Cover not available
Article published In:
How the Brain Got Language: Towards a New Road Map
Edited by Michael A. Arbib
[Interaction Studies 19:1/2] 2018
► pp. 239–255

Praxis, symbol and language

Developmental, ecological and linguistic issues

| Hunan University
This article focuses on the interweaving of constructive praxis with communication in ontogenesis, in phylogenesis and in biocultural niche evolution (ecogenesis), within an EvoDevoSocio framework. I begin by discussing the nature of symbolization, its evolution from communicative signaling and its elaboration into semantic systems. I distinguish between the symbol-ready and the language-ready brain, leading to a discussion of linguistic conceptualization and its dual grounding in organism and language system. There follows an outline account of the interpenetration in the human biocultural niche-complex of semiosphere and technosphere, mediated by the evolution of the niche of infancy. Symbolization (the foundation of the semiosphere) is by definition normative; the normative character of the technosphere is demonstrated by the interrelations in human development between affordance, action schema and canonical functional object schema. A model of the neuro-computational implementation of dual grounding is proposed.
Keywords: EcoEvoDevo, praxis, protolanguage, symbol grounding, niche construction, language evolution, epigenesis, infancy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.From communicative signal to representational symbol
  • 3.From symbol to system: The emergence of language
  • 4.Niche construction: Meaning, materiality and human development
  • 5.The ontogenesis of praxic action, imitation and language: Beyond affordance
  • 6.Toward a new road map
    • Neuro-computational subsystems and their integration
    • EcoEvoDevo-Socio: A synoptic view
    • Genetics and epigenetics of the language-ready brain
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.17025.sin
References (44)
References
Abouheif, E., Favé, M. -J., Ibarrarán-Viniegra, A. S., Lesoway, M. P., Rafiqi, A. M., Rajakumar, R. (2014) Eco-evo-devo: the time has come. In Landry, C. R. and Aubin-Horth, N. (Eds.) Ecological Genomics: Ecology and the Evolution of Genes and Genomes. New York: Springer 107–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arbib, M. (2012). How The Brain Got Language: The Mirror System Hypothesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arbib, M. A. (2015). Towards a computational comparative neuroprimatology: framing the language-ready brain. Phyics of Life Review. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berwick, R. C. and Chomsky, N. (2016). Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bühler, K. (1990 [1934]). Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cheney, D. L. & Seyfarth, R. M. (1981). Selective forces affecting the predator alarm calls of vervet monkeys. Behavior 761, 25–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. (1996). Using Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corballis, M. (2017). Language evolution: A Changing Perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 21, 4. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dediu, D. and Levinson, S. C. (2013). On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences. Frontiers in Psychology 4, 397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. (2013). Relationship Thinking: Agency, Enchrony, and Human Sociality. New York. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fagg, A. H. and Arbib, M. A. (1998). Modelling parietal-premotor interactions in primate control of grasping. Neural Networks 111, 1277–1303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freeman, N., C. Sinha and S. Condliff. (1981) Confrontation and collaboration with young children in language comprehension tasks. In W. P. Robinson (ed.) Communication in Development, 63–88. London, Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frege, G. (1892). Über Sinn und Bedeuting. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik 1001, 25–50.Google Scholar
Gärdenfors, P. (2014). The Geometry of Meaning: Semantics based on conceptual spaces. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, S. F., Bosch, T. and Ledón-Rettig, C. (2015). Eco-Evo-Devo: developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity as evolutionary agents. Nature Reviews Genetics 161, 611–622. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halina, M., Rossano, F. and Tomasello, M. (2013). The ontogenetic ritualization of bonobo gestures. Animal Cognition 161, 653–666. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hauser, M. D. (1996). The Evolution of Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Heine, B. and Kuteva, T. (2007). The Genesis of Grammar: A reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Henshilwood, C. S. and Dubreuil, B. (2011). The Still Bay and Howieson’s Poort 77–59 ka: Symbolic material culture and the evolution of the mind during the African Middle Stone Age. Current Anthropology 521, 361–402. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huxley, J. (1966). A discussion of ritualization of behaviour in animals and man. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London 2511, 273–284.Google Scholar
Jensen de López, K. (2003). Baskets and Body-Parts: a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic investigation of children’s development of spatial cognition and language. PhD dissertation, University of Aarhus.Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joordens, J. C., d’Errico, F., [18 others] & Roebroeks, W. (2014). Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving. Nature. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What categories tell us about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Vol. 11, Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lock, A. (1980). The Guided Reinvention of Language. London, Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lotman, Y. (1990). Universe of the mind, in A SemioticTheory of Culture, transl. A. Shukman. New York: I.B.Tauris and Co. Ltd.Google Scholar
Odling-Smee, F. J. and Laland, K. N. (2009). Cultural niche-construction: evolution’s cradle of language. In R. Botha and C. Knight (eds.) The Prehistory of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 99–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saussure, F. de. (1966). Cours de Linguistique Générale. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Sinha, C. (1982) Representational development and the structure of action. In G. Butterworth and P. Light (eds.) Social Cognition: Studies in the Development of Understanding. Brighton, Harvester, pp. 137–162.Google Scholar
(1988). Language and Representation: A Socio-Naturalistic Approach to Human Development. Hemel Hempstead, Harvester-Wheatsheaf & New York, New York University Press.Google Scholar
(1999) Sinha, C. Grounding, mapping and acts of meaning. In T. Janssen and G. Redeker (eds.) Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations, Scope and Methodology. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 223–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2004) The Evolution of Language: From Signals to Symbols to System. In D. Kimbrough Oller and Ulrike Griebel (eds.) Evolution of Communication Systems: A Comparative Approach. Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 217–235.Google Scholar
(2009) Language as a biocultural niche and social institution. In Vyvyan Evans and Stéphanie Pourcel (Eds.) New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 289–310. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013). Niche construction, too, unifies praxis and symbolization. Commentary on Michael Arbib: How the brain got language. Language and Cognition 51, 261–271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015a). Language and other artifacts: socio-cultural dynamics of niche construction. Frontiers in Psychology (Cognitive Science) 61, 1601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015b). Ontogenesis, semiosis and the epigenetic dynamics of biocultural niche construction. Cognitive Development 361, 202–209. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinha, C. and Jensen de López, K. (2000). Language, culture and the embodiment of spatial cognition. Cognitive Linguistics 111, 17–41.Google Scholar
Slocombe, K. K. E. and Zuberbühler, K. (2005). Functionally referential communication in a chimpanzee. Current Biology 151, 1179–1184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steffensen, S. V. and Pedersen, S. B. (2016). Temporal dynamics in human interaction. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 211, 80–97.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. & Call, J. (1997). Primate Cognition. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trevarthen, C. (2008). The musical art of infant conversation: Narrating in the time of sympathetic experience, without rational interpretation, before words. Musicae Scientiae 12 (Suppl. 1), 15–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W. C., Nishida, T., Reynolds, V., Sugiyama, Y., Tutin, C. E. G., Wrangham, R. W., Boesch, C. (1999). Cultures and chimpanzees. Nature 3991, 682–685. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Arbib, Michael A., Francisco Aboitiz, Judith M. Burkart, Michael C. Corballis, Gino Coudé, Erin Hecht, Katja Liebal, Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi, James Pustejovsky, Shelby S. Putt, Federico Rossano, Anne E. Russon, P. Thomas Schoenemann, Uwe Seifert, Katerina Semendeferi, Chris Sinha, Dietrich Stout, Virginia Volterra, Sławomir Wacewicz & Benjamin Wilson
2020. The comparative neuroprimatology 2018 (CNP-2018) road map for research on How the Brain Got Language. In How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map [Benjamins Current Topics, 112], ► pp. 370 ff. DOI logo
Arbib, Michael A., Francisco Aboitiz, Judith M. Burkart, Michael Corballis, Gino Coudé, Erin Hecht, Katja Liebal, Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi, James Pustejovsky, Shelby Putt, Federico Rossano, Anne E. Russon, P. Thomas Schoenemann, Uwe Seifert, Katerina Semendeferi, Chris Sinha, Dietrich Stout, Virginia Volterra, Sławomir Wacewicz & Benjamin Wilson
2018. The comparative neuroprimatology 2018 (CNP-2018) road map for research on How the Brain Got Language . Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 19:1-2 ► pp. 370 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.