not from jove's brow

Pergamon Language & Communication, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 179-192, 1996

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N O T F R O M J O V E ' S B R O W

SHERMAN WILCOX

King, B. J. 1994 The Information Continuum. Evolution of Social Information Transfer in Monkeys, Apes, and Hominids. Santa Fe, NM: School o f American Research Press (distributed by the University of Washington Press).

In The Blind Watchmaker Richard Dawkins poses five questions about a possible scenario for the evolution of a complex system, in this case the human eye, by a gradual process of step-by-step changes. The questions are (Dawkins, 1987, pp. 77-79):

1. Could the human eye have arisen directly from no eye at all, in a single step? 2. Could the human eye have arisen directly from something slightly different from

itself, something that we may call X? 3. Is there a continuous series of Xs connecting the modern human eye to a state

with no eye at all? 4. Considering each member of the series of hypothetical Xs connecting the human

eye to no eye at all, is it plausible that every one of them was made available by random mutation of its predecessor?

5. Considering each member of the series of Xs connecting the human eye to no eye at all, is it plausible that every one of them worked sufficiently well that it assisted the survival and reproduction of the animals concerned?

With the exception of question 1, which he says is clearly no, Dawkins answers these questions in the affirmative.

It would be illuminative to ask these same questions about human language, a system every bit as complex as the eye. Of course, it all depends on how we define human language. And that in turn depends on how we define human. But if we put these issues aside for the moment, we might ask: Could language have arisen in a single step? Could language have arisen from something different from itself?. Is there a continuous series of systems or abilities connecting language to a state with no language at all? And so forth.

It is not too difficult to find answers to these questions by linguists that are precisely the opposite of those offered by Dawkins. Consider question 1: contra Dawkins, Bickerton (1990, p. 190) answers in the affirmative and states that:

syntax mus t have emerged in one piece, at one t ime- - the most likely cause being some kind of muta t ion that affected the organization o f the brain. Since muta t ions are due to chance, and beneficial ones are rare, it is implausible to hypothesize more than one such mutat ion. Several factors suggest, indeed, that just such a single muta t ion gave rise to our species.

Not only did a complex system such as syntax arise in a single step, it also brought into existence an entirely new species. Or consider question 2: Chomsky, who on the one hand

Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed to Dr Sherman Wilcox, Depar tment of Linguistics, University o f New Mexico, Albuquerque, N M 87131, U.S.A.

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is fond of suggesting that language can best be understood by comparing it to a physical organ such as the eye (cf. Rieber, 1983, pp. 33~3), on the other hand has always maintained that language could not have emerged from some simpler system. In Language and Mind (1972, p. 70) he says:

When we ask what human language is, we find no striking similarity to animal communication systems. There is nothing useful to be said about behavior or thought at the level of abstraction at which animal and human communication fall together. The examples of animal communication that have been examined to date do share many of the properties of human gestural systems, and it might be reasonable to explore the possibility of direct connection in this case. But human language, it appears, is based on entirely different principles. This, I think, is an important point, often overlooked by those who approach human language as a natural, biological phenomenon; in particular, it seems rather pointless, for these reasons, to speculate about the evolution of human language from simpler systems.

Language is like a physical organ, such as the eye. Eyes evolved from simpler structures, but language could not have. A single-celled animal's light-sensitive spot shares enough in principle with the human eye (in which each light-sensitive rod alone is a single cell, multiplied 125 million times over in each eye) that the difference in complexity is easily overcome by evolution, but animal communication and human language can have no such evolutionary linkage because they are based on entirely different principles. Yet, animal communication and human gestural systems share many properties and might be directly connected. How then do we imagine it came about that human gestural systems and human language are so intimately linked (McNeill, 1992)?

Dawkins attributes a large part of the failure to understand how evolution could have produced complex systems from simpler ones to the Argument from Personal Incredulity: I cannot imagine how it could have happened, therefore it could not have happened. The Argument from Personal Incredulity is a profoundly unimaginative and unscientific--science is an imaginative enterprise--way to study a problem and leads, not surprisingly, to unscientific explanations or even to a denial of the ability of science to provide answers. Linguists are immune to neither pitfall. I consider a suggestion that syntax emerged 'in one piece, at one time' to be a miraculous, not scientific, explanation for the emergence of language. And if a recent article in Scientific American can be counted on for accuracy, we can see an example of the denial of science in action. The writer reports that, according to Chomsky, 'given the enormous gap between human language and the relatively simple communication systems of other animals ... and given our fragmentary knowledge of the past, science can tell us little about how language evolved' (Horgan, 1995, p. 178).

In The Information Continuum." Evolution of Social Information Transfer in Monkeys, Apes. and Hominids, Barbara King (1994a), a primatologist and physical anthropologist at the College of William and Mary, combines imagination and science in constructing a bold, evolutionary hypothesis about how human language could have evolved. There is no Argument from Personal Incredulity here, no miracles. King does not give up in exasperation with fragmentary knowledge of the past (though she does, wisely, tread carefully when she speculates about our ancestral past). What King does is to construct a thoroughly scientific, testable (and she suggests the relevant tests on numerous occasions) hypothesis about how language might have emerged in an evolutionarily plausible manner. Along the way, she offers intriguing insights into primate, hominid, and human behavior and suggests a wealth of areas deserving further research.

In King's scenario, language emerged gradually, each step requiring an adaptive motiv- ation and each being linked to the previous in a continuous series. For her, language is one way, the most developed way in our species, by which humans transfer information

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to one another. The origins of language are thus, according to King, to be found in the evolution of information transfer. More specifically, language is the donation of information. One of the main arguments of King's book is that 'in the long evolutionary history of our species there has been a gradual, incremental development of the ability to donate information to others' (1994a, p. 4). Thus, King is a continuity theorist. Not only would she, presumably, agree with Dawkins on the answers to the questions above about the evolution of the human eye, she would disagree with the views of Bickerton, Chomsky, and others (cf. Burling, 1993; King's reply, 1993) on the evolution of human language. 'The continuity approach does not deny the unique properties of human language, but it rejects the view that such properties set human language sharply apart from all other forms of information donation' (pp. 131-132).

King acknowledges that her continuity position is a minority view within anthropology. It seems to me, however, that within the field of linguistics continuity approaches to the evolution of language are even more rare. Linguistics is highly susceptible to human- oriented definitions of its object of study. And more--linguists have become quite adept at defining language in such a way that it appears language can have no precursors, cannot have developed in a Dawkins-style, gradual and continuous way. For example, consider Bickerton once (well, twice) more. 'It may be possible . . , finally to resolve just what it is in the workings of the human brain that makes us, and us alone, capable of language' (1990, p. 197); and, 'The evidence . . . indicates that language could not have developed gradually out of protolanguage, and it suggests no intermediate forms exist' (1990, p. 190).

I agree with King. The continuity approach should be the default position in seeking to explain human behavior and should be rejected only when it becomes demonstrably inadequate. Not only has its inadequacy not been demonstrated (Arguments from Personal Incredulity notwithstanding), King makes a powerful case for the explanatory adequacy of the continuity approach. This does not mean that the evolution of language could not have taken place in fits and starts. But when we attribute the origin of an entire complex system such as language to one beneficial fit, we are in danger of throwing our hands up and closing our eyes to science. Or, as King would say, 'we are left with a mysterious view of language' (p. 132).

In the sections that follow I will explore the major themes of The Information Continuum in more detail. In addition, I will offer a few proposals of my own, based on work presented elsewhere (Armstrong et al., 1995), that I believe are supported by and expand on King's model of the evolution of social information transfer.

Information donation and acquisition The Information Continuum is organized into six chapters. In chapter 1, 'Social Infor-

mation Transfer,' King defines and discusses such key concepts as information donation and acquisition; social information transfer; and the relation between information transfer and communication, learning, and teaching.

The twin concepts of information donation and information acquisition are key elements in King's thesis. Information donation takes place when a more experienced or more knowledgeable animal (which for the sake of convenience King calls the 'adult' animal) acts in some direct way towards another, less experienced or less knowledgeable animal (the 'immature'). As a result, either actually or potentially, the second animal gains information which it would not otherwise possess.

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Whether or not the first animal intends to share information (teach, guide, correct, or whatever) is not an issue for King. This is a move which I suspect she makes on purely pragmatic rather than theoretical grounds: even if intention were an important aspect of information donation, how would we measure it? I think that it is also an important theoretical move, however, and one which is in keeping with King's position as a continuity theorist and with her desire to find precursors for human behaviors. As King demonstrates, it is surely possible to conceive of situations in which unintentional donation of information occurs. By peeling off of intent from the concept of information donation, King makes it possible to explore how intention, donation of information, and communication may have become linked evolutionarily. The move also allows her to treat in a systematic way such issues as whether primates are capable only of emotional, and thus unintentional, communicat ion--a claim which she does not support and which will be critical to her thesis.

Information acquisi t ion occurs when information passes from the adult to the immature animal without any directed action. This raises an important distinction between information donation and acquisition. In donation, the adult plays the dominant role, making information available through some action directed towards to the immature animal. In information acquisition, the immature takes the dominant role. But more than merely being a passive recipient of incoming (though non-donated) information, King maintains that infants actively manipulate their social interactions to ensure that they may engage in information acquisition. While the information-donating adult is a relatively recent novelty, the active, information-gathering infant has been shaped by millions of years of evolution (King, 1994b).

In Chapter 1 King also provides a brief background on primate models, since much of the evidence she presents in following chapters comes from research on primate behavior. This was the first hint I had that the King model would speak directly to my own thoughts on language evolution.

Gesture and information transmission My colleagues and I have recently proposed a gestural model of language evolution

(Armstrong et al., 1994, 1995). For us, all language whether spoken or signed is articulatory gesturing (Neisser, 1967). We define gesture as a functional unit, an equivalence class of coordinated movements that achieve some end. Gesture is a fundamental unit of organization in an organism's motoric interactions with the physical world. Given the nature of our brain's evolution, however, gesture is also implicated in perception. As Churchland (1986, p. 473) notes, 'evolution being what it is, pattern recognition is there to subserve motor coordination ... if we ignore motor control as the context within which we try to understand pattern recognition, we run the risk of generating biologically irrelevant solu- tions.' Gesture is thus an important unit for unifying action and perception.

Of course, in defining gesture in this way, we realize that we are juxtaposing two senses of the word: the more commonsense use in which gesture refers to bodily actions that are expressive or meaningful, and a more technical sense as used in the speech and phonetic sciences of articulatory gesture as a dynamic, coordinative structure without symbolic meaning (Browman and Goldstein, 1989; Fowler, 1986; Kelso et al., 1986). Clearly these two senses are related; at the very least, gestures of the first type are composed of gestures of the second type. This is true across 'commonsense' gestures and speech gestures. A 'thumbs up' gesture is composed of a coordinated assembly of non-symbolic


gestures (closing the fingers, extending the thumb, raising the arm, etc.). Words are like- wise assemblies of non-symbolic gestures into larger, symbolic gestural complexes. Thus, our gestural view considers the word 'Great! ' and the ' thumbs up' gesture as remarkably similar. Each is a coordinated assembly of non-symbolic gestures into a larger symbolic unit: 'words [or symbolic gestures] are not simply strings of individual gestures, produced one after the other; rather, each is a particular pattern of gestures, orchestrated appropriately in time and space' (Kelso et al., 1986, p. 31). A claim of our theory is that this perspective on gesture is necessary for understanding the evolution of neural mechanisms which form the basis for perceptual categorization, memory, and language (Edelman, 1987, see especially pp. 221-231; Kimura, 1993; Studdert-Kennedy, 1987).

It is useful to examine according to various criteria the types of gestures that can be produced and received by animals. For example, we might consider which parts of the animal's body are engaged in the production of gestures and thus unavailable for other activities; or conversely, which activities preclude the production of gestures. It is difficult to produce a manual gesture while engaged in an activity requiring the use of both hands. Similarly, vocal gestures rely on physiological systems used for breathing and eating.

We might also consider how the animal perceives the gesture, or more correctly how it perceives the proximal signal produced by the distal gesture, and the properties of the environmental signal. Optical gestures require the visual system and a source of light for perception--visible gestures are less efficient in the dark. They also require that the eyes be looking at the signal source. We cannot receive visual gestures unless we are looking at them. Equally important, we cannot receive other visual signals at the same time, because we are not attending. Other sources of visual information which might be available in the environment become less accessible or even inaccessible to an animal which is required to visually attend to a visible gesture.

We get a different set of characteristics for acoustic signals such as vocal gestures. The ear does not have to be directed at the signaling source in order to receive an acoustic signal, and acoustic signals work as well in the dark as in the light. Ears are not engaged in any other activities except receiving acoustic information. Though auditory attention can certainly be directed, it is also true that we can perceive auditory information to which we are not attuned (consider the common experience of being engaged in a conversation yet overhearing your name spoken). Acoustic information is complementary to optical information. Consider a modern example: learning to use a word processor. When a skilled user teaches a beginner how to use a word processor, the learner must attend to both the spoken instructions (acoustic information) and what is happening on screen (optical information). The learner watches the screen while the teacher says something like, 'Now move the cursor over here and click this button. ' Of course, it is certainly possible to accomplish the same instruction task using only optical information: deaf people learn how to use a word processor by watching the screen and watching a signing teacher. However, the process requires competition for visual attention. The teacher has to say, 'See this button over here? ' - - wait for the learner to visually locate the button and then visually turn her attention back to the teacher-- 'Now move the cursor and click that button. '

There are other ways to classify gestures and signals. For example, one of the arguments we make in our research on gesture is that visible gestures have a different set of semiotic possibilities available to them as compared to acoustic signals. Visible gestures, for example, have the potential to be iconic in ways that are much richer than acoustic

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gestures. Of course, it is this very characteristic of visible gestures that is often used as evidence that they could not have served a role in the evolution of language because, it is claimed, an important design feature of language is that it is arbitrary. But even Hockett, who first described the well-known 'design features of language,' considered this a view worthy of reexamination. In discussing language evolution and the role of sign language, Hockett (1978, pp. 274-275) called this semiotic potential of visible gesture the 'difference of dimensionality':

The difference of dimensionality means that signages can be iconic to an extent to which [spoken] languages cannot ... Now, while arbitrariness has its points, it also has its drawbacks, so that it is perhaps more revealing to put the difference the other way around, as a limitation of spoken languages. Indeed, the dimensionality of signing is that o f life itself, and it would be stupid not to resort to picturing, pantomiming, or pointing whenever convenient . . . . when a representation of some four-dimensional hunk of life has to be compressed into the single dimension of speech, the iconicity is necessarily squeezed out. In one-dimensional projection, an elephant is indistinguishable from a woodshed. Speech perforce is largely arbitrary; if we speakers take pride in that, it is because in 50,000 years or so of talking we have learned to make a virtue of necessity.

An important question is hinted at in the above discussion. Kendon (1991, p. 215) has posed the question:

All forms of language that we encounter today (with the exception of the relatively rare occurrence of primary, i.e. deaf sign languages and the even rarer development of alternative sign languages in speaking communities) are, of course, spoken. If language began as gesture, why did it not stay that way?

Why and how did the acoustic-auditory channel become selected over the optical-visible channel for conveying linguistic communication? If the beginnings of language can be traced to early visible gesturing, what caused the Great Switch to speech?

I raised the foregoing discussion of visible gesture at this point because of its relation to King's discussion of primate models. She points to the increasing importance of the primate sense of vision, hands, and brain as means of gathering information about and manipulating their environment. Tattersall (1995, p. 241) offers a similar picture for hominids, in a passage striking for its use of multiple metaphors of hands and vision:

If general lifeways changed so little prior to the advent of Homo sapiens, why do we see so much physical change--and particularly brain enlargement~in the course of human evolution? One possibility is that even relatively small technological advances--changes simply in the way in which the manipulability of the world was viewed by hominids--may have handed an evolutionary advantage to those individuals capable of grasping and exploiting them.

The evolution of social information transfer One of the claims that King makes is that information acquisition by immatures, as

opposed to information donation by adults, is the primary means of social information transfer in primates. In Chapter 2 ( 'The Social Behavior of Monkeys and Apes') she offers evidence for this claim from recent primate behavior research. Her evidence touches on a number of important topics, including socialization of young primates and the acquisition of predator avoidance skills, including the role of vocal communication in predator avoidance. Though King cites anecdotal reports that adult Peruvian squirrel monkeys may signal immatures about predator avoidance through interventions and vocal warnings in a way which could be interpreted as information donation, she finds little evidence that monkeys use referential vocal communication as a way to donate information. On the other hand, there is evidence that immatures use a variety of cues to acquire information about social skills and predator avoidance.

In Chapter 3 ( 'Foraging and Tool Use in Monkeys and Apes') King presents a number of case studies of primate foraging, cooperative hunting, and foraging-related tool use.


The most detailed are her own studies of baboon foraging in Ambolesi, Kenya. From her studies she concludes that little if any information donation occurs. However, infants seem to take an active part in acquiring the skills necessary to learn which foods to eat and how to gather and prepare them. King writes that 'infants behave in a way consistent with the use of social interactions to increase the potential for acquiring information about foraging from adults. That is, infants seem to set up opportunities for information acquisition' (p. 53).

The pattern is slightly different when foraging-related tool use is considered. Here there is a bit more evidence for information donation taking place (along with an enormous amount of information acquisition) about how to prepare foods for eating. King writes, 'Active guidance of immature foraging skills is practiced more often in populations that share food and/or depend on foods whose preparation requires a long practice period' (p. 88). This leads her to conclude that 'food sharing and reliance on extractive foraging may even select for increased information donation' (p. 88). The significance of this pattern will play a critical role in King's discussion of social information transfer in hominids and in the explanatory model that she presents in Chapter 5.

The beginnings of language Chapter 4 ("Hominids") examines social information transfer in our hominid ancestors.

Here King looks at the role that information transfer, especially information donation, may have played among hominids. The primary evidence that she brings to bear is from research on hominid vocal communication, foraging behavior, and material culture, especially art and tool-making.

This is the most speculative chapter in King's book, but also one of the most stimulating. Here King must offer evidence that the rate of information transfer increased in hominids, along with an increase in the amount of information donation. In addition, she must prepare the way for an explanation of how and why this evolutionary trend took place.

Evidence comes from three areas. First, King argues that 'the evolving hominid brain and vocal tract point to increasing ability to produce referential signals vocally, even before modern speech' (p. 108). Second, she concludes that tool-aided extractive foraging continued to play an important role in hominids and that food-sharing and guidance of immature foraging took place. Finally, King suggests that hominid material culture played an increasing role in information donation. This came about because hominid tools and art sent messages unrelated to their function. King suggests that, 'Messages might have been sent about social identity or food resources to other individuals or other groups, possibly including immatures; immatures might have needed tutoring in the production as well as the comprehension of those messages' (p. 108). This process by which tool-making and art are emancipated from their strictly instrumental function is a powerful component of King's thesis which deserves further discussion. I will return to it shortly.

I find King's arguments persuasive. I think, however, that a few minor additions to her evidence from gestural theory and from an examination of the role of ritualization in language development will strengthen the case even more.

First, let's consider vocal communication. King distinguishes vocal communication from speech because, she says, there has been a tendency to oversimplify the role of nonhuman primate vocal communication. Primarily, this is because researchers have assumed vocal communication to be categorically simpler than speech, a point which King

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does not concede. Researchers also assume that vocal communication among nonhuman primates is entirely nonvoluntary and therefore not under neocortical control. Lieberman (1991), for example, argues that nonhuman primate and human vocalizations are categorically distinct and that only the latter are under voluntary, neocortical control. King offers compelling evidence to challenge these claims.

The case that King is building is that there is not a categorical difference between nonhuman primate vocal communication and speech, and that there is the possibility that vocal communication was used to donate information among hominids. As she notes (p. 97): 'Referential vocal communication about specific objects or events might well have been possible before speech evolved, just as it is possible for some nonhuman primates.'

King wants to decouple referential vocal communication from speech because she would like to demonstrate a long, gradual evolution of information sharing using vocal communication, perhaps even beginning with the australopithecines, and this does not square with most accounts of the beginnings of speech. Lieberman (1991), for example, concludes that physiological constraints of the larynx prevented anything like human speech before Homo erectus. At the same time, King finds the argument for increased transmission rate of speech made by Lieberman to be important. Lieberman argues that specific features of human vocal tract physiology, features unlikely to be present before Homo habilis, enable speech to transmit information at a greatly increased rate. This, King says, 'is important because it allows long sentences (and hence complex thoughts) to be transmitted within the constraints of short-term memory' (p. 98). Any increase in the potential of vocalizations to transmit information would be beneficial, and this is precisely what Lieberman says occurs with speech.

It is here, however, that I think gestural theory can be especially useful. Two points are worth mentioning. First, we might consider the possible evolutionary history of gesture. When did hominid anatomy and physiology begin to support the production of complex gestures and how does the history of gesture compare with that of speech? Second, does gesture offer the same transmission rate benefits as speech?

Here is what I would like to suggest. Hominid hands were capable of producing gestures long before hominid vocal tracts were capable of producing speech. The coincidence of this potential with bipedalism and with increases in brain size and reorganization adds to the picture. The importance of vision as an information gathering sense reinforces this scenario.

The evolutionary history of gesturing is longer than that of speech. There is abundant evidence that nonhuman primates gesture (Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin, 1994; Snowdon, 1990); it is reasonable to assume that hominids' ancestors did too. Australopithecines had ample capability to produce and receive gestures. Lieberman (1991) even suggests that australopithecines were unable to produce vocalizations except in conjunction with gestures. There is little doubt that H. habilis, the 'handy man,' was capable of complex gesturing.

The evolutionary history of gesturing is also more continuous than that of speech. There is no reason to believe that there were any sharp jumps in hominids' ability to produce or receive gestures, even though it is certainly possible that the structure of gesture may have become more complex, more language-like.

What about the transmission potential of gesture as compared to speech? It might seem that gestures would be at a disadvantage as compared to speech because the articulators (hands vs. vocal tract) are so much larger and thus require larger, more time-consuming movements. What little the research literature has to say about this, however, suggests


that the transmission rate potential of gesture (in this case, sign language) is at least equal to that of speech. In a series of studies, Klima and Bellugi (1979, pp. 181-194) report that although the rate of articulation of signs is almost half that for words, there is no difference in the rate of production of propositions. They were of course studying a fully developed language, American Sign Language (ASL). But it is not unreasonable to assume that the processes used by ASL to accomplish this were equally available to early gesturing. These processes include a structured use of space, superimposed modulations on the movement of signs (a type of simultaneous layering made possible by changing the dynamic profile of a sign's movement), and the simultaneous use of facial expressions for grammatical purposes (Klima and Bellugi, 1979, p. 194).

I view this transmission potential as a special feature of the optical-visual channel of gesture, a type of bandwidth advantage of visible gestures over speech. I also think it is entirely possible that Klima and Bellugi's measurement of rate of production of propositions is conservative. I would not be surprised if future research found that signing is able to transmit more propositions per unit of time than speech. This is certainly the impression I get when watching highly skilled sign language interpreters. Keeping all other factors equal (i.e. assuming that the interpreters are fluent bilinguals, are familiar with the subject matter being interpreted, and so forth), it is rare to find a sign language interpreter who cannot keep pace with a fast speaker. On the other hand, when an interpreter must speak for a deaf signer, problems can arise in keeping pace. The rate at which a signer can encode propositions seems to be higher than the rate at which an interpreter can encode the same propositions in speech. The highly linear, acoustic channel of speech cannot keep pace with the simultaneously layered, optical channel of signs.

In summary, King claims that 'data from primates and hominids suggest that the ability to send messages to conspecifics via referential vocal communication did not suddenly arise with modern speech, but evolved gradually' (p. 99). She must, however, square this claim with the fact that H. erectus 'seems to represent a kind of turning point for information donation among hominids' (p. 109). I would like to suggest that the nature of the turning point can be revealed more clearly by eliminating the reference to vocal.

Might it be that the essence of this turning point was not in the ability to use referential vocal communication (manual gesture can handle referential communication); or in the ability to efficiently transmit large amounts of information, 'longer' sentences, more propositions (gesture can easily handle this); or in a qualitative difference in brain size or cognitive capability (though these may have been present); or even in the ability to produce speech? Perhaps the essence of the turning point was that the primary means of information donation shifted from optical to acoustic.

I am not suggesting that information transfer switched from gesture to speech. In fact, I am proposing just the opposite: there was no Great Switch from gesture to speech. I am suggesting that there was a gradual realignment of information transmission from a holistic gestalt of channels in which the optical (visible gesture) initially played a critical role to one in which the acoustic (vocal tract gesture) became predominant. Initially gesture carried the burden of information donation, even though vocal communication was present. Today speech carries the burden of information donation, even though gesture remains.

The question is, what were the adaptive pressures that would cause such a realignment? The answer comes in Chapter 5 ('A Diachronic Model for Information Donation'), where King proposes an explanatory model for how and why increased information

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donation was selected for. A pattern that became clear in previous chapters provides the key. 'The clearest pattern for information donation is found in the foraging context and correlates with food sharing and extractive foraging with tools' (p. 117). King's critical explanatory claim is thus that 'a likely selection pressure for greater donation of information is a shift to dependence on foods that require a significant investment by immatures in acquiring foraging skills and the information on which those skills depend' (p. 119).

Acquisition of foraging and foraging-related tool-making skills relies critically on at least two processes. First, adult and immature must jointly attend to the task. This means both cognitively sharing a focus on, say, digging up a tuber in a certain way or producing a tool with a certain technique, and also visually attending. As the task at hand becomes increasingly more difficult, there will be more of a demand for information donation to take place via explicit instruction. This is precisely where visible gesture is at a disadvantage. It requires the hands, which are already engaged in another activity, and the eyes, which must divide their attention between, attending to the task and attending to the gesturer. If the acoustic channel could assume the burden of carrying the communicative load, then the optical channel would be free to simultaneously receive important visual information. The same case can be made for other situations where competing sources of optical information are present, such as in the acquisition of predator avoidance skills. It would be more efficient and more effective to be able to attend simultaneously to a vocalizing information-donating adult and the approaching predator than to divide visual attention between the two.

If we assume that gesturing and vocalizing were distinct activities it is difficult to imagine how a switch from one to the other would occur, even given the pressures described above. However, if we assume that gesturing and vocalizing were a holistic activity, then the selection of one channel (acoustic) to represent the entire gestalt becomes a process well-known in language--metonymy. Several lines of research begin to fall into place as a result. The conception of language and cognition as embodied action is a natural consequence (Damasio, 1994; Farnell, 1995; Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987). The tight bond of gesture and speech in thought and language production (Calbris, 1990), and the impressive neuromotor linkages between oral and manual gestures (Kimura, 1993), is a reflection of their evolutionary history. McNeill (1992, pp. 23-25), in his comprehensive study of gesture, finds that gestures occur only during speech; that gestures and speech are semantically and pragmatically coexpressive; that gestures and speech are temporally synchronous; that gestures and speech develop together in children; and that gestures and speech break down together in aphasia. He concludes that 'speech and gesture are elements of a single integrated process of utterance formation in which there is a synthesis of opposite modes of thought--global-synthetic and instantaneous imagery with linear- segmented temporally extended verbalization' (1992, p. 35).

Ritualization and language We can now return to King's observation that the emancipation of hominid art and

tools from their instrumental function possibly allowed them to send messages that, in turn, would have required information donation to learn to produce and comprehend. This process was almost certainly co-occurring with the events described above and would have played a synergistic role in the emergence of language.

The process by which instrumental actions are emancipated from their primary motiv- ation and become free to serve communicative function has been described by ethologists


(Blest, 1963; Tinbergen, 1952) as ritualization. Haiman (1994) suggests that ritualization is an important process in the development of language, both ontogenetically and phylo- genetically. Haiman argues that ritualization is caused by repetition of a behavior or activity. He identifies three evolutionary processes that are driven by this process: (1) the replacement of instrumental substance by 'empty ritual'; (2) the creation of signs; and (3) automatization.

As behaviors and activities become emancipated from their instrumental function, they can become selected and modified to produce signals. Acts which formerly served an instrumental function are now free to take on meaning. The example that Haiman describes is from Kessel's (1955) research on the mating activity of balloon, or dancing, flies. The male balloon fly signals the female that he is available for mating by giving her a 'wedding present '--a balloon made of silk. He does this, apparently, to distract the female, who would rather eat than mate with the male. While she is busy opening the present, he mounts and mates with her. According to Haiman (1994, p. 4), the explanation for the male's gesture is this:

Originally, the male dancing fly distracted the predaceous female with a distracting gift of a dead insect: at this point, the gift was purely instrumental. Later, the gift was interpreted as a signal to the female, a signal whose message was something like 'this fly is available for mating'. Originally, also, the male partially wrapped his tiny prey up in silk exuded from his anal glands, probably in order to subdue it: the silk, like the dead insect, had an instrumental function, and its similarity to 'wrapping' was incidental. Finally, however, the mate achieved his original 'purpose' by giving the female the elaborated wrapping alone, and it is the wrapping which serves as the mating signal.

The activity stops functioning as a purely instrumental act and becomes a communicative event, a sign. Ritualization leads to codification, 'the creation of (a) language' (Haiman, 1994, p. 5). Codification brings about two transformations of the former activity. First, the ritualized activity is regularized; its form becomes independent of its original stimulus. This fixity of form results in the sign becoming easier to recognize, easier to reproduce, and independent of context. No longer analogically related to its stimulus, the form becomes stylized, decontextualized, and replicable.

There is another process that is driven by repetition: automatization. Automatization allows us to chunk meaningless symbols into meaningful ones. One of the examples that Haiman provides is receiving a telegraph message. An expert telegraphy operator receiving a message can apparently lag six to twelve words behind the clicking instrument, in effect storing around 200 clicks in short term memory. If the clicks represent not words but numbers, however, even skilled operators can only hold a maximum of about twenty clicks in memory.

It is not difficult to see in these examples the precursors of three often cited features of. modern language, features that some have claimed set it categorically apart from other forms of communication (cf. Burling, 1993): arbitrariness, digitization and duality of patterning. This is where many linguists stop, leaving us with discontinuities: prior forms of communicative behavior lack these properties while language has them. It is just such discontinuities th~it King wants to ferret out, searching instead for underlying or overarching processes that can unify the evolutionary course of language development. Haiman is a potential ally in the search for unity. He pushes us one step further, and asks what might have caused these features to appear. The answer, he suggests, is that 'they arose precisely through repetition and the styliz- ation of form and habituated response that repetition gives rise to' (1994, p. 25). It is this same repetition that continually causes linguistic codes to change over

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time and leads to the evolution of g rammar (Bybee e t al., 1994). Haiman (1994, p. 22) writes:

As human acts (like expressive cries of rage and pain) become emancipated from the laws of nature, they become what Goffman calls stereotyped 'willed doings'--cultural acts. As cultural acts become in their turn liberated from functional or instrumental purposes, they become 'symbolic' or magical communicative gestures of these, the most important are the gestures which comprise spoken language, and the most instrumental function of language is to make others do one's bidding. As language becomes liberated from its instrumental (magical) function, it becomes referential. As referential language becomes liberated from even this abstract communicative function of imparting referential meaning it becomes ritual (either ludic or pbatic): grammaticalized as phatic communication or as ritual, language and culture reach their highest degree of playfulness, abstraction, or liberation from the natural world of brute reality.

It is said that language, by providing us with words and concepts and allowing us to categorize our world, separates us from raw experience, from brute reality, and allows humans to create a shared culture, shared realities. I f this is true, it is only because language is the end result of a long process of ritualization, a process unique neither to language nor to humans.

The differences between conventionalized signals such as balloon fly mating gifts and semantically empty exchanges such as 'How ya do in? ' - - 'Fine, t hanks ' - -o r the erosion of referential pronouns with argument status to grammaticized verbal agreement markers (Haiman, 1989)--appear enormous. But they may be differences more of quantity than quality. It is just possible that the development of the balloon fly mating gesture and of g rammar is a result not of entirely different, but remarkably the same principles.

Not uniquely human In her final chapter ( ' Information Donation, Language, and Human Uniqueness')

King returns to modern humans and makes explicit the implications of her continuity model for the evolution of human language and for human uniqueness. 'My central claim in this final chapter - -which may come as no surprise--is that human communicative behavior, including social information transfer and language, can best be studied along a continuum with that of other primates ' (p. 131). King argues convincingly for the continuity view of language evolution as opposed to discontinuity views. In doing so, she joins the paleoanthropologist Mat t Cartmill (1990) in suggesting that many definitions for human behaviors are constructed so as to ensure human uniqueness. This strategy, King says, is inherently unscientific because 'truly unique behaviors cannot be examined along with other behaviors in search of a common pattern of adaptation' (p. 132). King challenges anthropologists to reject ' the use of human-specific skills as the inevitable starting place and standard for evolutionary analysis' (p. 143).

The real challenge that King poses though is for linguists to discard their human- specific definitions of language as the standard by which all other communicative behaviors are measured. It is often difficult for us to imagine how complex systems such as hands, eyes, brains, or language could have come into existence. For those who spend their lives studying it, the complexity of language is not easily reduced to simpler natural phenomena. When faced with accounting for the origin of language, linguists are often enticed into offering explanations that require apparent miracles or that merely put the problem into someone else's arena (let the brain scientists figure out how a non-linguistic, non-human brain became reorganized into a linguistic, human one). When faced with such complexity, we are often led to conclude that the structures or behaviors in question must have sprung into existence fully formed, as if f rom Jove's brow. Explanations that require


o n l y s imple , s low, i n c r e m e n t a l c h a n g e s - - n o g rea t swi tches , n o d i s c o n t i n u i t i e s - - s e e m ,

well , t o o s imple . T h e y a re no t . P r o p o s a l s such as t hose p u t f o r t h in The I n f o r m a t i o n

C o n t i n u u m a re e l o q u e n t , scient i f ic h y p o t h e s e s t h a t dese rve o u r t h o u g h t f u l a n d r e a s o n e d

c o n s i d e r a t i o n .

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