Interweaving protosign and protospeech

Further developments beyond the mirror

Michael A. Arbib | Computer Science, Neuroscience and USC Brain Project, University of Southern California

We distinguish “language readiness” (biological) from “having language” (cultural) and outline a hypothesis for the evolution of the language-ready brain and language involving seven stages: S1: grasping; S2: a mirror system for grasping; S3: a simple imitation system for grasping, shared with the common ancestor of human and chimpanzee; S4: a complex imitation system for grasping; S5: protosign, breaking through the fixed repertoire of primate vocalizations to yield an open repertoire for communication; S6: protospeech, the open-ended production and perception of sequences of vocal gestures, without these sequences constituting a full language; and S7: a process of cultural evolution in Homo sapiens yielding full human languages. The present paper will examine the subhypothesis that protosign (S5) formed a scaffolding for protospeech (S6), but that the two interacted with each other in supporting the evolution of brain and body that made Homo sapiens “language-ready”.

Keywords: language evolution, mirror system, protosign, protospeech

Published online: 30 September 2005
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.6.2.02arb

Cited by

Cited by 21 other publications

Arbib, Michael

2006. Aphasia, apraxia and the evolution of the language-ready brain. Aphasiology 20:9 ► pp. 1125 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2006. A Sentence is to Speech as What is to Action?. Cortex 42:4 ► pp. 507 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2008. From grasp to language: Embodied concepts and the challenge of abstraction. Journal of Physiology-Paris 102:1-3 ► pp. 4 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2009. Evolving the language-ready brain and the social mechanisms that support language. Journal of Communication Disorders 42:4 ► pp. 263 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2011. From Mirror Neurons to Complex Imitation in the Evolution of Language and Tool Use. Annual Review of Anthropology 40:1 ► pp. 257 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2015. From Action-Oriented Perception to Language. Cognitive Semiotics 8:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2017. Dorsal and ventral streams in the evolution of the language-ready brain: Linking language to the world. Journal of Neurolinguistics 43 ► pp. 228 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2018. Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain. Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 19:1-2 ► pp. 7 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2020. In How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map [Benjamins Current Topics, 112], ► pp. 7 ff.

Arbib, Michael A.

2015. In The Handbook of Language Emergence, ► pp. 600 ff.

Arbib, Michael A., Katja Liebal & Simone Pika

2008. Primate Vocalization, Gesture, and the Evolution of Human Language. Current Anthropology 49:6 ► pp. 1053 ff.

Cabrera, Maria E., Keisha Novak, Dan Foti, Richard Voyles & Juan P. Wachs

2020. Electrophysiological indicators of gesture perception. Experimental Brain Research 238:3 ► pp. 537 ff.

Christy, T. Craig

2016. In History of Linguistics 2014 [Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 126], ► pp. 43 ff.

Corballis, Michael C.

2010. The gestural origins of language. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 1:1 ► pp. 2 ff.

Grosvald, Michael, Eva Gutierrez, Sarah Hafer & David Corina

2012. Dissociating linguistic and non-linguistic gesture processing: Electrophysiological evidence from American Sign Language. Brain and Language 121:1 ► pp. 12 ff.

Imai, Mutsumi & Sotaro Kita

2014. The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 369:1651 ► pp. 20130298 ff.

Locke, John L.

2009. Evolutionary developmental linguistics: Naturalization of the faculty of language. Language Sciences 31:1 ► pp. 33 ff.

Moulin-Frier, Clement, Jules Brochard, Freek Stulp & Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

2020. Emergent Jaw Predominance in Vocal Development Through Stochastic Optimization. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems 12:3 ► pp. 378 ff.

Moulin-Frier, Clément & Michael A. Arbib

2013. Recognizing speech in a novel accent: the motor theory of speech perception reframed. Biological Cybernetics 107:4 ► pp. 421 ff.

Moulin-Frier, Clément, Julien Diard, Jean-Luc Schwartz & Pierre Bessière

2015. COSMO (“Communicating about Objects using Sensory–Motor Operations”): A Bayesian modeling framework for studying speech communication and the emergence of phonological systems. Journal of Phonetics 53 ► pp. 5 ff.

Shuai, Lan & Tao Gong

2013. Book review. Lingua 134 ► pp. 27 ff.

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