The Origins and Evolution of Language | Michael Corballis | TEDxAuckland

This guy is comparing the development of language to the development of organs? Is he serious?

Boring

bro was hammering on chomsky 😂

Did scattered groups of hominids each develop their own language, or do all languages share a common ancestor?

Lmao he put Obama on with a bunch of apes. Diabolical. 😅

This video maintained me with precious knowledge.

You don’t know why he called him Prometheus? 😅 really? I hope that was a joke. Prometheus is not a biblical story, no offense…

Gee, that doesn't make sense to me. Therefore it's false. What a genius, man.

The overall talk is very interesting. But the difference out of fortressing does not make sense. The difference is due to something much much more simpler.
As for the Chomsky's hypothesis on spoken language genesis, his could only revolve around a cultural revolution as a result of aggregation and - so - out of need to conform (some) semantics. To keep in mind that semantics of spoken languages of 90 (?) thousand years ago have little to see with the semantics of today's spoken languages.

''the question of where language came from is one of the most difficult questions in science''
Not really. Probably one of the easiest. It's need of communication in order to survive. It is more in use between animals who live in groups. The bigger the group the greater the need and the better the development. I have zebra finches who talk to each other. After years of observing them I believe they actually even have names for their companions and I will not be surprised if the have names for people. Nearly all animals have a language.

If u typed this in. You have a rich smart mind.

I have been working on a linguistic research for a months, and this 17 minutes video harboring the most precious and sophisticated knowledge about language origin and development, thankyou Michael Corballis for the wonderful information bequeathed upon us.

Muy interesante

The simple truth is that God created languages for us so that we humans can have a way to communicate with him (because He is a higher being). There is no way human can explain the origin of different languages other than the simple story of Babel. The evolutionists want to explain the origin of languages by evolution but they really can't agree with each other. There are at least 20 different theories, go figure. It saddens my heart to see how people are slaved by evolution theory nowadays. I pray for one day that light shines through the darkness in their eyes!

What's the citation for Chomsky using the term "Prometheus" regarding the origin of language?

Shout out to the intro designer, sound, animation, colors amazing! Yes, I'm drunk but still amazing.

The primary use of language is internal thought.

if we put speakers of different languages together (and they don't know each other's language) in a remote place for a year or two ......I am sure they will develop a new language and that will be the combination of all their languages and more... they may as well create a completely new language .... such is the capacity of humans to evolve and grow ... I think Chomsky is right when he talks about intuition and innateness

Iam new to this topic, so interesting and it's given me iinsight into language.

When he said God… I just glazed over

Interesting ❤

Biology degree here:
His understanding of evolution is a little bit off. For the most part, most major biological modifications through evolution are minor modifications that slowly add up, however, it is entirely possible for a major change to occur within one generation. Sometimes even the smallest tweak to the genome can cause a cascade of changes in certain protein expression that can make a big difference in the organism

A cat once spoke to me in meows so it makes me wonder what we sound like to animals.

Gibbons show us that singing came first... then language. Gibbons are bipedal when terrestrial. This has been widely overlooked.

Do You think you're a pokemon?, why Pikachu only speaks Pikachu, when it evolves to raichu it speaks Raichu, They forgot the old language. They didn't learn a new word. so let's waste our time on this topic😅😅.

The Arabic language is the origin of all other languages for two main reasons: one, because it is the richest language ever existed with more than 12 millions word and two, because most of languages have words with Arabic origins, no one can deny it even the linguistic scholars.

I know the origin of language , and it's me .
Because I speak it , beside me there isn't any witness of language.

Just the way , I am the creater of world. Because when I died , the world has also died.
It's like , when i died , who will say that world ever exist.

Problem solved 😎

All europian language influenced by samskrit🇮🇳🕉️the mother of all languages

The remarkable thing is that we came up with 6000 languages in less than several thousand years after coming through millions of years of evolution.😊

Excellent❤

Ironically, the meaning of the universe is only understood in Silence

How about music? Varied pitched and glissando ,melismatic resonant sustained vowel calls?

*AI has entered the Chat*GPT

My question is how did we develop talking. The great apes animals are not capable of talk. So If we came from them then How do we achieve talking?

Very interesting. I think music, both singing and making rhythmic sounds in other ways, also needs to be considered. It is widespread in the animal world and probably predates human language itself.

Didn't Eric Gans propose this in his original of language book published in the early 80s?

I was immersed

The whole speech could be contracted to the educational sentence that language began in the trees with hand gestures. The rest is just filling.

The problem with an evolutionary explanation for language is this simple language fact: One must be taught language. Language could not have evolved from the grunts and groans of apes. Feral children prove that language must be taught. Children totally deprived of human contact in the first 5 years of life, at best, have only been able to pronounce a couple of words once reunited with humans. And they have never learned to speak sentences (That is those who were totally deprived of human contact in those formative years). Even if early man evolved and a few grunts eventually became words, that's a far cry from grammar; language is more than words, it's grammar. Even if people biologically evolved, there would be no language. The so-called first hominoid would only be able to grunt, and that's all they would have been able to share with offspring, and that would have continued ad-infinitium. Simply saying language evolved because we have language is no explanation. Therefore, my conclusion is, a higher power taught the first humans language.

Vwry interesting about a consequence of bipedalism. I think however it is important to define what a language actually is. Noam Chomsky
says that Language is mainly a system of thought basically. You think with your language. You Michael talk about language as atool of communication (and separating as you said after min 14). Ca we ssy that animals do not communicate or have some form of language?
Looking at the apes today, we could maybe think that the screaming of apes when there is a predator nearby, could also be a form of language. language we can not yet interpret. Mice call for their parents using ultrasounds that cats can hear. So some form of language did maybe already exist before bipedalism.

I'm of the belief that we were able to discover "music" with our vocalizations and were able to draw a tribe together to bond and enjoy the sounds. Through these sounds were are able to label physical things with a sound. Now as far as grammar evolved shaman were probably the groups who introduced a more complex set of rules. In my opinion Chinese is a language that fits my theory of sounds and then particles to attach to thise things as adjectives and adverbs

This is exactly what I was wondering about; Origins and evolution of language. Thanks Michael Corballis!

great distances made all the differant languages. gestures became sounds and words were created. again, all differant from areas that were far away . you will note that shorter distances create acents. for example, the new york acent, the boston acent and the southern acent . also items like food are callled differant names. a grinder in new england may be called a hoggie or a sub elsewhere. it’s the distance that made all the differant languages, dialects, acents and calling all the same things by differant names. i’m not a scientist. this is just my theory. anyone have opinions on this?

Do monkeys understand the concept of their dead monkey grandpa's?

If you look at other mammals, many communicate with sound as they walk around on four legs. There could have been an audible element to language before bipedalism, which was subsequently made better by bipedalism as we could make faces and gestures to add meaning to our grunts.

I find it hard to conceive that we only used signs for any length of time. Signs only work when you're close enough to the receiver and they are looking at you. You also need light. The first time we felt the need to sign to someone up on the hill and facing away, I'm sure there was a yell to get their attention. And it probably evolved from there.

Just as Chomsky's theory is a bit simplistic, the clear boundary between signs and voice was likely not that neatly delineated.

Theory represented as fact😂,
Biggest joke to humanity.
I strongly believe in Evolution but not Darwin's.

in other words u have no idea how languages came about apart from speculation

Mankind evolved from Apes hahahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay....what a nice fiction story unfortunately fed to mankind on cradles of knowledge neglecting the other scientific evidences of the impossibility of the evolution story....

As a linguist, I'm surprised he thinks Bantu is a language. It's like saying "I speak Scandinavian."