Origin of Vocal Language

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  • Okanoya Kazuo
    Department of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo

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  • 動物行動から考える音声言語の起源
  • —A Pre-Adaptation Hypothesis—

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Abstract

<p>Vocal language is a human-specific behavior, but sub-components of vocal language can be found in other animals. In my strategy of biopsychological evolutionary linguistics, I first identify these sub-components in animals and consider how these sub-components (or pre-adaptation) could be synthesized to give rise to language. I hypothesize that vocal learning, string segmentation, and context segmentation are these pre-adaptations. I use songbirds and rodents to study each of these sub-components. Overall, I consider song as a precursor to language. Songs became complex through sexual and social selections. There are songs for each social situation. The common component of social situations and the common component of songs are mutually segmented and a part of song came to have a specific meaning. This process of mutual segmentation was repeated to give rise to vocal language. </p>

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