[Xmca-l] Re: Michael C. Corballis

[Peter Feigenbaum [Staff]]

If I might chime in to this discussion:

I submit that the key cooperative activity underlying speech communication
is *turn-taking*. I don't know how that activity or rule came into being,
but once it did, the activity of *exchanging* utterances became possible.
And with exchange came the complementarity of speaking and
listening roles, and the activity of alternating conversational roles and
mental perspectives. Turn-taking is a key process in human development.

Peter



On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 9:21 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> Oddly, Amazon delivered the book to me yesterday and I am currently on
> p.5. Fortunately, Corballis provides a synopsis of his book at the end,
> which I sneak-previewed last night.
>
> The interesting thing to me is his claim, similar to that of Merlin
> Donald, which goes like this.
>
> It would be absurd to suggest that proto-humans discovered that they had
> this unique and wonderful vocal apparatus and decided to use it for speech.
> Clearly* there was rudimentary language before speech was humanly
> possible*. In development, a behaviour is always present before the
> physiological adaptations which facilitate it come into being. I.e,
> proto-humans found themselves in circumstances where it made sense to
> develop interpersonal, voluntary communication, and to begin with they used
> what they had - the ability to mime and gesture, make facial expressions
> and vocalisations (all of which BTW can reference non-present entities and
> situations) This is an activity which further produces the conditions for
> its own development. Eventually, over millions of years, the vocal
> apparatus evolved under strong selection pressure due to the practice of
> non-speech communication as an integral part of their evolutionary niche.
> In other words, rudimentary wordless speech gradually became modern
> speech, along with all the accompanying facial expressions and hand
> movements.
>
> It just seems to me that, as you suggest, collective activity must have
> been a part of those conditions fostering communication (something found in
> our nearest evolutionary cousins who also have the elements of rudimentary
> speech)  - as was increasing tool-using, tool-making, tool-giving and
> tool-instructing.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.ethicalpolitics.org_ablunden_index.htm&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=VlOXr8x02-mghKHGod2LwGx8_X-LHNRmDI_elI-7rKI&s=A3k5oeQ13zGCPUbWibdOb2KNZT4q__fLyCwugyULUDw&e=>
> On 16/11/2018 12:58 pm, Arturo Escandon wrote:
>
> Dear Andy,
>
> Michael Tomasello has made similar claims, grounding the surge of
> articulated language on innate co-operativism and collective activity.
>
>
> https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-child-language/90B84B8F3BB2D32E9FA9E2DFAF4D2BEB
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cambridge.org_core_books_cambridge-2Dhandbook-2Dof-2Dchild-2Dlanguage_90B84B8F3BB2D32E9FA9E2DFAF4D2BEB&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=VlOXr8x02-mghKHGod2LwGx8_X-LHNRmDI_elI-7rKI&s=vxJZooXRDYwTRrM4dzWBbLfUhF9HhmUvU3ouq6sbwPI&e=>
>
> Best
>
> Arturo
>
>
> --
> Sent from Gmail Mobile
>
>

-- 
Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
Director,
Office of Institutional Research
<https://www.fordham.edu/info/24303/institutional_research>
Fordham University
Thebaud Hall-202
Bronx, NY 10458

Phone: (718) 817-2243
Fax: (718) 817-3817
email: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20181116/3903e01a/attachment.html