Orangutans and consonants

[gurnemanz]

Probably the first time I have combined those two words in an utterance. The primitive origins of language has always interested me and I'm referring to an item on the Today programme this morning. Years ago, I remember being fascinated by William Golding's novel, The Inheritors, in which he has Neanderthals and Homo sapiens communicating with each other and attempts to represent what sort of 'language' they might have used.

It seems that the origin of language could at least in part have been down to our hominid ancestors discovering that the sounds they uttered were better communicated over a distance if they contained consonants. Orangutans are the only known great ape to produce consonant-like and vowel-like calls in syllable combinations and they therefore presented a model for a study to test that theory. The research evidence which the study provided seems to indicate that the theory has some validity. It is an appealing thought for me that human intelligence might be down to plosives and fricatives.

Details here.

[kernelbogey]

I must read The Inheritors: I've known of it for decades and vaguely knew its subject matter, but not that it treated of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. Now that genetic research has proved via DNA that the two species interbred, it makes the book even more appealing. Thanks for this Gurnemanz.

[Serial_Apologist]

For some silly reason I thought from the thread title this was going to be about the distinctive "g" pronunciation found in some Midlands and Northern accents, as pronounced in "singing", i.e. "sin-ging" or "oran-gutang"!

[Ian Thumwood]

I have to own up to be absoutely fascinated by this argument myself. The whole element of consciousness and cognitive ability in animals is fascinating and has been subject to much debate - especially with research into things such as chimpanzees communicating by sign langauge. I believe that the current research in to this matter is that the ability fo communicate with chimps is being challenged and that they are effectively mimmicking people.

The notion of the creation of human language is surely something that should intrigue all intelligent people. I am fascinated by this topic and find myself being really annoyed when older and obscure languages become under threat. I find that the idea of natural selection as presented by Darwin to be a challenge and think that the science needs to be advanced as it is over-simplified. I would love to know when humanids first started to communicate and when languages evolved. I think there has been research about brain size and the ability to make cognitive decisions based on the size of cavities within skulls.

One of the most incredible things that I have seen in a musuem was one near Poitiers in France which was near some caves where loads of paleolithic engravings had been found. From recollection they were about 15 thousand years old and some of the material found by the archaeologists was a mixture associated with Neanderthals as well as Homo Sapiens. One engraving was of a man in profile , sitting hunched. It was clearly a portrait and , although not an expert in these things, would suggest that it could have served no purpose in any rituals. It just struck me as someone scratching a portrait of his mate to pass the time of day. It was a really staggering piece of art.

[smittims]

Neanderthals and Home Sapiens attempting to communicate with each other can be heard in South Cheshire every day.

'N?'

'ye' enn.'

'ah, y'r nnn.'

'raaa'.

[gurnemanz]

I have to own up to be absoutely fascinated by this argument myself. The whole element of consciousness and cognitive ability in animals is fascinating and has been subject to much debate - especially with research into things such as chimpanzees communicating by sign langauge. I believe that the current research in to this matter is that the ability fo communicate with chimps is being challenged and that they are effectively mimmicking people.

I was doing a postgrad language teaching cert in 71-72, where of course language acquisition theories figured prominently. I remember hearing about the famous chimp, Washoe, who was brought up like a human child. Checking Wiki, I find she lived to the ripe old age of 42, dying in 2007. BF Skinner and the behaviourists had insisted that language was learnt behaviour. Chomsky and others posited an innate human language learning capacity. Our professor at York offered us his own personal evidence that Chomksy was right. He had a two-year-old grandchild who saw a cello for the first time and called it 'big music'. The child had 'generated' a new piece of language, not learnt its official name. Generative grammar was Chomsky's big thing.

I found this out later myself when observing our own children. We can't go back millions of years to the origins of language (except via orangutans) but we can witness the miracle of an individual human child's language acquisition (there must be some parallels). My wife is German and we decided to bring up our two bilingually and being an inquisitive linguist I wrote down interesting utterances and made hidden-mike tape recordings of their speech. As our daughter, aged one to two years, moved from one-word to two-word utterances there were many instances of a creative process at work. Before having fully grasped that she was acquiring two distinct languages she would happily make her own new two-word names for things by combining single English and German words. German was not mentioned as such but 'what Mummy says'.

Years later there was an interesting follow-up. She was doing English Language A Level and needed a coursework project. She decided to do it on her own bilingualism and use my noted-down utterances and tape recordings as corpus material. She is now 40+ and has only ever lived in England but still talks only German to my wife and only English to me.

[Old Grumpy]

For some silly reason I thought from the thread title this was going to be about the distinctive "g" pronunciation found in some Midlands and Northern accents, as pronounced in "singing", i.e. "sin-ging" or "oran-gutang"!

Yep, me too. I think orangutan is often pronounced oraguntang- including by me, I suspect

[Pulcinella]

For some silly reason I thought from the thread title this was going to be about the distinctive "g" pronunciation found in some Midlands and Northern accents, as pronounced in "singing", i.e. "sin-ging" or "oran-gutang"!

I misread it as Orangutans and consonance.

[Serial_Apologist]

I misread it as Orangutans and consonance.

An example for us all of cognitive consonance!

[Sir Velo]

I misread it as Orangutans and consonance.

I read it as oranges and croissants - probably because that's on the breakfast menu this morning