The origins of language are not what inherited disorders seemed to suggest

http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/the-family-that-couldnt-say-hippopotamus?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication

by caffeinewriter • 12 years ago

45 24 12 years ago

nautil.us

kapnobatairza• 12 years ago

How do nautil.us posts seem to hit the front page so frequently and effectively? I know others have brought it up before....

I'm not complaining about the quality of the content, but many of them don't seem like "hacker news". I'm a little suspicious....

hyp02• 12 years ago

Surely good content being upvoted is what should happen? From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

  anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity

TeMPOraL• 12 years ago

So far all those posts seem to be intellectually interesting and high quality. I'm personally very fine with that; that's what Hacker News is for.

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

I'm a huge fan of them; I'm much more interested in things like this than I am about latest Silicon Valley news, or startup-culture stuff.

ggambetta• 12 years ago

The mutation was subtle—only one nucleotide removed from the typical FOXP2 sequence—but the resulting language impairment was substantial.

I wonder what kind of superpower-like abilities we're just one nucleotide away from.

OK, maybe "superpower" is too much. What I mean is this: what if the "normal" version of FOXP2 was the one without the nucleotide? People with that extra nucleotide would be seen as geniuses.

unhammer• 12 years ago

Well, as they wrote, the mice have this slightly-different FOXP2:

just three amino acids distinguish the human version of the FOXP2 protein from that of mice. When he engineered the FOXP2 genes of mice to produce proteins with the two human FOXP2 amino acids, it resulted in functional differences in brain areas critical for carrying out fine motor tasks and controlling muscle movements, as well as altered function in regions involved in sending and receiving reward signals. […] mice with human FOXP2 learned faster than regular mice.

I found it quite funny that there's been all these news reports on FOXP2 being "the language gene", and then someone goes ahead and makes mice with human FOXP2. Unfortunately the mice did not learn to speak :-)

catenate• 12 years ago

Was this a permanent or temporary effect on Algernon the mouse? If we continue the amino-acid mutation along the line of the difference between the mouse and human FOXP2, can we expect great things from Charlie?

mjevans• 12 years ago

So they have to become the Rats of NIMH for the experiment to be a success? Let us hope we never unintentionally go that far with an experiment. I would not want to create a cursed form of sentient life; if it is to be done it should be done to increase diversity and resistance to intelligence ending disasters.

chongli• 12 years ago

I wonder what kind of superpower-like abilities we're just one nucleotide away from.

I think we're a little further away than that. Just think of a huge computer program. Modify one line of code in the right place and you introduce a showstopping bug. On the other hand, adding a random line of code anywhere in the program is unlikely to produce a complex new feature.

hyp02• 12 years ago

Nicaraguan Sign Language, spontaneously developed by deaf children http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language This was a community; whereas individually isolated children have not developed language independently.

A module can be functional, in that it behaves as a module even if not implemented as one (and certainly need not an isomorphism between genes and anatomical or behavioural features).

Chomsky argues for theories that make sense; whereas Norvig accepts impenetrable machine learning model as theories. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/06/norvig-vs-chomsky-and-the-f...

Unfortunately, biology is messy. But I think we should at least try to decompose it into what it is trying to do.

CWuestefeld• 12 years ago

I was with you up until that last phrase - what it is trying to do

You're going to get yourself into hot water with that "trying" word in there. It's a mistake to look at this as a designed feature with a goal, when in fact what's going one is emergent, just doing whatever the heck it does, in concert with other features of the organism, in such a way that its chances of having successful offspring is increased.

lkrubner• 12 years ago

If I am eating dinner, and I want to add salt to the meal, then I try to reach the salt container, using my shoulder and arm and hand, and using my muscles and tendons and nervous system. How much of my body is involved in bringing food to my mouth? You can define this in slightly different ways, but you end up with the same result: some parts of my body allow me to bring food to my mouth. In those moments, it is entirely appropriate to say that the system is trying to bring food to my mouth. And yes, that increases my chances of having children. It is possible that something else, unknown to me, is also happening, emergent, and in 2 million years that emergent quality will be more obvious. But in the short term, it is altogether reasonable to say that parts of my body were working as a system to bring food to my mouth.

why-el• 12 years ago

A biological module need not be pointed at to be functional. You can reason about a module given its properties while simultaneously continue to look for what constitutes that module.

Chomsky has argued that this module could be standing alone, or it could be something that actively recruits from other mental faculties. There is nothing in his writings that suggest that this module can only be separate one, or that language as a whole must be reduced to one gene. In fact, Chomsky and few others are strong believers that whatever gave rise to language did give rise to a whole set of other mental capabilities, and this is exactly what research into complex tooling is confirming.

This article does not contradict the ideas that originated with Chomsky in the slightest, despite some paragraphs claiming otherwise.

gmarx• 12 years ago

It's a strange thing you see in many popular press science stories; It's not enough to report the findings. They want some kind of human conflict. So contradicting a person like Chomsky gets the reader more involved.

hawleyal• 12 years ago

The article completely dismisses persistent culture and only searches for a biological capability for language in each individual.

The cultural argument contends that complex behavior (including communication) is merely the result of consistent sharing and learning throughout a population over time. Basically, familiarity allows mutual understanding and eventually communication, verbal or otherwise.

coldtea• 12 years ago

The article completely dismisses persistent culture and only searches for a biological capability for language in each individual.

Did you even read TFA? It actually does the contrary... the whole last part is about the cultural development of language...

The origins of language are not what inherited disorders seemed to suggest

Related Stories