lal
et al.
2001). As well as difficulties with inflections, the affected family members are unable to break down words into their constituent sounds, and they also have problems with the sequencing of mouth movements.

MIND-READING AND MIRROR NEURONS

As researchers puzzle over exactly why humans are such competent language users, new findings have emerged, which may turn out to be of vital importance. Humans have an ability to ‘mind-read’, to put themselves into another person’s shoes, as it were, and envisage their mental state (p. 27). Mind-reading is an awareness that develops with age: 3-year-olds are typically unable to achieve it, but 4-year-olds can normally do so without difficulty. This trait is lacking in those who suffer from the mental disorder of autism, a condition sometimes known as ‘mindblindness’ (Baron-Cohen 1999; Ramachandran and Oberman 2006). There seem to be layers of mind-blindness. Chimps have
some inkling of mind-reading (
Chapter 2
), though not the same level of awareness as normal humans. This has led researchers to probe into the neurological background behind this ability

An intriguing discovery is that of so-called ‘mirror neurons’, which according to some researchers, may underlie the ability to understand another person’s intentions, and also the ability to imitate. Mirror neurons have been found both in humans and monkeys. An Italian neuroscientist, Giacomo Rizzolatti, is credited with their discovery (Rizzolatti and Arbib 1998). He noticed that a section of the frontal lobe of a monkey’s brain fired when it performed certain actions, such as reaching for an object or putting food in its mouth. But bizarrely, the same neurons would fire when it watched another monkey performing the same actions. Rizzolatti labelled these ‘mirror neurons’ and speculated that he may have identified the neurological basis of mind-reading. Later work has emphasized the importance of mirror neurons in imitation, a skill at which humans seem to be better than apes, and may be crucial in language learning (Rizzolatti
et al.
2006), and also their possible role in the evolution of language (Stamenov 2002).

We do not yet know all the details, but the overall picture is clear. Humans are physically adapted to language in a way that snails, sheep and even apes are not. Their vocal organs, lungs and brains are ‘preset’ to cope with the intricacies of speech in much the same way that monkeys are pre-set to climb trees, or bats to squeak.
Chapter 4
gives further evidence of this biological programming by showing that language follows an inner ‘time-clock’ as it emerges and develops.

4

____________________________

PREDESTINATE GROOVES

Is there a pre-ordained language ‘programme’?

There once was a man who said, ‘Damn!’

It is born in upon me I am

An engine that moves

In predestinate grooves,

I’m not even a bus, I’m a tram.

Maurice Evan Hare

Language emerges at about the same time in children all over the world. ‘Why do children normally begin to speak between their eighteenth and twentyeighth month?’ asks one researcher:

Surely it is not because all mothers on earth initiate language training at that time. There is, in fact, no evidence that any conscious and systematic teaching of language takes place, just as there is no special training for stance or gait.