Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T19:33:28.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Niche construction, too, unifies praxis and symbolization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Chris Sinha
Chris Sinha*
Affiliation:
Lund University, School of Languages and Literature (Linguistics), P.O. Box 201, 221 00 Lund, Sweden. E-mail: chris.sinha@ling.lu.se
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Arbib hypothesizes that evolutionary modern language significantly postdates human speciation. Why should this be so? I propose an account based on niche construction theory, in which Arbib's language-ready brain is primarily a consequence of epigenetically-driven adaptation to the biocultural niche of protolanguage and (subsequently) early language. The evolutionary adaptations grounding language evolution were initially to proto-linguistic socio-communicative and symbolic processes, later capturing and re-canalizing behavioural adaptations (such as serial and hierarchical constructive praxis) initially “targeted” to other developmental and cognitive domains. The intimate link between praxic action and symbolic action is present not only in the human brain, but also in the human biocultural complex. The confluence of praxis and symbolization has, in the time scale of sociogenesis, potentiated the invention of domain-constituting and cognition-altering symbolic cognitive artefacts that continue to transform human socio-cultural ecologies. I cite in support of this account, which differs only in some emphases from Arbib's account, my colleagues' and my research on cultural and linguistic conceptions of time in an indigenous Amazonian community.

Keywords

Niche constructionpraxic actionepigenesisculturetime
Type
The perspective from psychology
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 5 , Issue 2-3: Special Issue , September 2013 , pp. 261 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bohm, D. 1980. Wholeness and the implicate order. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Boivin, N. 2008. Material cultures, material minds: The role of things in human thought, society and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Botha, R. & Knight, C.. 2009. The cradle of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. 1973. Space, time, semantics and the child. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, 27–63. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
de Waal, F. 2001. The ape and the sushi master. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Donald, M. 1991. Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dor, D. & Jablonka, E.. In press. Why we need to move from gene-culture co-evolution to culturally-driven co-evolution. In Dor, D., Knight, C. & Lewis, J. (eds.), The social origins of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M.. 2008. Rethinking metaphor. In Gibbs, R. (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought, 53–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heine, B. & Kuteva, T.. 2007. The genesis of grammar: A reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. 2005. Material anchors for conceptual blends. Journal of Pragmatics 37. 1555–1577.Google Scholar
Jablonka, E. & Lamb, M.. 2005. Evolution in four dimensions: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic variation in the history of life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lotman, Y. 1990. Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.Google Scholar
Mellars, P. & Stringer, C.. 1989. The human revolution: Behavioral and biological perspectives on the origins of modern humans. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mueller, R.-A. 1996. Innateness, autonomy, universality? Neurobiological approaches to language. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19. 611–675.Google Scholar
Norman, D. 1993. Things that make us smart. Reading, MA.: Addison Wesley.Google Scholar
Odling-Smee, J. & Laland, K. N.. 2009. Cultural niche-construction: Evolution's cradle of language. In Botha, R. & Knight, C. (eds.), The prehistory of language, 99–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Odling-Smee, F.J., Laland, K. N. & Feldman, M. W.. 2003. Niche construction: The neglected process in evolution. Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Postill, J. 2002. Clock and calendar time: A missing anthropological problem. Time and Society 11(2/3). 251–270.Google Scholar
Sampaio, W., Sinha, C. & Sinha, V. da Silva. 2009. Mixing and mapping: Motion, path and manner in Amondawa. In Guo, J., Lieven, E., Budwig, N., Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K., Őzçalişkan, Ş. (eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the study of language. Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin, 427–439. London: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Sinha, C. 1988. Language and representation: A socio-naturalistic approach to human development. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Sinha, C. 2005. Blending out of the background: Play, props and staging in the material world. Journal of Pragmatics 37. 1537–1554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinha, C. 2009. Language as a biocultural niche and social institution. In Evans, V. & Pourcel, S. (eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics, 289–310. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinha, C., Sinha, V. da Silva, Zinken, J. & Sampaio, W.. 2011. When time is not space: The social and linguistic construction of time intervals and temporal event relations in an Amazonian culture. Language and Cognition 31. 137–169.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. 1999. The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Whiten, A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W. C., Nishida, T., Reynolds, V., Sugiyama, Y., Tutin, C. E. G., Wrangham, R. W. & Boesch, C.. 1999. Cultures and chimpanzees. Nature 399. 682–685.Google Scholar
Whitrow, G. J. 1988. Time in history: Views of time from prehistory to the present day. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar