Simon has a microphone. Somebody gave Simon a microphone. They are the same microphone.

This channel is such a hidden gem

Simon, don't be self-conscious about the hand waving. It's going to be important when you start appearing on "smart people talking about stuff" shows for the BBC.

Our boi here speaking Pirahã like a pro

I appreciate your video style. I get a bit shell-shocked by some of the expository videos that are frenetic, high-pitched sales jobs. The simplicity of conversation and simple word illustrations allows me to watch these videos and relax.

My favourite example of recursion is "Those are the only vegetables which I don't know where to find out how to plant."

as someone who has tried taking linguistics courses in university and not enjoyed them, your videos are amazing. such great explanations in clear terms, truly has made linguistics feel so much more present in my life and easy to understand. keep it up

The thing about Pirahã having no basic color terms is not as weird as it sounds. They do have color words; they're just the names of plants with those colors, similar to how we have "orange", "violet", and "lilac" as colors. The thing about them not having numbers seems to be pretty much what it sounds like, though. They aren't the only culture that doesn't count, but most languages like this still have a few small numbers. That being said, Pirahã does have a word for "one"/"a few" and another for a larger number. It's probably not that similar, but it does remind me of how a German word for "some"/"a few" is "einige", which I think is related to "ein(s)", the German word for one (which is cognate with English). I've always wondered how that change happened since I noticed the connection.

How Did Language Start is by far my favourite topic. It makes my brains go funny. Like bottomless chocolate. Looking forward to the next episode mate

I get the sense this young man’s recordings will be listened to a hundred years from now.

I’m from Hawaii, so it was cool to hear you mention Hawaiian creole (though we just simply call it “pidgin” here even if it’s not actually a pidgin language). It’s pretty interesting because growing up I never thought of it as a different language. It’s often looked down upon as a lesser form of English, or broken English, and people who speak pidgin primarily (I don’t, but many of my older relatives do) have similar problems to the ones mentioned in your AAVE videos. Code switching is very common, and even among people who speak primarily pidgin there’s the mindset that it’s lesser, or uneducated, or low-class-myself and many of the people in my age group (at least the ones I know) speak standard English primarily, and it’s not uncommon for my older relatives who speak pidgin to say that we “talk good” and often older people who speak pidgin try to encourage their kids to “talk good” because they think it will help their kids with school and jobs and stuff. I admit that growing up part of the reason I preferred standard English was because it seemed more proper and educated (plus other factors, of course, like it being the primary language of education, the fact part of my family is from the mainland, and the fact that most of the media I consumed growing up was from the mainland). As a result I still don’t feel that comfortable speaking pidgin, because it feels like I’m putting on an act because I never actually spoke that way growing up, but after taking some linguistics in college and learning more about the language and it’s rules I found a new appreciation and perspective on it.

Cheers to whoever sent Simon the mic. I must admit, I thought about doing this when the phone came into play, but I thought it might be a bit presumptive. Well done whoever actually had the motivation to do it!

There is a (sign) language that was developed spontaneously, Nicagraguan Sign Language. There was a group of deaf kids in Nicaraguan in the 1970 - 1980s. Teachers tried to teach them how to read spoken spanish from lips. However the kids were unable to learn the language. During the breaks the kids were playing outside with themselves. They started to communicate with themselves by hand signs. Those signs evolved into a full blown sign language with it's own grammar.

Fascinating. You’ve made the uninteresting interesting and yes, I do miss your weirdo naturalist excursions. More toads please....

Chomsky's whole point is to demonstrate that language is more a biological phenomenon than a cultural one, while Everrett would be the reverse. I did a bunch of Chomskyan linguistics in undergrad, and I'm pretty sympathetic to Chomsky's ideas. I think his starting point makes sense. The marked cognitive difference between humans and other primates (including humans' ability to use language) must be due to a relatively recent evolutionary event. If that event produced the biocognitive capacity for language in humans, then surely that capacity *looks* like something, right? It must be, in some way, tangible. The capacity for language that arose is ultimately biological, so it has limits, patterns, and so on, that are hardwired into the human brain, just like how any other biological system in the body and brain also has limits and patterns. And since that innate hardwired capacity governs how language arises and develops and is used throughout human history and across the world, we should expect it to exert the same constraints on all human languages. So it all sort of makes sense to me. In saying that, since undergrad I've since become more convinced that there is a lot to be said for Everrett's camp, which sees language more as a cultural tool. There is lots of good evidence that culture drives language and that language reflects culture, which I won't go into here. Though, this cultural tool take still has to be stacked on top of some biocognitive capacity for language. I guess it's possible, as you mention, that this biocognitive capacity is just a combination of higher-order pattern recognition, symbolic reasoning, and other cognitive abilities. And the point that children may quickly pick up and make sense of grammar based on word distributions, not anything innate, is a good argument here. Thanks for making me think. You might also be interested in exemplar theory, which says that speakers (including children) store words that they hear in the mind with all their acoustic, social, syntactic, and other contextual information. So when people (again, including children) speak, they don't piece together grammatical sentences (and develop grammaticality intuitions) based on anything innate, but rather on the wealth of exemplar words and sentences that they've amassed.

I feel pretty comfortable not developing even a tentative opinion on this question, partly because for some of the points you described I can hardly imagine what the difference would actually look like.

First, apologies for not being able to focus much on the content, your voice per se as well as the way you articulate things is just mesmerizing.

Michel Dansel, under the pen name Michel Thaler, hated verbs so much he wrote a whole novel without using any. He still manages to express his meaning quite comfortably. But I suppose the point is that he had to work really hard in a language that already prefers nouns to verbs to contrive a way of doing so. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Train_de_Nulle_Part

First love from Iraq 🇮🇶❤️❤️

Very strong evidence for innate universal grammar is provided by the case of Nicaraguan sign language. During Nicaragua's long civil war the education system for deaf children collapsed, so a generation of them were just brought up isolated at home, and also the teachers had retired or were dispersed. So when peace was restored they decided to provide education for deaf children, and collected a number of them together. However, they needed to train the teachers, and decide what system they were going to use. So at first they left the children alone while they discussed these matters. Amazingly, these young children, who didn't know each other, invented their own language, a signing language. This was so successful that it has now been instituted as the official deaf sign language for Nicaragua. Analysis shows that as with other signing languages, the grammatical structures are the conventional ones you might find in a spoken language. The idea that this was generated by culture seems hard to justify or accept. Congratulations on the channel, by the way.

A huge number of linguists would argue for a genetically-encoded, universal grammar. A huge number of linguists are wrong. They are the same linguists.

I always loved Chomsky's activism, but universal grammar has always appeared to me an unbelievably bold a claim given the available evidence. Science proceeds because of the certainty granted to it through the poverty of it's epistemological means, and not by the explanatory attractiveness of it's hypotheses alone.

I very much appreciate the slides! If there's an auditory version of dyslexia, I think I have it. Reading along helps me so much! It's also nice to see your face, too, so it feels like a conversation not a lecture. And the nature shots are beautiful and peaceful. Yay for balance!

That was a FANTASTIC read of piraha!!

Wow. Free mic. That was really cool. There's still hope for humanity.

My university is very Chomskyan, so I am very biased, but I find the fact that damage to certain parts of the brain (Broca's and Wernicke's areas, to be precise) leads to aphasia, certain parts of language being damaged (language production in the case of Broca's aphasia and language comprehension in the case of Wernicke's aphasia) a strong argument in favour of language-specific areas in the brain.

Just in case anyone else is learning German like I am, remember that the 9:05 sentence is very literally translated and therefore doesn't really work. It would have to be 'ich zerbreche...', 'ich zerschlage', 'ich zerstoere', 'ich mache das Fenster kaputt' and so on. The zer- is necessary and important as it's a verbal prefix that suggests some sort of dissolvement or destruction. Very interesting video though! Keep them coming!

I actually found a couple of linguists online (including the youtuber, Simon) while researching recursion...nice one.

I have a layperson‘s fascination with linguistics (and specifically Old English), and you make it so much easier to understand than other KZfaqrs. The videos only get better as time goes on. Can’t wait to see what the new stuff looks like.

I've gotta say, this is my favourite channel at the moment. Look forward to each new upload. Thanks for the great content!

There is so much of interest to learn from these videos but just for starters lets all try to display the humility shown here. Whatever we do , lets ne a bit more like simon.

I remember reading an interview with Chomsky in Omni magazine about forty years ago. The interviewer kept asking him how were were going to communicate with space aliens when we make contact. Chomsky quite reasonably said he had no idea because he didn't know what the aliens would be like. Chomsky also casually mentioned the term "universal grammar" as if it were assumed the interviewer was familiar with it--which led to another round of questions about aliens. Chomsky corrected him, saying universal grammar was only universal to humans. The interviewer replied, "Maybe we shouldn't call it universal, then."

i havent watched your videos in months (no particular reason hahah, ive just been busy and i like to listen to music or more mindless stuff like livestream VODs while i work) and these "how did language start" ones are my first few back--i cant believe id forgotten how calming and informative and wonderful i find your videos!! thank you for making this series, i do lots of worldbuilding for fun and your channel is a great resource for my art c:

Your channel is an amazing resource. I can't tell you how much I enjoy your videos. Thank you for your work!

Nice video, Simon. In this kind of discussion, it's important to keep clear in our minds two distinct issues: whether humans have an innate capacity for language; and whether there is a universal syntax. Some of the commentators in this board seem to be confusing the two questions. I find Everett's argument convincing, namely that there is no universal syntax. Children do seem to have an innate ability to quickly deduce linguistic patterns (rules) associating sounds with concepts and combining words to make sentences. But the rules themselves seem almost completely arbitrary (i.e., cultural); except to the extent that they must accommodate universal human cognition.

Props to whoever got him the mic! And nice work, as always, Simon!

Thanks, Simon. Excellent video. Cheers.

I like the slide heavy vids because it aids with digesting the information but I am also a fan so feel you have to express your work in a why and style that represents your vision for the channel

As I have grown older, I find that I'm a frustrated linguist. As a wee lad playing in my sand pile I wondered about language. I may have just heard the story of the Tower of Babel. I was interested, even at that young age, where it began, what it sounded like and how did it become my vernacular. I wish I had realized I had this interest when I could have done something about it. I really appreciate your videos.

Thank you very much indeed for making, this was another unreasonably interesting topic and video.

Fascinating stuff and nice to hear about language development in the Uk etc ... amazing ! Thankyou x

Really fantastic stuff. The best overview of the subject for newbies and intermediates in this realm. Glad to see you read Don’t Sleep... I would be interested to see a video just in that book.

I've said it before and I'll say it again now I think your "B-roll" footage is really really good

Thanks for your videos, Simon~ Greetings from Russia

love this channel!

Pirahã is so interesting.. 🤔 Cheers from Mexico, Simon 🖐

Interesting and educational. Thank you!

I love your nature's shots! Everytime it's so spontaneous and mystical ! :P It's a good topic ... I don't know if languages is human based, i think we definitely have a place in our brain ''Made or evolved to be'' for ''verbal languages''. But if only a dog or a cat could have a human's mouth and vocal cord.. I would be sooo curious to see it talking because i have cats and sometime they respond and talk to us like we do. It's mind-blowing! A pretty good question would be ; How well do you think your dogs/cats understand you?? I think we'll be shocked! And it could maybe answer some of the languages origin's questions Sorry for my grammaticals faults , i am a Canadian French... I should not say that, i'm gonna be beaten down xD

Great Video, as always. Thank You Simon!

Very well explained - thank you.

I like how you just casually speak Pirahã in the video. Awesome content Simon!

You're saving my sanity with your content. lol

I definitely lean much more towards the Chomskian side. So I disagree with you on that. I'm sorry, I hope you don't hate me for it. What convinces me the most about it is the fact that language as a thing is so universal. Like, the Pirahã language may be very unusual, but it is still a language. Where a population is hearing, there will be an oral language where sounds are made with their mouths to represent individual semantic concepts that are later placed linearly next to one another in extremely complex and specific ways to encode meaning. And the same will happen with a sign language if the community is non-hearing. When you say that linguistic universals may be a product of other cognitive processes that just naturally coalesce into a specific way of using language, I see where you're coming from, but the difference is in just how incredibly quick and unconscious the acquisition of language is. Other cultural phenomena require a certain degree of active learning: a child will not learn to bike, to read, to sew or to play the piano if there isn't someone who is telling them what to do and how to do it at the early stages, even if they get to master that activity and do it like it's second nature, they had to observe diligently at the onset of learning. Some kids may do some of these things without initial guidance, but not all of them. Language, on the other hand, is clearly engaging some of those cognitive processes, that may be more general, in a very specific, goal-oriented way, to force a child to acquire language simply from exposure, and the stages of acquisition are surprisingly consistent. If our brains were just good at certain cognitive processes, and we use those things to acquire language, without a specific module that specifically aims those processes to the acquisition of language, I feel like we should see MORE variation. I know that few things are truly universal, and language is clearly formed from outside stimulus that is culturally determined, but even if some things aren't universal, I just couldn't convince myself that they are as "obvious" as to appear in so many languages that have nothing to do with one another, and haven't been in contact for millennia. I encourage you to look into conlangs, which are constructed languages, and to see the incredibly different ways people have come up to encode meaning, that you just intuitively know couldn't be possible in a natural language. I especially recommend Ikthuil, Lojban, Kēlen, Fith and Rikchik. When I think of these conlangs and compare them to natural languages, I can't help but wonder why natural languages just don't evolve to allow more levels of complexity, like Ikthuil, or why they don't organize predicates like Lojban, etc. And I think it's partly because we don't "just use" what our brain has to offer when we acquire language, we use what it has to offer in a particular way, which encourages and allows certain things and disallows others; otherwise you'd see more diversity. But that's just my opinion. Perhaps those "obvious" ways in which to use our cognitive abilities really are obvious, and that's why we tend towards them, and maybe our languages really are the most effective ways of imparting information, and they have these things in common simply because they're the most direct way to do it with the tools we're given. I'm just skeptical of that.

We think recursively because every verb and noun in our inner dialogue comes loaded with associations, memories and emotions; in order to form a spoken sentence we must submerge all but that which serves the intent of the moment. All else is, as it were, put in parentheses of silence.

Very enjoyable as always

good for you with the mic, however I also enjoyed the lo-fi diy approach :)). Thanks for the content!

I like your videos with slides inside them and I cannot lie

Fourth love from Australia.

With Daniel Everett you mention something that originally started my interest to go deeper into linguistics. Just funny to have made this circle for me ;) And I just recognized a very interesting linguistic feature of your videos (and probably other videos on youtube): The very interesting mixture of the poles of the conceptual continuum of orality and literacy of the language of your videos. What really triggered me here was the train, when the rather scripted section was interrupted by "wait, there is a train coming". Former colleagues researched on what effect that might have on students when a teacher uses language more on the side of orality of the conceptual continuum or on the side of literacy. The quick answer: It is not that simple! :)

It's interesting that you brought this up, Simon. I've been teaching myself Ukrainian and sometimes I will have to choose the missing word in a lesson and I don't know any of those words. First, I see if the word is probably a verb or a noun, for example, and then I look at words I do know and see if the new words are spelled similarly, like maybe it's the plural form of a word I know or something related to something I already know. Sometimes I just shot in the dark guess. 🤷‍♀️But it's interesting how all languages share some very basic rules with each other and even if you don't know the language, you still have some basic knowledge of sentence structure or that verbs have different forms.

I totally love your presentations, Simon. Although I certainly support your interest and trajectory in archeology, having an abiding interest in Greco-Roman Antiquity, I also think you’re a natural for linguistics or consciousness and theory of mind studies, which appear more and more to be inextricable from the evolution and study of language.

When I started to study linguistics at university, I expected to be told of systems of communication that did not conform to universal grammar in contrast to human languages. After all, a good way to understand a concept is to consider its opposite. I didn't hear of any examples. I can think of some possibilities myself; mathematical notation, computer languages and, perhaps a good one, bidding systems in bridge.

3:25 Technically this sentence could make grammatical sense, if say, Jill had been blind but was suddenly able to see again, and Jack had gone to ask someone about it. Of course, this completely changes the meaning of the sentence.

I've never seen any evidence that animals don't have language. Or that they don't use sounds to communicate. One time I was walking to work and a baby bird was on the ground, meanwhile the whole flock of related birds were freaking out about this baby bird. If you tried to get near it they would dive bomb you. They were chattering and chirping like it was the biggest tragic story since the Hindenburg.. I'm sure one of the things those birds said would translate into english as "Oh the Birdity!!"

Language seems to be derived motorically from a more general movement feature, the „Willkürbewegung“ studied by the ethologists. It’s functional polymorphism. The evolutionary trends converge to language independently in parrots, corvids, toothed whales and primates. But it’s more sensible to view at language from a teleological perspective at the beginning. Language is mainly a feature that allows to instruct a conspecific of a precise to do. Honey bees are a model organism for a simple language. Their waggle dance language delivers a decoupling from spatial and temporal constraints imposed by pheromonal or tactile information „techniques“. When a corvid raised by hand tells you „Stay away!“ it‘s an imperative approach . When it says „ I‘m hungry“ it‘s an declarative one. All appetitive behavior is structurally more complicated than avoiding. I personally think, that language is a „child“ of the optical sense, because this form of perception is not restricted by short informational events like acoustic, tactile or olfactory. The „mild omnipresence of light“ (Novalis) opens up a categorical space, that‘s nearly boundless. The german term „Bedeutung“ encompasses such a new category. „bedeutungs“- sensitiveness has been studied by Auguste von Bayern in jackdaws. These corvids are able to reason about the intents of their conspecifics by following their line of gaze. This is one category of indirectness, that‘s only possible under the conditions of optics. Others are „option“, „expectation“ and „objectivity“. The nervous system therefore is solving differential equations, like Sabine Hossenfelder pointed out in a talk on KZfaq. I think it makes sense to combine linguistics, reasoning about the capabilities of an optical sense and Category Theory for a deeper understanding of language. By the way, the decision between verb and substantive is not a linguistic trait, but a universal one between type and function. „We routinely use types to express our high level intent of our programs“ (Nadia Polikarpova in „Type-Driven Program Synthesis“).

This is so interesting Simon

If I could be allowed to show off one more time; the sentence: "Where John had had Mary had had had, had had had had the examiners' approval," is perfectly grammatical and semantically straightforward in English.

I love words and how languages describe

Audio sounds wayyyyy better man. We can actually hear the fundamental frequency of your voice now!

Have you read John Truscott’s Consciousness and 2nd Language Learning? He makes an interesting argument for the dedicated language learning module idea. Or if we want to consider rational processes vs. UG, then what can we make of English attributive adjective ordering? The general “rule,” as I understand it, is that adjectives more intrinsic to the noun go closer to it: “big green tree,” since trees come in various sizes but are generally (culturally?) perceived to be green. If we are presented with “green big tree,” our brains inevitably scramble to find a context in which this makes sense, such as some bizarre horticultural experiment with a row of small varicolored trees and a row of large ones: Since the speaker would need to distinguish which row he/she was referencing, you might get, “But what about the green big tree? It’s doing nicely, don’t you think?” Thank you for your videos. I greatly enjoy your subject matter and the clarity you bring to it.

I have a gut feeling that the study of machine learning, in particular language models, will help solve this mystery. Because neural networks do bear similarities to real brains, and in some cases are essentially blank slates full of neurons, inputs, outputs, hidden layers, working in conjunction with other neural networks, and they do acquire emergent properties, in some cases literally evolve them. Similarly, existing language models, such as GPT-3 can become capable of other types of abstraction, for instance being surprisingly good at arithmetic.

Simon! I feel like we would literally talk for hours on end and never run out of subject matter. I'm currently reading 'The stuff of thought' by Steven Pinker. I imagine you've read it? But if not I'd recommend it. I can't speak on Pinkers conclusion, because I have yet to finish. Personally I think along the same lines as you, if I haven't misunderstood your points. Language seems to almost be an exact expression of our underlying consciousness. And what I mean is that our brain clearly works in ways that language then reflects, once it has developed. This may be a little outside of your interest, but I have the idea that 'consciousness' as we see it in a scientific/deterministic sense, is so directly intertwined with language, that I would suggest they are fundamentally the same. And what I mean is that we would not have one without the other. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this idea. This way, the pressures to evolve all different parts of our brain to deal with higher levels of cognition, would have just produced language as a side-effect. And that would then of course be selected for because of its usefulness. This feels right to me when we look at other apes, or 'intelligent' animals who seems to have 'degrees of consciousness', and we see them also grasping some aspects of language (but not the whole).

We already know about Brocca's and Wernicke's areas in the brain

You're really showing off with that perfect Pirahã reading.

You're very modest. I personally believe in UG - but I do think that the evidence for its existence is theoretical. That is, it is a logical construct. If there were not a language acquisition device in a child's mind, we would expect errors that do not occur. From that I do think that the binary branching model is the best we have for how language can plausibly be processed in the brain. Even if our brains operate just like Google translate in every respect (for instance), then surely that is "universal grammar" as well. It would be an overhaul of the Chomskian binary branching model, but it would still be part of the biological endowment. Universal grammar is the scientific name for whatever it is that helps us acquire language, and is specific to human language (rather than an alien one). I hope this makes sense and that I haven't presumed anything incorrectly.

Another thing about "universal grammar": Being encouraged to write down a local language in Cameroon (well I stopped after my stay there and after realizing that this language is dying fast with people being unable to remember basic words like "giraffe") I stumbled over apparently "universal" concepts such as plural, possessive adjectives, verb forms, a three-person system and so on. Isolation during Coronavirus hysteria made me pick up studies on the Vietnamese language. It has plenty of literature and more or less a standard. AND it is contradictory to "universal language concepts": Everyone is third person ("tôi", mostly translated as "I", simply means "subject", example: "vua tôi" = "king and subject / subserviant", in this fixed expression the "and" is missing), no verb forms (time is guessed from the context or taken from a prefixed "new", "soon" or other words), instead of plural forms you simply say "all" or take a general plural marker ("những"), any possessivity is expressed by word order (example "mother I" = "my mother") or the inclusion of the word "của", meaning "property". Any inclination is avoided except for tonal changes when doubling words or expressions (example: "Ngày xửa, ngày xưa" = "earlier day(s), earlier day(s)", meaning "once upon a time"). The good sides of this language are its head-first principle (though interrupted by loanwords from old Chinese) and the ability to express oneself without necessarily defining time, gender or number. On the bad side are the dialectal sound mergers, double meanings and a difficult pronunciation with minor subtleties ("tay, tai, tài, thai, thay"...) hard to detect and a vocabulary hard to remember (without "Anki" cards almost impossible for an adult). *** In short: I think that isolating languages kicked "universal grammar" into the linguistical trash can.

Just to make the point, Chomsky himself clearly distinguishes what he meant by the term (which he concedes was poorly named) "universal grammar" - essentially the fundamental observation you cover at the beginning of the video - and the field of divergent theories that spawned from this base observation. In his book "What Kind of Creatures Are We?" he goes into a lot of detail about this, and also notes that he considers a few of these theories more plausible than the others but isn't "married" to any of them and has discarded a fair amount of his own work in the field based on new evidence (generally how scientific inquiry is meant to work), but that the basic observation stands. So it always strikes me as odd when people argue that "Chomsky is wrong on universal grammar" when what he meant by it is so different from, far narrower than, and comparatively uncontroversial to what is actually argued against, and what is argued against is itself usually a strawman version of the multiple theories in that field.

On the evolution of language scale, I agree those are somewhat extreme views. I think I lean a little more to the Chomsky side. I don't think there is a single language handling brain module, because there are at least a couple (maybe three or four, I don't remember exactly) different areas of the brain that handle language related functions, but also the portion of the brain that handles the articulation of the mouth, tongue and larynx must particularly developed to allow for language, which blows the other guy out of the water. I don't know how long ago the Chomsky position was formulated. It would have been reasonable in the 70's, but we've learned so much about the brain in just the last twenty years that the position isn't tenable. I would be curious to know if he has a different position now. Mostly because he says a lot of clever sounding things that are quite daft, and I wonder if that extends to his actual area of expertise.

Many things about grammar are primarily because we are used to hear sentences spoken in a certain order. If I would say for instance „the window I close“ you still would understand what message I am conveying and the action I am planing to take. It only would sound odd to the listener if they are not used to a sentence constructed that way. However if the listener had been growing up in a society were everyone would construct the sentences this way, they would consider this tobe „normal“.

Fascinating I felt my IQ go up by 100!!

Very nice video, as usual. For those interested in the subject, I'd recommend two older pieces (in English) that, without exactly arguing for or against universal grammar, offer insightful critical remarks on the frameworks from which the topic has been debated. These are Eugenio Coseriu's essay "Universal (and other) universals" (available at www.romling.uni-tuebingen.de/coseriu/publi/coseriu128.pdf) and Ernst Pulgram's review of Chomsky's 'Language and mind.'

Nice to see Chomsky, something that applies to computer scientists as well!

Given that we're born able to mimic the rhythm and cadence of our mother's tongue (our 'accent') it seems we have a universal 'music' module, but acquire our grammar as we do our phonemes: by fitting them into the tune by trial and error. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8346058.stm

Does anyone else listen to these videos when going to sleep

I've thought of a way to investigate the Pirahã question of recursivity - Alexa, GTP-3, and a good sat phone, running away snooping 🤪

Hey Simon. Love your videos. I Was wondering if you have any of your content in podcast format? Would love to listen on the go..

I've been reading Peggy Mohan's Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through its Languages, Penguin / Viking, 2021. Although Mohan writes in a way that's accessible to non-linguists like me, I still paused midway to look at your video as it covers some similar ground, in order to understand the subject better. If you do have the time then please review the book I mentioned. I, at least, would certainly read it very avidly.

I like slides with information

Based on how evolution works, I think it's far more likely that language evolved out of a collection of programmes in the brain and not from a singular, discrete programme. Much of the architecture of the brain is deeply conserved across vertebrates. This is clear not just from comparative neuroanatomy, but the central nervous system across vertebrates have similar patterns of development from embryonic tissues. Nature tinkers with extant gene expression programmes to build more complex emergent properties if it is so advantageous. Moreover, neurons have special evolutionary pressures on them, and thus have additional mechanisms to generate diversity in gene expression patterns to make such elaborate functions robust (e.g. alternative splicing, stop codon read through, 5' UTR regulation, etc.) Edit: Clarifying that this is mostly my perspective as a person who studies genomics and the evolution of neural circuits (I do not have expertise in evolution of language or neurolinguistics per se).

Hi Simon, thanks for the wonderful video. I was wondering if in your archeological studies you'd found anything, such as an artifact or evidence of a religious or other cultural practice, to suggest there may have been some aspect to an extinct culture that reflected unique grammatical features that are not found at all today? You make a great point by saying that most languages in terms of the total that ever existed are now extinct and that we don't have the opportunity to study them intensively (Thracian for example).

hearing that someone donated a microphone and muffler to simon reminds me of how chill online linguistic spaces are, at least all the big ones ive had contact with on social medias/reddit its almost weird how lacking in drama we are comparatively

I think language, in the uniquely human sense, began when it became capable of VIRTUALITY. Animals communicate in the here and now. To speak of yesterday, or of possibilities, requires the ability to construct a virtual idea in the listener's mind. And that in turn opens vast new possibilities in cultural evolution through story, spirituality and myth making. That raises the question of how the Imagination evolved to want to go there. What is the imagination ? What comes first, language or imagination ?

Regarding the poverty of the stimulus thesis, it would make sense for something as fundamental to humanity as speech to have prebuilt models, HOWEVER humans are also in general very specialised in constructing models for any new phenomenon, so it wouldn't be surprising if a child managed to model the language of its parents just by listening without specific language slots ready to receive types of words

For whatever it's worth to you, I think your face is a perfectly nice thing to have on screen to accompany your mellifluous voice. No nature scene can compare. ◡̈

The concept of abstract colour names is missing in more langugages than just Pirahã. When I was in Cameroon I was encouraged to learn their local language, a local accent of Éwondo with the special feature of replacing "f" with "p". When I asked for colour names the answer was "by the colour of..." There are no specific colour names except their word for "ripe" meaning red, orange or yellow. Then there are several words for black or white, their usage depending on what you describe. By the way, this same thing seems to apply to Yoruba. For example the Yoruba word for "brown" is "àwò igi", literally "colour tree". -- Rob Words has a wonderful video on KZfaq explaining how the concept of colour names evolved in English.

How we use language is directly reflective of how we interpret and conceptualize reality around us. While I don't believe that there is an inherent grammatical program that's carried with us throughout our evolution, I do believe that the vocal conceptualization of a noun, for example, is almost entirely inevitable for the human brain. We're able to identify places, categories of people, objects and animals without using assigned names. It's only natural that it becomes reflected in our language. We can then consciously acknowledge that we have a group of words that describe these things however it's only our interpretation that these are considered "nouns" whereas it could also be possible that many unknown languages didnt categorize these words together thus it wasnt a component of their grammatical structure. I think it's possible that languages existed where no one categorized types of words at all and there was little to no trace of grammatical structure. I understand that it's a subconscious process of the brain but our subconscious is still largely determined by our environment. We shouldn't make assumptions about the environments of prehistoric humans when we dont even know anything about their individual cultures and how they saw the world around them from a philosophical perspective.

dude these videos are fire i kinda maybe changed my major to linguistics because of you (no pressure though)

But we love death by power point! 😂 jokes aside i love the style of film you upload 👍

Re early childhood learning: young children can and have learned a wide range of astonishing skills, when their environment has been rich in that particular practice. Musical instruments, painting or drawing, other craft and technical skills which are distinct in many ways from spoken language. Is there a piano machine in the brain? An African drumming machine? A pen and ink illustration machine? No there is not. There are a set of resources and structures in our brain and body which have historically accomplished an amazing array of techniques and crafts, and can clearly be harnessed very early, shaped almost entirely by what matters to the humans around the person, and what they have to offer materially. I just don't see how fast achievement in language (also not universal of course, though nearly so) is evidence of a structure uniquely human and uniquely for language. Also perhaps worth questioning whether Chomsky's idea A: lives in a larger project of making sciences "harder" to increase their status, and B: has an unfortunate association with some nasty ideas about disability and neurological difference, which have emerged from the great man's mouth on more than one occasion, and been backed by his followers. I have twice had dime store Chomskyianism thrown at me as an argument against supporting communication strategies for non verbal adults, so that's fun. The point is that a sociolinguistic view of language propogation is not only probably more correct, it is also more humanistic and fun and full of life, less reductive, more multiplicative.

I'm super excited to see what comes out of artificial intelligence research with regards to language learning. Imagine an artificial mind that has learned to use a language, and what we'll be able to learn about the process!