Tag Archives: anthropology

Motherese

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It is always a delight to read/hear one’s ideas confirmed/supported. It’s the source of so much joy and progress in this world and also the source of so much evil. Such is our nature. Today, over my Friday morning ritual of “the big breakfast” at Twiggs, the local coffee shop – had this experience.

Every Friday, I usually sit and read my New York Review of Books and enjoy an hour of “brain stretching”. This month’s issue had a sterling article “It Does Take A Village” about the incredible life and work of Susan Hrdy.

My background in anthropology coincides with my interest in language and I’ve always been interested in the topic of how human language came to be. It’s a deep riddle that holds some clues that  have a bearing on how we should teach language. If we can discover the origins of our journey, we might know where we are heading and further, based on the experiences of that journey, what makes language tick. It’s an important question that’s had its share of debate.

There are all sorts of theories about how we began this “great code” and started communicating in an abstract fashion. The “bow-wow” theory. The ding-dong theory, the pooh pooh and yo he ho theories (yep, I’m not making this up – google them!). All proposed by great scholars and arm chair grammarians. Even Chomsky is quite radical in this area, with his “asocial” and non-proto-language” theory of origins. Everyone has their own take and its been quite the place to “make your mark” in the world of social anthropology/linguistics.  I’ve always leaned toward the sing-song theory of which I’ve written about previously. Why this theory?

Well, it proposes that music and mother/child bonding are the origins of language. That the spark that led to language wasn’t fear or hunting but rather love, the love and emotion of a mother and baby. It’s a theory that puts emotion as the central impulse and fertilizer that made language grow.  So when I read the following passage this morning, I almost choked on my Canadian bacon.

And in a world where nearly half the population is male—the sex with higher levels of testosterone and its potential for causing aggressive behavior—the female majority, by better translating emotions into words, must have mitigated countless dangerous conflicts. We should not underestimate the role that may have been played by this verbally skilled, moderating majority in the evolution of language itself. Of all the calls, hoots, and screeches issued by our chimpanzee relatives, the only ones that sound a little like human speech are the coos exchanged in quiet moods by mothers with their young; the first language may have been “motherese.”

The term “motherese” is originally credited to Dean Falk (“Prelinguistic Evolution in Early Hominins: Whence Motherese?,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Vol. 27, No. 4 (2004).) and to me it makes sense.

Not only does the female sex today have a much better linguistic ability, it makes sense that language developed through a child, an infant. Language most certainly began through the development of “emotional intelligence” and paralinguistics (non-verbal communication). Language is an extension of that and most likely developed through imprinting on the infant of sounds that had meaning (by imprinting, I mean the process whereby infants develop ingrained behaviors regarding the mother – like a duckling will follow the “mother”.).

Language is such a powerful thing. Transcending time and power. It makes so much of what we have possible – almost everything. We owe so much to language. We might in this way – owe it all to “mothers”.

This video will get you thinking. Think a little about the children in this video and how they learn language so easily. Deb Roy’s experiment has important implications. Could it be that thousands of years of looking into a mother’s eyes and face holds the key?

Do Teachers Kill Creativity?

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Do teachers kill creativity? What is the harm that a “teacher” does, just by being a teacher? Do we indeed stunt student achievement, growth and “thought” by our mere presence as a model and person to look up to and copy/become?

Like Ken Robinson’s story in “Do School’s Kill Creativity”, where the little girl is drawing God and the teacher says, “You can’t draw god!” — are we limiting our students by teaching our students? Where does culture start and control begin?

I remember when I was a kid. It was nice to observe adults but I much preferred doing it myself, learning by myself. Teachers were actual barriers on the road to learning. So many detours I had to take, to think for myself! To find the quick way, the effective way to the nuggets of gold and understanding.

Watch the video below comparing chimpanzees and children. Thought provoking.

I’m more and more calling for a world of self directed learning. Technology is prying open that door, that possibility. I think that maybe we do have it wrong. Teachers – who needs them?

(** note, this video suggests that humans are the only animals that “teach”. I just watched a BBC Earth video where they showed a clip of a mother teaching her baby chimp to use the proper stick to fish for termites. So this notion of our uniqueness is false. Surprisingly, the baby chimp kept pushing away the mother’s “stick” , kept pushing away the teacher. Maybe that’s why Jesus’ famous phrase, so hotly debated (Luke 14:26 – “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.”))


Find more videos like this on EFL CLASSROOM 2.0

Part 2 here.

Music is more than the language of love…

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It also might be the origins of thought…… think about it.

This video is fascinating. It shows music on a very intense and personal level, conveying information just like language. Music is language, the language of personal expression.

Jesperson’s long ago suggested a “sing – song” theory of language origins.. That as mothers sang to their children, language slowly arose.

As with so much “conjecture” there is a lot of truth to it, I believe. But even more true would be to note that music probably WAS the proto-language, the mother of all mother languages for thousands of years. Music was a means of personalizing, of conveying information about the person’s thoughts and feelings – just like this man does so skillfully. Slowly, it did become a formal system I believe, not as many think, because it gave some kind of adaptive advantage. Rather, because it felt good (though you might argue this was “adaptive”. ).

Steven Mithen is an archaelogist I wish I’d read earlier in my studies. His “Singing Neadrathal”, puts forth his own theory that music developed first – as humans expressed emotions. Then, language developed on top, as a means of conveying information. Music or his “Hmmmm” was the protolanguage” and how people did communicate before formal language. It is a wonderful read and I highly recommend it.

I have a personal connection to this topic. Not just as a poet but also because of one of my own afflictions – Forster’s syndrome. Broadly defined, it is obsessive punning but for me, it manifests not just in pun but in the rhythm and flow of language. I’ve learned to control it and monitor it – through a little voice in my head. But get me drinking or in the right mood and words just connect and flow, as music, with a deeper and more visceral connection. One word leads to another, automatically and they connect by some mysterious force of rhythm, meaning and rhyme. To me, this is my own connection, in my genome and being, with the ancient origins of language.

It does any teacher well to ponder the connect between music and language.As I watch this video, the man IS communicating to me. Directly and viscerally. It is communication and language. To me, it makes sense to think in Mithen’s terms. What do you think?

If you liked this post – this site offers lots of info. about language origins. Or read my post and meditation on language origins.