Writing, Clear and Simple

As I mentioned, I’m in Portland, Oregon, for the WritersUA conference. The keynote speaker was Christine Kenneally, author of The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language.

Figuring out how language originated is complicated by the fact that speech leaves no fossils. Because solving the question then necessarily involves so much speculation, the French Linguistics Society went so far as to ban discussing the question at all, and for many years, there wasn’t any scholarly work done to even consider some possibilities. That has finally begun to change.

One of the interesting things about language is that it’s not a single ability, but rather a suite of abilities. We’re all born with this innate suite, but the ability to speak seems to develop only if we are spoken to; it does not arise spontaneously on its own. Thus, if we learn to speak only because we are spoken to, how did language arise?

Among the abilities that allow us to use the amazingly powerful tool we call language are the following:

• Words (Kenneally pointed out that a word is not a discrete thing, but rather a “nexus of information;” for example, the word rose conjures up many meanings, images, and associations, such as the definition of the word, its scent and color, the texture of the petals, the prick of thorns in your fingertips, and any emotions surrounding your experiences giving or receiving roses.)
• Syntax: the rules about how we arrange words
• Cognition: the kinds of thinking that support language use
• Gesture and body language
• Cooperation

Regarding cognition, Kenneally told us about Rico, a Border Collie who has learned to recognize hundreds of words. Given a command to fetch one of the words he recognizes, he will be able to select it out of an assortment of objects. In one experiment, the researchers prepared a selection of objects, and one of them was a thing that Rico didn’t know the word for; the rest were things that he learned the word for. He was told to fetch the unknown thing, and he selected the correct object. It appears that Rico was in some way reasoning like this: “I don’t know that word, but I understand that I’m supposed to fetch something. Here are some things, and I know what most of these things are called. I don’t know what this one thing is called, so this unknown thing must be the something that I’m supposed to fetch.”

Two of the major components supporting our linguistic abilities are self-awareness and cooperation. Some animals have both of these abilities; for example, dolphins, chimpanzees, and elephants all exhibit some degree of self-awareness and cooperative behavior. But it appears that humans are highly skilled at social reasoning (a key part of cooperation): We are very good at inferring what’s going on in someone else’s head based on how they react to our actions, and then adjusting our actions based on that inference.

Kenneally said that language is the foundation for so many things:

• Numbers and mathematics: Many animals appear to understand numbers less than three, but aren’t able to go beyond that.
  
• Complex tools: Again, many animals use tools of one or two components, but humans create and use extremely complex tools.
• Science
• Folklore