LB263-264淑儀

LB263-264淑儀

Lenneberg

P.263~264

IV. Limitations on reconstruction of the history of language

(4) Cultural Status Evidence for Language

Do the cultural remains of prehistoric man furnish clues for the dating of the development of language? If one could be certain that language is the necessary concomitant of either tool-making, or social organization, or cultural complexity, one could make fairly precise statements about the time of the birth of language. Unfortunately, such certainty does not exist for the first two phenomena and even the third gives but vague indications.

The use of objects as instrumentalities for behaviors is not resereved to man among the primate order (Miyadi, 1964; Goodall, 1963; Birch, 1945; W. Köhler, 1927). Apparently a primitive capacity for the use of tools is common to several primate species and is therefore not necessarily tied to the human form of communication. However, even the earlist forms of homo must heave made a very different and much more extensive use of tools than any subhuman primate today. Miller (1964) has proposed that the use of tools and the use of language demand very similar, biologicaly given capacidies. I consider this to be a fruitful way of looking at language but, at the same time, it must be stressed that it does not compel us to assume simultaneous emergence of the two skills. One may have been present before the other and there is no way to decide which might have had the lead. Nor does the nature of the tools or the state of primtivity allow us to pospulate concomitant levels of primitivity for a form of communication. (Miller suggested no such correlation.)

Degree of social organization must be related to efficiency of intraspecies communication. This is almost a truism. But the communication may, and does, take on an infinite variety of forms. Our speculations about the beginnings of language are seriously handicapped by two unknown factor. First, we can only make the vaguest of assumptions about the social structure and organization of prehistoric men and second, their forms of communication might have been highly developed but very different in nature and principle from our present form. Therefore, Dart’s (1959) postulate that evidence of hunting and fishing technology makes the possession of language a reasonable assumption can not be accepted uncritically. Perhapes a certain activity calls for good communication, but whether this was a direct, primitive antecedent of what we now call language is uncertain.

The most difficult evaluation of evidence for the existence of language is cultural complexity. At one time our phylogenetic ancestors must have had a truly primitive form of culture. On the other hand, the neolithic cultures of fifty thousand yeas ago may not have been any less complex than the most primitive living cultures today, for example, say in Central Brazil or New Guinea. When did “complexity of culture “ arise? Can we be certain that the prehistoric cultures were as primitive as their physical remains today would indicate? The older the culture the more tenuous must be our guesses. Even the notion of “complexity” is itself a source of inaccuracy. There is a further difficulty in using culture as an indication for language.

Today we may study cultures that are essentially neolithic in their state of development, as well as cultures advanced enough to split the atom and explore interplanetary space. Surprisingly, the natural languages spoken throughout this range of cultures appear to be based on similar principles. It is an empirical fact that today neither the tools commonly occurring in a given culture nor the social structure associated with that culture can give us clues about the complexity of structure of the language now spoken by the individuals of that culture. Natural languages cannot be ordered in terms of complexity. A complex task should be more difficult to learn than a simple one end therefore take more time and effort. But all natural languages are learned with the same ease by children of a certain age, which seems to confirm the “equal complexity” hypothesis.

It is reasonable to assume (though not absolutely necessary) that Cro-Magnon man, whose material culture might not have been too far removed from the most primitive present-day cultures, and who had all the physical characteristics of modern man, was in possession of language as we know it today. There is nothing that requires us to think of his language as substantially more primitive than ours, or to postulate any “uk-uk-theory.”* It is likely that Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men were speaking creatures. We have no means of decifing whether earlier races has a form of communication that was in any way similar to that of Cro-Magnon. Attempts at dating the origin of modern types of language development seem unwarranted.

＊大綱：

探討對語言的歷史之重建的限制：「語言的文化地位之證據」。

首先，我們只能以史前的人、社會的架構和組織做最含糊的假定。他們溝通的形式和發展可能在性質上和我們目前形式的的原則不太ㄧ樣，因此Dart’s (1959)做了一些假設。

再來，語言的存在的證據，最難的評估就是文化複雜性。一方面，我們的祖先一定已經有一個文化；另一方面，今天的發現最老的文化，例如，在中部巴西和新幾內亞，對古老的文化之細節我們只能有ㄧ定的推測。一個不精確的源頭，讓我們在把推論文化作為語言的一個跡象過程中有一定的困難。

總之，在試圖以年代做為斷定語言發展的現代類型起源，好像沒有確切的保證。