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(1) Gestures play an important role in the development of language both for individuals and species. However, once language is established it can function through vocalizations alone, as in phone conversations. The author contends that vocal language emerged relatively late in human evolution, after gestures evolved to convey meaning. (2) Evidence suggests the vocal abilities necessary for speech developed recently in human evolution, around 2 million years ago. Early language was likely primarily gestural but punctuated with involuntary vocalizations. The complex adjustments to the vocal tract needed for modern speech may not have been complete until around 170,000 years ago. (3) It is unclear what selective pressures led to the dominance of speech, as gestures seem better suited

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140 views1 page

First Text

(1) Gestures play an important role in the development of language both for individuals and species. However, once language is established it can function through vocalizations alone, as in phone conversations. The author contends that vocal language emerged relatively late in human evolution, after gestures evolved to convey meaning. (2) Evidence suggests the vocal abilities necessary for speech developed recently in human evolution, around 2 million years ago. Early language was likely primarily gestural but punctuated with involuntary vocalizations. The complex adjustments to the vocal tract needed for modern speech may not have been complete until around 170,000 years ago. (3) It is unclear what selective pressures led to the dominance of speech, as gestures seem better suited

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dramaking
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From Hand to Mouth

Michael C. Corballis

(1) Imagine trying to teach a child to talk without using your hands or any other means of pointing of
gesturing. The task would surely be impossible. There can be little doubt that bodily gestures are
involved in the development of language, both in the individual and in the species. Yet, once the
system is up and running, it can function entirely on vocalizations, as when two friends chat over the
phone and create in each other’s minds a world of events far removed from the actual sounds that
emerge from their lips. My contention is that the vocal element emerged relatively late in hominid
evolution. If the modern chimpanzee is to be our guide, the common ancestor of 5 or 6 million years
ago would have been utterly incapable of a telephone conversation but would have been able to make
voluntary movements of hands and face that could the least serve as a platform upon which to build a
language.

(2) Evidence suggests that the vocal machinery necessary for autonomous speech developed quite
recently in hominid evolution. Grammatical language may well have begun to emerge around 2 million
years ago but would at first have been primary gestural, though no doubt punctuated with grunts and
other vocal cries that were at first largely involuntary and emotional. The complex adjustments
necessary to produce speech as we know it today would have taken some time to evolve, and may not
have been complete until some 170,000 years ago, or even later, when Homo sapiens emerged to
grace, but more often disgrace, the planet. These adjustments may have been incomplete even in our
close relatives the Neanderthals; arguably, it was this failure that contributed to their demise.

(3) The question now is what were the selective pressures that led to the eventual dominance of
speech? On the face of it, an acoustic medium seems a poor way to convey information about the
world; not for nothing is it said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Moreover, signed language
has all the lexical and grammatical complexity of spoken language. Primate evolution is itself a
testimony to the primacy of the visual world. We share with monkeys a highly sophisticated visual
system, giving us three- dimension information in colour about us, and an intricate system for
exploring that world through movement and manipulation. Further, in a hunter- gatherer environment,
where predators and prey are major concern, there are surely advantages in silent communication
since sound acts as a general alert. And yet we came to communicate about the world in a medium
that in all primates except ourselves is primitive and stereotyped- and noisy.

(4) Before we consider the pressures that may have favoured vocalization over gestures, it bears
repeating that the switch from hand to mouth was almost certainly not an abrupt one. In fact, manual
gestures still feature prominently in language; even as fluent speakers gesture almost as much as they
vocalize, and of course deaf communities spontaneously develop signed language. It has also been
proposed that speech itself is in many respects better conceived as composed of gestures rather than
sequences of these elusive phantoms called phonemes. In this view, language evolved as a system of
gestures based on movements of the hands, arms and face, including movements of the mouth, lips,
and tongue. It would not have been a big steps to add voicing to the gestural repertoire, at first as
mere grunts, but later articulated so that invisible gestures of the oral cavity could rendered accessible,
but to the ear rather than the eye. There may therefore have been continuity from the language that
was almost exclusively manual and facial, though perhaps punctuated by involuntary grunts, to one in
which the vocal component has a much more extensive repertoire and is under voluntary control. The
essential feature of modern expressive language is not that it is purely vocal, but rather that the
component can function autonomously and provide the grammar as well as meaning of linguistics
communication.

(5) What, then, are the advantages of a language that can operate autonomously through voice and
ear, rather than hand and eye? Why speech?

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