The Origin of Language: Memes vs. Genes
By Jay Lee
Abstract
The invention of "uniquely human" language is not a result of persistent endeavors by ancient people, but a gift given to the population through "spontaneous surges," or linguistic memes. Human beings have long lived independently enough to acquire individual distinguishing cultural traits. Given the common sense that languages are expected to vary from culture to culture, therefore, the extent to which many different languages - including European and Chinese languages - reveal a surprising number of similarities, is a wonder. How is it possible? Transmission of a homogeneous linguistic paradigm via "genes" may not be an answer of the trans-continental linguistic likeness due to the absence of sunstantial interactions between the two languages in ancient times. Then, the possibility of linguistic "memes," or an agent of the "spontaneous surges" which is not limited by the border of the body, deserves an academic investigation.
What are human languages?
Many scientists, from anthropologists to linguists, have paid attention to the ability of humans to "speak" in searching for the origin of languages in humans. The problem is that Nature is filled with much better verbal communicators; dolphines are even better equipped with the capacity to use sonar messages; bats also employ echolocation; and, traditional human beings are supposed to be poor echolocators. Given the possibility that echolocation might be one of the most sophisticated ways using sounds as a communicative vehicle, people don't deserve to be treated as the best "speaker." However, most scholars have been addictedd to the role of tongue, which is simply one of the kinetic muscles to express thoughts or opinions through sounds. Of course, some scientists have studied FOXP2(Forkhead box protein P2), also referred to as "language gene,"1) in order to argue for the uniqueness of human ability to speak. But, the gene is shared by other animals and birds - sounds are a secondary criterion of language on the part of humans.
The Possibility of Linguistic Memes
Even though it is unlikely that using sounds is not uniquely human, people DO speak without learning. Then, how and by whom? FOXP2 shared by other mammals? Some unknown intellectual beings, who have been reported to kidnap people? Or God? If so, why have they "abandoned" their kids? To allow freedom?
Possibly, the presence of linguistic memes made it possible for early humans to use language; in other words, boundary-free linguistic genes "invaded" human brains, and passed their genes onto offspring in the brain. Had it not been for the lingual virus, we could not explain how early hominids became homo sapience, or homo lingua, in an abrupt way. The temporary conclusion: we are slaves of memes. 2)
"We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'." 3)
Sprachbund: the Coalition of Memes
Some human languages show a surprising number of likeness in spite of the absence of their interactions; Latin, for example, shares many grammatical similarities with Japanese and Korean, even though little or no clear evidence of their cultural interactions are found; they have in common the SOV structure, the absence of articles, and the omission of subjects. The three similarities are unique in that other European languages use the SVO construct, the compulsoriness of article selection, and the frequency or even indispensability of heads. Why is Latin, the presumably Eurpoean linguistic ancestor, much closer to the two East Asian languages? Coincidence? Then, what kind of coincidence circuit did work to make Latin, Japanese, and Korean linguistic cousins? First, it is possble to hypothesize that some Asian speakers migrated into the European country, Rome. However, the geographic proximity shared by alphabetical languages can't be applied to the three languages. 4)
Second, it seems possible to argue that memic Sprachbund 5) has worked for the transcontinental likeness in the two far-flung regions; memes are border-free.
The problem of the second argument is that it's extremely hard to prove it, since we cannot determine what they are like. But, I suspect that they reside in FOXP2.
Jung's Collective Unconscious: How Have Linguistic Memes Worked?
Faced with the methodological conundrum to explain the possibility of linguistic memes and their working on human brains, Carl Jung's world-famous theory Collective Unconscious is needed to be accounted for in details.
"My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents." 6)
The well-known argument of Carl Jung that "collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited" can be the turning-point of this essay. Dosn't it sound like Richard Dawkins' theory that memes are passed from one person to another by non-genetic means within a culture? The difference between Carl Jung's theory and that of Dawkins is that the biologist confined his attention to "cultural" contexts, while the psychologist emphasized the importance of symbols, or signs - as shown in his term "archetypes" or "collective representation."
"The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif - representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern ... They are indeed an instinctive trend". 7)
Now, it's time to reconcile Carl Jung with Jigmund Freud.
In trying to establish his theory of archetypes, the younger doctor was explicitly inspired by his academic rival - Sigmund Freud.
"[W]hat Freud called 'archaic remnants' - mental forms whose presence
cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life ... inherited
shapes of the human mind"8)
Of course, Jung attempted to revive the "archaic remnants" by defining "not in any sense lifeless or meaningless 'remnants'. They still function, and they are especially valuable ... just because of their 'historical' nature"8) But, there is no denying the fact that the presence of Freud's term archaic remnants made it possible for Jung to build his theory. 9)
Whatever the term, archytypes or archaic remnants, their notion is instrumental in proving the possible presence of linguistic "replicators." Plus, Carl Jung's notion Collective Unconscious could help detail the "diachronic" process by which linguistic memes pass their "imaginary framework" onto the owner of their counterparts - genes. With the help of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, we can overcome the weakness of Dawkins' meme theory - just explaining "synchronic" cultural phenomena, not WHY and HOW. 10)
Human Echolocation and the Potential Para.Sites
Suppose that the world is composed of linguistic domains based upon sounds, images, and minds. Bats or diving mammals are more well-equipped with the acoustic-dominant world. Human beings are supposed to reside in the typology-driven universe. Just some poor-and-deserved-to-be-repected blind people develop the ability to echolocate. 6) Sounds are not uniquely human; people are rivalled by bats on earth as well as by marine mammals under ther sea.
If human beings acquired the ability to speak with the unexpected and "spontaneous surge" of linguistic memes and they still exist, it is likely that people will become a user of echolocation like dolphines in the future. If so, will it be fantastic? Possibly, their use of echolocation might be detrimental, and even fatal, to the populations due to the fact that the intrinsic randomness of human phonological structures7) and the subsequent chaos in communications system; humans are more specialized in letters than sounds, which are suitable for dolphines or bats. And, the well-organized and hierarchical way of communication - exemplified by bacteria, ants, and bees - look beautiful; however, only the result is "beautiful" - a "cruel" feat painfully acquired by killing some rebellious members against the order of the Queen in its colony.
The conclusion: humans are less likely to survive the sound-laden universe; they will suffer from chaos or slavery by linguistic memes. Characters! The competitive edge of "real" humans against memes, just as you take a picture againt the SKY. Do you want to live in a world where a series of memic super-engineers and stupid "shouters" dominate, and descendants of the contemporary human populations are their slaves, or mental and physical parasites?
p.s. Greed will trigger tragedy.
1) FOXP2 has been studies as one of the possible answers to the origin of humand language because "[i]n humans, mutations of FOXP2 cause a severe speech and language disorder. Versions of FOXP2 exist in similar forms in distantly related vertebrates; functional studies of the gene in mice and in songbirds indicate that it is important for modulating plasticity of neural circuits." (Wikipedia. FOXP2. 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2) However, the common presence of the potential linguistic gene in other mammals lessens, or at least denies, the possibility that FOXP2 could become the only candidate for creating only human linguistic traits. Worse, sounds of dolphines or bats are more sophisticated; much of the complexity and exquisiteness of human language has been acquired with the help of letters.
2) Meme is a replicator, whose role is to disseminate the identical "idea, behavior, or style from person to person within a culture."(Merriam-Webster Dictionary) Then, the "copycat" will naturally remind many professional linguists of the mirror neurons. The word "meme" sounds somewhat vague here since the brand-new term wasn't meant for languages; Richard Doskin, the namer of the lexicon, mentioned a lot of cultural phenomena to explain his intruguing and impressive theory, but omitted language. To make the "replicator" sound more "sound and solid," much part of Wikipedia is intentionally copied and cat.alogued below:
"In humans, functional MRI studies have reported finding areas homologous to the monkey mirror neuron system in the inferior frontal cortex, close to Broca's area, one of the hypothesized language regions of the brain. This has led to suggestions that human language evolved from a gesture performance/understanding system implemented in mirror neurons. Mirror neurons have been said to have the potential to provide a mechanism for action-understanding, imitation-learning, and the simulation of other people's behaviour. This hypothesis is supported by some cytoarchitectonic homologies between monkey premotor area F5 and human Broca's area. Rates of vocabulary expansion link to the ability of children to vocally mirror non-words and so to acquire the new word pronunciations. Such speech repetition occurs automatically, fast and separately in the brain to speech perception. Moreover such vocal imitation can occur without comprehension such as in speech shadowing and echolalia.
Further evidence for this link comes from a recent study in which the brain activity of two participants was measured using fMRI while they were gesturing words to each other using hand gestures with a game of charades – a modality that some have suggested might represent the evolutionary precursor of human language. Analysis of the data using Granger Causality revealed that the mirror-neuron system of the observer indeed reflects the pattern of activity of the activity in the motor system of the sender, supporting the idea that the motor concept associated with the words is indeed transmitted from one brain to another using the mirror system.
It must be noticed that the mirror neuron system seems to be inherently inadequate to play any role in syntax, given that this definitory property of human languages which is implemented in hierarchical recursive structure is flattened into linear sequences of phonemes making the recursive structure not accessible to sensory detection." (Wikipedia. Origin of Language. 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language)
"A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behaviour of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate and other species including birds. In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal cortex.
The function of the mirror system is a subject of much speculation. Many researchers in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology consider that this system provides the physiological mechanism for the perception action coupling (see the common coding theory). They argue that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some researchers also speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory of mind skills, while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities. Neuroscientists such as Marco Iacoboni (UCLA) have argued that mirror neuron systems in the human brain help us understand the actions and intentions of other people. In a study published in March 2005 Iacoboni and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern if another person who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink from it or clear it from the table. In addition, Iacoboni has argued that mirror neurons are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy.
It has also been proposed that problems with the mirror neuron system may underlie cognitive disorders, particularly autism. However the connection between mirror neuron dysfunction and autism is tentative and it remains to be seen how mirror neurons may be related to many of the important characteristics of autism.
Despite the excitement generated by these findings, to date, no widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions such as imitation. There are neuroscientists such as Greg Hickok (UC Irvine) and Cecilia Heyes (Oxford) who caution that the claims being made for the role of mirror neurons are not supported by adequate research."
3) Dawkins, Richard (1989), The Selfish Gene (2ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 192.
4) The locative vicinity of Japanese and Korean might lead to the false idea that the likeness of the two Asian languages derives from a "map," not a linguistic "gene." But, since Japan withdrew from the Korean peninsula immediately in A.D 660, when the Three-Kingdom(Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla) War ended, the island isolated itself from the Continental contacts. Thus, the similarities between them cannot be explained by the theory of Sprachbund.
5) "The term Sprachbund, a calque of the Russian term yazykovoy soyuz ("language union"), was introduced by Nikolai Trubetzkoy in an article in 1923. In a paper presented to the 1st International Congress of Linguists in 1928, Trubetzkoy defined a Sprachbund as a group of languages with similarities in syntax, morphological structure, cultural vocabulary and sound systems, but without systematic sound correspondences, shared basic morphology or shared basic vocabulary."(Wikipedia. Sprachbund. 2012.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachbund)
6) As shown in the study of feral children, the auditory capacity of people is fragile; just after the isolated children lose their contact with human societies, their allegedly innate ability to "speak" evaporates. But, humans are power-users of characters. Some empirical evidence shows that humans are early adopters and even creators of "signs." See OSBORNE, LAWRENCE (October 24, 1999), A linguistic Big Bang, New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/19991024mag-sign-language.html
7) One weakness of the bow-wow theory is derived from the arbitrariness of sounds; every dog barks based on its own "culture."
6) Jung, C. G (1996), The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (London), p. 43
7) Jung, C. G (1978), Approaching the Unconscious in C. G. Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London).
p. 58
8) Freud, Sigmund (1991), Case Histories II (London). p. 364
9) Jung, C. G (1978), Approaching the Unconscious in C. G. Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London).
p. 32
10) To pay homage to their academic greatness, one of my linguistic theories is termed the JungFrau Language Family Hypothesis. For more details, click here
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N.B. 1) Memes are quite different from genes, passed onto offspring through physical elements;
they do not care race, or the population; they just work in the context of culture, not
barbarianism, which means that it is humans who pollute the world.
N.B. 2) Memes are not a result of the effortless transmission of genes, but a complex of cultivation.
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