How Language Evolves:Ann Senghas:Rethinking Recapitulation:Structure in Nicaraguan Sign Language

Summary

我们是矛盾的猿类，拥有大脑、语言和工具，试图理解自己。语言是人类本质的一部分，尼加拉瓜手语的诞生展现了语言如何从人类互动中自然演化。视频描述了尼加拉瓜聋哑儿童如何创造了自己的语言，从最早的简单手势逐渐发展成一种完整的、复杂的语言结构。通过多个儿童群体的语言进化过程，探讨了语言作为一种有机体如何随社会网络变化而演变，展现了人类和语言之间的共生关系。

Takeaways

• 🧠 人类是复杂的生物，具备大脑、语言和工具等能力，但依然在努力理解自己。
• 🦻 尼加拉瓜手语是40年前由一群聋哑儿童自发创建的，这是一种完全自然的人类语言。
• 🌍 语言是每个人类群体的共性，即使没有文字或轮子，但每个群体都有自己的语言。
• 👥 语言并非被发现，而是通过社会互动和世代相传而产生。
• 🔄 尼加拉瓜手语的演变记录了语言如何从简单的手势发展为完整的语法结构。
• 👶 第二代手语使用者改变了手语的结构，将手语空间化来表达‘谁做了什么’，而不仅是‘在哪里’。
• 📊 语言的演变与人类社会网络的变化紧密相连，社会互动是语言变异和进化的关键。
• 🧬 语言如同有机体，依靠人与人之间的交互生存和进化。
• 🔍 通过追溯尼加拉瓜手语的发展路径，研究者能够观察语言如何在不同代际之间传递和变异。
• 💬 语言进化的驱动力是人与人之间的社会联系，而不是有意创造语言。

Q & A

问题1：尼加拉瓜手语（NSL）是如何形成的？

尼加拉瓜手语是在20世纪70年代一群聋哑儿童相互交流中自发形成的语言。起初，这些孩子没有语言可以交流，但他们利用手势和动作逐渐发展出一种完整的手语体系。

问题2：第一批尼加拉瓜手语使用者是谁？

第一批尼加拉瓜手语使用者是1970年代进入学校的50名聋哑儿童。他们是语言的开创者，通过相互交流创造了NSL。

问题3：为什么NSL是人类语言演变的独特例子？

NSL的形成过程展示了人类语言的自发性和进化特性。它是通过不同世代的聋哑儿童逐步发展出来的，代表了一个真实的语言演变过程。

问题4：第二代NSL使用者与第一代有何不同？

第二代NSL使用者在1980年代进入学校，他们将语言的空间使用引入语法中，通过手势的方向来表明动作的执行者和对象，而第一代使用者则主要依靠词序来表达。

问题5：NSL的语法结构是如何演变的？

最早的NSL使用者使用简单的名词-动词结构，但随着时间推移，后来加入的使用者通过调整手势的空间位置，引入了更复杂的语法规则，使语言能够更灵活地表达动作的执行者与接受者。

问题6：为什么第二代没有简单地模仿第一代的手语？

语言是一种不断演变的有机体，每代人都在学习和改进语言。第二代使用者通过他们独特的社交环境和学习经验，对语言进行了创新，重构了语法规则。

问题7：NSL的发展过程中如何体现语言的进化？

NSL的发展体现了语言随着不同社交环境中的学习者而进化。每一代人都对语言进行小的调整和改进，逐步形成了更加复杂的语法结构。

问题8：语言演变的核心是什么？

语言演变的核心是社交互动。语言并不是为了创造规则或代码，而是为了实现人与人之间的沟通。通过交流和互动，语言得以繁衍和进化。

问题9：NSL如何展示语言的自我复制特性？

NSL展示了语言作为有机体的自我复制特性。每一代学习者并不是完全复制前一代的语言，而是带有创新和变化，使语言在不断的复制中逐步演变。

问题10：NSL的演变过程如何体现人与语言的共进化？

NSL的演变过程体现了人与语言的共进化。人类为语言提供了演化的环境，而语言反过来也影响了人类的社交结构和认知方式，两者在相互依存中共同发展。

Outlines

00:00

🧠 人类的复杂本质

这一段探讨了人类作为一种充满矛盾的生物。我们具备独特的身体结构，如双足行走和裸露的皮肤，并掌握火、工具和语言等能力。然而，尽管我们意识到死亡的不可避免性，仍然充满了乐观精神。这种复杂的存在促使我们通过代际知识的传递和社会互动，追求对自身的理解。Carta 项目通过汇集不同领域的专家，探索人类的起源与发展，这种研究因人类的慷慨支持而成为可能。

05:01

👶 尼加拉瓜手语的起源

尼加拉瓜手语在短短 40 年内从无到有发展起来。以前的聋哑儿童无法相互交流，但随着社会的互动和网络的建立，他们创造了一种自然手语。手语的产生和发展展示了语言作为人类本质的核心，是通过世代交替的社会连接所形成的。随着时间的推移，这种语言通过新一代的儿童不断传播和演化。

10:05

📜 语言结构的演变

通过观察不同年代的尼加拉瓜手语使用者，可以发现语言的结构随着一代代使用者的加入而不断演变。早期的手语结构更为简单，如名词-动词的顺序。而随着新一代的到来，手语逐渐变得复杂，开始使用空间的方向性来表达动作的主语和受语者。这种变化展示了语言的自我调整和复杂化过程。

15:07

🔄 语言与人类的共生关系

语言和人类之间存在一种共生关系。语言像有机体一样，在人类的社会网络中复制和演化。随着一代代儿童的学习，语言的基本结构逐渐发生改变。语言并不是简单的复制，而是通过不断的学习和适应进行选择性传递。人类通过传递语言保持社会联系，而语言则依赖人类的互动才能得以存续。这一段探讨了语言作为一种有机体的独特进化过程。

Keywords

💡尼加拉瓜手语

尼加拉瓜手语（Nicaraguan Sign Language, NSL）是尼加拉瓜的聋哑儿童在没有正式教学的情况下自发发展起来的一种自然语言。视频中讲述了这门语言的起源及其发展历程，强调了语言的演化是社会互动的结果。它展示了人类如何通过社交网络在几代人中传递和创造语言。

💡语言演化

语言演化指的是语言随着时间的推移在社会互动和文化背景下逐步发生的变化。在视频中，通过观察尼加拉瓜手语的不同年龄段的使用者，可以看到语言如何通过新一代的学习者逐步变得复杂且具有结构性。

💡社会网络

社会网络是指人类通过互动和交流建立的关系网。在视频中，尼加拉瓜手语的诞生正是因为聋哑儿童在学校环境中相互接触和沟通，通过社交网络不断传递和演化这种语言。语言是人类社交需求的产物，语言的传递依赖于社会网络中的人群互动。

💡手势与动作

手势与动作是指在没有语言的情况下，聋哑儿童通过观察他人的动作来表达意思。在尼加拉瓜手语的最初阶段，早期的手语使用者是通过他们周围的手势和动作来发展他们的沟通方式，最终演化为一种结构化的语言。

💡语法结构

语法结构是指语言中表示动作和意义的规则体系。在视频中，通过分析不同代聋哑儿童的手语使用者的句子结构，可以看到语言的语法从最初的简单句式逐渐演化为复杂的指向性动词结构，用来区分谁在做什么。

💡主语与宾语

主语与宾语是语言中表达谁在做动作和谁接受动作的关键成分。视频中提到，尼加拉瓜手语的早期版本使用严格的名词-动词顺序来表达主语和宾语，而随着语言的演化，空间中的指向开始用来标识动作的发出者和接受者。

💡语言共演化

语言共演化是指语言和使用者共同进化的过程。视频中将语言比作有机体，它与人类的文化、认知能力一同演化。聋哑儿童通过学习和传递语言，推动了手语的复杂化和规则化，展现了语言与人类的共生关系。

💡指向性动词

指向性动词是指通过手势的方向性来表明谁在做动作和谁接受动作的动词。在尼加拉瓜手语中，早期使用者的动词多是中立的，而后来语言演化中，动词逐渐带有方向性，用以指示动作的对象，这增强了语言的表达能力。

💡语言传递

语言传递是指语言从一代人传递给下一代的过程。在尼加拉瓜手语的例子中，早期的语言使用者发展了基本的手语，而新一代的学习者并没有简单复制他们的手语，而是通过学习和互动对语言进行了创新和重构。

💡人类本质

人类本质指的是人类在认知、语言和社会行为方面的独特特征。视频中提到语言是人类本质的核心部分，每个社会都有语言，这展示了语言是人类理解自己和他人的重要工具。尼加拉瓜手语的演化过程也体现了语言与人类本质的密切关系。

Highlights

人类是充满矛盾的生物，既掌握火、工具和语言，也充满乐观地面对死亡这一不可避免的事实。

语言是人类本质的一部分。即使不是所有社区都有文字、数字或车轮，但每个社区都有语言。

尼加拉瓜的聋哑儿童通过交互创造了尼加拉瓜手语，这是语言诞生和演化的一个独特例子。

第一代尼加拉瓜手语使用者从日常动作和手势中构建出一种语言，并将其传给下一代。

第二代手语使用者改变了语言的基本结构，增加了空间指示，表明谁做了什么。

第三代手语使用者通过空间指向和动词链接，进一步细化语言的复杂性。

语言演化就像生物一样，有复制和选择过程。每一代的语言传承者都在重新塑造和发展语言。

人类和语言之间存在共演化的关系，语言依赖于人类的社交网络，而人类也需要语言进行沟通。

手语的发展体现了语言学习者在语言演化中的关键作用，特别是在语法结构的变化方面。

语言的变化是不可逆的，早期语言特征不会被后来者重新引入。

语言的传递并不是完美的复制，而是通过模糊的信号传递并依赖于可学习的部分。

通过分析不同世代的手语使用者，可以追踪语言演化的历程。

即便是尊重这样抽象的概念，也可以通过手语中的空间和动作来传达。

拉马克的进化理论不适用于语言的传递，语言的进化与生物进化具有不同的时间尺度和机制。

语言的产生和演化并非有意为之，而是由于人类的社交需求，语言在交互中自然而然地产生。

Transcripts

- We are the paradoxical ape, bipedal, naked, large brain, long the

master of fire, tools and language, but still trying to understand ourselves.

Aware that death is inevitable, yet filled with optimism. We grow up slowly. We hand

down knowledge. We empathize and deceive. We shake the future from our shared

understanding of the past. Carta brings together experts from diverse disciplines

to exchange insights on who we are and how we got here. An exploration made

possible by the generosity of humans like you.

- If you go to Nicaragua today, you can see these deaf children

hanging out in their school playground using

a rich natural sign language to communicate, and 40 years

ago this language didn't exist. Forty years ago, deaf children in Nicaragua,

children just like these kids, didn't have the ability

to communicate effortlessly with one another like they do.

So how did their language, how did this language get into

the hands of these children? If we think about that, if we really think where does

any language come from, where does the language come from. Languages really

central to human nature. It's universal. Not every community has writing or numbers

or using the wheel, but every community, every human community has a language.

Language is not something that we've discovered out there in the world.

Languages come from us. They're product of humans connecting and interacting in a

social network generation after generation. So to see where this language

came from, I'm going to take you on a little journey and retrace the path of

Nicaraguan sign language up to the present day. When these children arrived at school

five years ago, they were already about 1,200 deaf native users of Nicaraguan sign

language, and there were hundreds of kids older than them using this language around

them, in their school. These children learned it from interacting with them.

Now, if we want to know what those hundreds of kids who were older than that

first, that current day generation of children. What they looked like. We can

look at the kids who were teenagers at that time when they entered. So this first

group here entered the school in the mid 1990s, and at that time there are about

800 signers of Nicaraguan sign language, and two hundred of them were at the school

at any time. You know, you could see that this is--

it's a fast, it's fluent. They can talk about the non-hear now. This is a natural

human language that's used for what human languages are used for. If we want to know

where they got their language from, we can retrace the steps of the language further

back when these kids were four and five years old, and ask who were the teenagers

then when they arrived at school. So we can look at the people who were you know,

10 years older than them. When these guys-- These are the cohort that arrived

in the 1980s. So when they arrived, they were about 400 signers of Nicaraguan sign

language, again 200 at the school. You may be able-- if you have an eye for it, you

may be able to see how as we're going further and further back, the language is

a little bit more deliberate. The feedback is a little more explicit and the signs

are bigger and more symmetrical, they are more two handed signs. There are a lot of

differences like that in my, a lot of the work I do is to try and quantify what

those differences are. But if you wanted to know who they got their language from,

so if I continue this retracing of the steps. When they arrived at the school,

the older people were these people who are 45 to 50 years old today. When these

people where four and five years old in the 1970s, when they first came to the

school, there were no signers of Nicaraguan sign language. This is where we

reach the end of our retracing. Nobody taught these people to sign.

The teachers at the school used Spanish which they couldn't hear so this is really

where NSL begins with these cohort of 50 pioneers. They took the gestures and

actions that they observed as a raw materials and wove them into a new

language. So we have this incredible opportunity to see how languages are born

and evolve, and the rule that language learners play in that evolution. I'm going

to start with the language of this earliest first cohort of signers and walk

forward to the present day and start with the most fundamental pieces of the grammar

that every language has, the structure of the simple statement. So arguments and

predicates. How do you show who's doing what to whom? So in English for example,

we use word order to do this. If you take a sentence like, "A man taps a woman."

And you change the order of the words, "A woman taps a man." You change who's

doing the tapping and who gets tapped. Now, other languages might stick

inflectional endings on the end of the verbs or even on the nouns to show which

person is the tapper and which is the tappee, and to figure this out my

colleagues and I used non-verbal materials to list sentences that can compare these

different aspects of the sentence. So I'll show you how different signers respond to

stimuli like this. So in event like this, giving event or this tapping event. Here's

what the first cohort's signs is looked like. They have a very strict noun-verb,

noun-verb word order. So to say that a woman taps a man, you've got woman tap,

and then tapped. Here's what this looks like when the first cohort signer signs it

So I want you to see how he produces that noun-verb, noun-verb order for

signing who tapped, and the sign for woman which is produced like this, and who is

tapped, the sign for man. So he's going to sign these nouns, man and

woman, and in the neutral area, in front of his chest. Know that there's this

movement in the verbs away from and toward the body in a way they can reflect sort of

iconically the way that movement happens in the world. But they're centered in the

signer's body. He keeps this body centered and neutral. So here's what it looks like.

Woman, tap man, get tapped. Right? So this is all very nice, clear and orderly, but

the interesting thing is that it wasn't reproduced this way in the next second

cohort. So starting in about 1983 or 84, the second wave of kids who're coming in

took this direction in which signs are produced and started giving that job in

the grammar. What they did was start modifying where they produce their signs

as a way of showing who did what to whom. So in this example in the first panel, we

have the words see and pay produced in this neutral area in front of the chest.

Then in the second panel you can see the signs have been modified so the direction

is to the left. So if these signs were together in one sentence produced by a

second cohort signer, it would mean that that same person was both seen and

paid, right? So these inflections started out with the verbs like this but soon

after in the mid 80s, you can also start producing nouns in particular locations to

link them to verbs and more recently you can even use it just a point to one

location or another to refer to the person associated with that location. So now

you're using these locations and space not to talk about where or something happened

but to show who's involved. So here's an example where the second cohort signer

does, and you can see how these developments really changed the basic

structure of the sentence, right? So, here is the woman giving to the main event, and

you'll see we get the nouns now being produced in particular locations that

correspond with the direction of movement in the verbs to show you what the object

or recipient is. There are the steps with the addition of

the spatial modification on the signs that came in changes in the world or whatever.

So now the verbs move to the end of the sentence. So you're going to see, first

she actually talks about-- remember those three people in that scenes. So she starts

talking about the woman on the right just looking straight ahead then she touches

her chest, that's a switch reference device, then you'll see she does woman,

man, your nouns, and give, receive, your verbs. Woman look and then self, woman,

man give receipt. Okay, if we move to the third cohort, we're going to see the

introduction of the space, saw you. So you use your points linking the verbs with the

doer and the done too. So this is an event where a woman pushes another woman, woman

in a black shirt, and a woman in a green shirt. So he's going to index the black

shirt to his left and woman in green to the right. Then come the verbs, remember

now they're at the end, push, be pushed. Finally you'll see this verb respect at

the end, and what I love about this example, the respect sign here. Is that

even the respect isn't something that moves from one person to another and know

who's telling. Here we're going to see the space and the movement of the verb linking

it to the nouns. So you can say green tells black, the black should show green

some respect and you do all that with one word using the space. So black, green,

push, be pushed, respect. See? Okay, so we can measure three structure in many ways,

and here's one. If you plot how frequently points are used in that way that shows who

rather than where, you get this pattern. So starting in the left with home signers

who are deaf people who were never exposed to a sign language, and then the first,

second and third cohorts. You can that they all use points to show where about

the same amount that something would stay pretty stable. But this nominal use that's

used to show who, that's linking the noun with the verbs. This use really increased

with the second and third cohorts of signers. So the questions why this changed

and if children are so good at learning language and someone has already developed

the perfectly good way to mark subjects and objects. Why didn't the second cohort

just learn to sign it the same way that the first cohort had been doing it. I

mean, it's one thing to gradually drop whom from your English but this is a total

restructuring of the language here. So to answer that question, I think we really

need to take seriously this idea of language as an organism.

Language is an organism, so this isn't just a metaphor when we say this is-- A

language is an abstract thing, it's abstract but it's still real. It's a

bundle of structured material. It's self replicating and we each live in that

symbiotic relationship with that language, like the microbes in our gut. Like we

can't survive without it and it can't survive without us. Language changes and

adapts to the humans that host it. So the social network of people that learn it and

pass it on are the environment in which language evolves.

Now, the different versions of Nicaraguan sign languages that we see signed by

different aged cohorts today represents this living record of the evolutionary

path of the language. So you know, the way that I've been doing my work that I

described is you know, I look at the slice today, right?

If we start with the 1970s in this figure over to the left and you have the first

cohort coming in, and then in the 80s the second cohort joins, and then the third

and fourth. We can look at today at the differences between the cohorts, but we

can't forget that the action and moment of change is over there, right? As we add

each new wave, and that's where the language, that's when the language

reproduces, right? So the first cohort builds the language as children in the

70s, and then they pass it on to this next cohort in the 80s, and that second cohort

acquires it with sub-fidelity but they don't copy it exactly. And so on in the

90s and today, and we know these changes occurred when their children-- because the

path is uni-directional, right? So stuff can get passed on to later cohorts, but

not the other way. It doesn't go back. So things that adults initiate or learn, they

would be the same for everyone, and there are things like that, that you see, that

are the same across all of the cohorts. But these core ethics of the grammar, how

the sentence structured. How you do agreement, how you show who's doing what

to whom. Those kinds of things, they're changing just in that one direction, and

they don't get passed on back up. So this change from one to two, then there's

where, that where, got re-interpreted as who. So to take our questions about, "Why

change it?" We have to really think about how languages replicate, right? What's the

mechanism that copies that code? The rules and patterns of Nicaraguan sign language

and passes it on to the next generation of NSL, right? Just because the organism

let's say 1980s NSL developed some cool characteristic, doesn't mean you get to

pass it on for free. If we don't have a really good understanding of the mechanism

of reproduction. We'll start to see parallels between

development and evolution that don't actually explain the nature of the change.

So most of us are more familiar with Lamarck's second law here. This idea that

adaptations made by an organism in response to its environment get inherited

by its offspring, right? So the sons of the blacksmith must have bigger biceps, or

the daughter of the giraffe gets a slightly longer neck than her mother

started with. But Lamarck also had this first law that much as we developed from

simple cells to complex systems that all organisms have a natural drive to

complexify. These are great ideas but they don't work out, right? They don't work out

because now we know that reproductions doesn't work that way. You don't just pass

them the useful stuff or the more complex stuff, or the exercise parts. What we've

learned from Darwin, and since Darwin is that we have to pay attention to

reproduction and selection processes, right? Organisms send along everything,

they send out everything, not just the useful stuff, but they do it with their

ability and noise. So the environment is what's determining what will survive,

right? So now we really have two evolutionary processes on really,

really different time scale. So we've got human reproduction and selection on one

hand, and language reproduction and selection on the other. It's not that one

recapitulates the other, it's each of them is evolving in a shape by the processes of

reproduction and selection. In human reproduction we pass on what kind of

patterns we can learn and it may be very slowly and very long ago that more

effective and more powerful pattern learning devices would prevail. But we all

came in to the world with brains that a product of that process. On the other

hand, when language is reproduce, they sent out you know, all this accumulated

symbols and patterns of combinations, but it's a blurry and blended its signal,

right? It's just the output of someone's own language, and it isn't copied

perfectly. In the process of selection, it's not the useful stuff but the

learnable parts of the language that survived.

So what we've got then is this co-evolution of humans and their

languages. Each of them is serving as the environment for the other, and each cannot

survive without the other. So, the thing is though, that we don't set out to create

languages to grow languages, right? This isn't done with an intention to make a

code. Humans grow languages because our social connection is so critical, right?

When we pass a language from one generation to the next, the goal isn't to

create something or to organize your message. The goal is to connect, and the

drive is a social one that the idea is to get your message into someone else's mind

and to understand what message someone else is sending to your mind. In that

process of communicating back and forth and actually forth and forth, that's how

we weave the fabric of language with the machinery of our minds.

So thank you very much.