Transcript Wolfgang Wildgen Evolutionary Pragmatics

Wolfgang Wildgen
Evolutionary Pragmatics
Late Spring School
Cognitive Semiotics
Sofia, NBU 29th of May
Condillac`s thesis
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Abbé de Condillac formulated in 1746 the thesis that
language issued from a signaling behavior/language based
on non signaling behavior; i.e. a “language” of action.
This was considered as the common ground making animal
communication and human language comparable.
As a corollary he assumed a language of gestures prior to a
phonic language in the development of early men.
He is thus the grandfather of evolutionary pragmatics; the
father would be Darwin who assumes a real continuity
between species and as a consequence on the behavioral
side a continuity between animal communication and
human language.
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Basic thesis of evolutionary
pragmatics
1. Pragmatic principles , i.e. those governing
the behavioral patterns and motion schemata
of animate beings are the bottom line of any
signaling behavior.
2. In the transition of social signaling to social
language the meaning of linguistic signs is
primarily motivated by the action they allow
or even constitute (define).
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Ernst Cassirer (1874 – 1945) and his
„philosophy of symbolic forms“
(1923-29)
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On the relation between different
symbolic forms
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For Cassirer the symbolic organization of thinking
(giving symbolic form to pre-symbolic thought)
demarcates the transition between nature and culture.
The symbolic forms are manifestations of man’s basic
symbolic capacity.
They emerge as a plurality: myth, language, science.
Intermediary symbolic forms are technology and art.
It follows that the evolution of symbolic behavior
may be followed in all these manifestations.
As a consequence it is possible to use the evolution of
technology and art to fill observational lacunae in the
evolution of language.
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Some facts about the
evolution of technologies and
art
Instrumentality in higher mammals and man
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The use of instruments and the goal-oriented adaptation
(manufacturing) of tools can be observed in many orders of
animals: ants (insects), birds, and mammals all use simple
instruments. In some cases, this allows them to access difficult
areas of their body (elephants) or to reach under surfaces.
Chimpanzees shape twigs to facilitate “fishing” for termites in
termite-hills.
The use of instruments may be inborn and even the evolution of
limbs may be connected to instrumental functions, i.e., limbs are
“shaped” evolutionarily to adapt for specific instrumental
functions. Thus, primate and human hands take over functions
originally located in the head (mouth) for attack, defense,
preparation of food, for mastication, etc.
Our gestured language, facial expressions, art practices and
vocal language presuppose a kind of “instrumental” evolution of
the human (and hominid) hand and face.
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Possible evolutionary
steps leading to cave art
Cave art
H. sapiens, language
Homo erectus, lithic
technology, protolanguage
Australopithecus, upright locomotion
Primates like gorillas, orang-utans and chimpanzees
10 million y.
7 million y.
2 million y.
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400.000 y.
40.000
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The evolution of tool use
The development of tool-use and tool making implies
learning, social imitation or even teaching. Tembrok
(1977: 186 f) distinguishes six levels:
 ad-hoc tool-using
 purposeful tool-using
 tool-modifying for immediate purpose
 tool-modifying for future eventuality
 ad-hoc-tool-making
 cultural tool-making
The last stage, “cultural tool-making”, can only be
observed in primates and in man.
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Human tool use in the Paleolithic
Lithic technologies. Left:
reconstruction of the technique; right:
products of the Levallois technique
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The Design of Lithic Instruments
The industry had to consider the following factors:
 Form and quality of a stone found (this includes a
geographic knowledge of places, where they may
be found).
 Splitting of the stone and isolation of the kernel.
 Separation of sharp blades from the kernel.
 Use of instruments for choking stone on one side
and use of stone instruments for the
manufacturing of other instruments (bone and
wood).
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Handaxe in the
early Paleolithic
(above)
AbbévillienBiface (Le Stade)
Le Champs de
Mars
(below)
Middle
Acheuléen
(Saint Acheul)
(cf. Weiner, 1972:
130)
Abbévillien= 600.000-350.000, second glacial period;
Wolfgang Wildgen Evolutionary
Acheuléen= 350.000-100.000;
third glacial period
Pragmatics
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(left) Moustérien; until 40.000, fourth glacial period; Charente
(middle), La Quina
(right) , La Quina (all in the Mousterian period)
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Blades
from the
Solutrean
Blades
from the
Magdalenean
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From tool-use to cave art
Stages of
glaciations
Interglacial
Early
glacial/temperate
Periods in ky = 1000y.
ky BP
Lithic
technologies
Stylistic periods of cave art in
France (recent man)
128- Core/chopping No cave art found yet
118 tool
118-75 Flake, core
/chopping tool
Early glacial, glacial
75-32 Handaxes,
scrapers
Full glacial
32-13 Blades
Perigordian (ca. 34 ky-19 ky)
Aurignacian (33 – 18 ky)
Late glacial
13-10 Microlithic
elements
Solutrean (18 –16 ky)
Magdalenian (16 – 10 ky)
Current interglacial
10-0 Transition to the metallic ages
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The beginning of graphical art
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The beginning of graphical arts can be dated by the first
appearance of concentrated color pigments in the context of
hominid dwellings. Barham (2001) reports that in south central
Africa pieces of iron hematite (often called ochre) and
specularite were recovered from an archeological site near Twin
Rivers, in Zambia. They had been brought to the site, processed
and rubbed against surfaces. One can infer that these materials
were used to color objects, bodies or surfaces. The use of such
pigments establishes a continuity, which reaches from the
archeological sites mentioned (i.e., from 270.000y. BP) to
contemporary hunter-gathers in the Kalahari. The first
engravings on stone were also found in Africa and can be dated
to 70.000y. BP. One can conclude that archaic Homo sapiens
used colors to paint (e.g., their bodies, objects, and/or large
surfaces).
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Rock-engravings and color use
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Rock engravings and later plastic art in stone may
be understood as the origin of representational art.
As this line also leads to the invention abstract
(motivated by cultural memory) signs and finally
to writing, the modern cultures of fine arts and
literature have their origin in Paleolithic symbol
techniques.
Color was originally used for body-painting, later
in the context of funeral practices, and finally in
the art of caves (after 40.000 BP)
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Drawings on portable art
Bone of a mammoth with ornaments from Mezin (Ucrainia)
The engraved bone in the possession of a person and the engraving
on it may be used as a prototype (or a model of imitation) which
orients further perception of similar objects. It is also an object of
value (it can be given, stolen, inherited or buried with the owner).
Becoming an object of value marks the point of transition to ritual
and magical objects.
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Varieties of Venus-Figures in
Western- and Eastern
Europe.
A: Willendorf; B: Lespuge;
C: Grimaldi; D: Dolné-Vêstonice,;
E,F und L: Kostienki;
G: Khotylevo; H und J: Avdevo;
I und K: Gargarino
The dominance of female
statuettes and female symbols
(“vulvas”) was interpreted as
the consequence of a more
“gendered” society in the Upper
Paleolithic. Eventually a more
egalitarian society was replaced
by a society with social
differentiation and a divergence
between female and male roles
Evolutionary
From: Sanchidrián, 2001: 12Wolfgang Wildgen
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Abstract
representations of
human bodies
Males and females
Russia
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Paleolithic cave paintings
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Cave paintings occur mainly in an area north and west of the
Pyrenees: mainly in Périgord, Toulouse (France) and Cantabrica
(Spain). Probably the area was a very early economic
“Kulturbund” (network of civilizations) in Europe. The herds of
reindeer (as in northern Finland today) defined the relevant
ecological dynamics. They probably came to the plains in winter
and returned to higher grounds in the Pyrenees, the Cantabrica
Mountains or the Massif Central in France in summer. The
populations of Cro-Magnon men followed the herds and thus met
other populations in southern France and northern Spain.
Other forms of Paleolithic art show an extension of this cultural
region to Switzerland, Italy, Southern Germany and Eastern
Europe.
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Drawing techniques and body motion
Monochrome drawing of a horse (Peña de Candamo)
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Patterns of locomotion are not only relevant for the content of
pictures but also for their production. Beltran et al (1998: 72) have
shown that painters in the cave of Altamira stood with their left
arm on the cave wall and traced along it to get a long curved line;
i.e., they used their (left) arm and hand as a mold for lines. In a
similar way the natural motion of the arm with fixed body was the
basis for larger curved lines, e.g., the shoulder and back of a bison,
i.e., the human limbs were used as instruments in a ritualized act of
painting. The drawing of a bison can thus be decomposed into a
series of natural motion patterns, which begin at the head and end
at the hind legs (variants of this technique are common).
The surface can be further structured by lines which separate light
and dark parts, or by areas with different color or texture and
further details can be added. In this context it is worthwhile to note
that certain body parts of animals receive special attention: the hair
of a bison or its eye and nose (in Altamira), the heads of horses
(e.g., a sequence of four heads with necks in cave Chauvet) and of
lions (e.g., the sketched or elaborated heads and necks in cave
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The cultural achievement of Paleolithic art presupposes a
rather general grid of meanings on the level of values in a
probably multilingual society of hunters. It would be
exceptional if the existence of a large-scale system of values
for exchange had not produced a collective system of
meanings.
The diversity of conventional signs (cf. Leroi-Gourhan, 1992:
137-140) shows a range of distribution corresponding in size
to actual dialect-areas and suggests that the populations living
in the Franco-Cantabric area had many different subcultures.
Nevertheless these “dialects” formed an assembly on the
level of basic semantics and pragmatics used in cultural
contacts, rituals, in the oral tradition of myths and the
practice of rituals.
They formed probably one of the largest preliterate symbolic
civilizations before the introduction of writing.
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Paleolithic paintings contain many signs, which cannot be
interpreted as pictures or figures. The transition between
iconic signs and abstract signs (symbols) occurs first with
very frequent contents. Two human body-parts appear
regularly in the paintings and engravings:
The human hand.
The female vulva.
In the case of the hand the most concrete picture is created
either by pressing the (left) hand on the wall and painting the
contours (or by spraying chewed color with the mouth) or by
painting the hand with color and pressing it against the wall.
The picture is really the trace of the hand (it indicates the act
of touching the wall with the hand). Other tokens abstract the
shape of the human hand to a line (a band) with three, four,
five branches
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First signs of
abstraction
Styled Representations of hands
Cave Santian (Spain)).
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The relation of hands to their body is
metonymical (pars pro toto), i.e., one can
guess the whole if one has the necessary
knowledge, which is easy in the case of the
hand. In some cases, the hands are deformed
(e.g., have only four fingers); they could
therefore be the personal signature of a painter;
some authors even guessed an underlying
gestured language.
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Methonymic abstraction
Sketch of a
deer’s head
Contours
of a deer’s
head
Giant deer
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Graphical and writing
technologies as symbolic
manifestations parallel to an
evolved (but not yet
diocumented) language
Many pictures in the painted caves cannot be linked with specific
contents, from which they are derived. Leroi-Gourhan (1992:
chapter IX) made an inventory of the Franco-Cantabric signs
and distinguished three major classes:
 small signs (e.g., sticks and ramified forms),
 full signs; e.g., triangles, squares, rectangles (tecti-forms), key
shapes (clavi-forms), and
 punctuated signs.
Leroi-Gourhan comes to the conclusion that all these signs have
only a very indirect association with the animals represented in
the paintings. They are a supplementary code. This is very clear
in Lascaux, where signs and pictures are systematically
combined into one gestalt and have corresponding sizes (cf.
ibidem: 337).
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Combination
(and
separation) of
pictorial and
abstract signs
in the
Paleolithic
period.
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(cf. J. Jelinek, 1975,
433)
The abstract sign
is of the
tectiform type
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The small signs could be derived by “disjunction”, i.e.,
certain figural features from pictures are isolated, cut
off. The general tendency is one of geometrical
abstraction. Small pictures as in portable art could have
triggered the abstraction. The conventionalized
miniature signs were later added to full-scale pictures
in the cave paintings. This is the same process as the
one observed in the evolution of early writing systems,
e.g., in Egypt.
Leroi-Gourhan associates these signs with the male sex
(as phallic symbols). Full signs are associated with the
female sex. Either they are derived from the form of
the vulva, or from a female profile (without head and
feet).
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The signs called “tecti-forms” or rectangular (cf. ibidem:
208 f.) look like huts or shelters and could refer secondarily
to the domain of females (In a matrilineal society, daughters
inherit the house and objects in the house and these are
associated with the female sex). Figure 17 shows some
examples from Leroi-Gourhan (1992: 319).
The punctuated signs can be related to a basic technique of
painting and engraving, i.e., to aligned points, which
produce a curve or two rows of them, which fill a surface. It
is thus a discrete variant in the representation of lines and
surfaces. There is some evidence that counting or
representing mathematical structures may underlie these
signs
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A list of abstract symbols
Tectiform symbols
1-16;
1-10 Dordogne (
Les Eyzies)
11-16: Northern
Spain (Altamira,
Castillo, u.a.)
17 23: isolated
signs
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Transition to writing (the last
10.000 years): Object signs
Original functions:
•Representation of objects for the purpose
of bookkeeping (a sign stands for an
object in the economic world)
•Creation of a representational universe of
discourse (where the buying, selling,
transfer., loss etc. of objects is
represented).
•Calculation (origin of mathematics)
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The abstraction process from pictures to writing symbols
corresponds to a general mnemonic principle. This is also valid
for messages in an object language employed by Yoruba tribes
and in Australian messenger-sticks. The message is coded for the
messenger, who “reads” it when he arrives after a long journey.
This guarantees that he does not forget important contents, but it
presupposes that he knows the message. This means that the
written message can only be “read” accurately if the reader has a
knowledge of its contents independently from the “written”
document (cf. Friedrich, 1960: 17).
Full-fledged writing-systems presuppose a writing industry, i.e.,
the frequent production and usage of writing in proper contexts.
The Paleolithic stone industries established the context for the
manufacturing of functionally optimal artifacts (weapons, tools),
the Mesolithic and Neolithic picture and symbol industries
established the necessary context for writing systems
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The communicative/functional usage of writing was systematically
developed in Mesopotamia, which became a melting pot of many
cultures and concentrated large populations into one organized
political system. The paths for the exchange of goods, values, and
ideas became complex and difficult to control. The civilizations of
Mesopotamia (and the “golden crescent”) took their new shape
between 11 and 8.000y. BP. The first “token” systems, called “object
languages” by Schmandt-Besserat (1978), appeared ca. during this
area and were not dramatically changed for almost five millennia.
Only in the Bronze Age, between 7,500y. BP and 5,100y. BP, did the
number of tokens increase and their shape differentiate and finally
give rise to Sumerian writing (ca. 5.000y. BP; cf. also Friedrich, 1966:
42 f.). The context was not religious but economic. The storage,
transport and control of goods motivated a system of bookkeeping. A
closed jar contained a number of symbolic objects, which stood for
the goods sent to a destination. On the jar, a list of the symbolic
objects in the jar was marked.
The next slide shows the state of the system in the intermediate period
of the Bronze age (before Sumerian writing arrived).
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Early objectsymbols
(choice from
a field of 12
categories)
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Conclusions
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The pragmatics of modern languages concern the
embedding of linguistic utterances into contexts of use
(speaker, hearer, situation, time, etc.) and the action
patterns, formed by linguistic utterances (i.e. speech
acts, conversational sequences). In an evolutionary
perspective these contexts of action (the ecology, the
group structure) become dominant, because language
itself is only emerging step-by-step and reshaping,
developing the earlier action patterns. At the same time,
the social ecology (and later the physical ecology) is
dramatically changed by the effect of linguistic thinking
and communication.
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