5 ms·

If language began in the hands, why did it ever leave?

24 points by prostoalex 6y ago

totetsu 6y ago
I wonder if this is related to why it's easy to learn touch typing while saying the keys out loud.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  I didn't know it was. Can you direct me to some research there; I'm curious about that now.
  - totetsu 6y ago
    Just speaking of my own experience.
    - michaelcampbell 6y ago
      Fair enough, thanks. I might try that.
lqet 6y ago
> But there is at least one key feature of speech that is harder to dismiss: it takes very little effort. Attempts to measure the caloric expenditures involved in speech report that they are essentially negligible. This is both because the movements involved are so tiny, and because spoken words often hitch a ride on our outgoing breath. (Speaking can be thought of as a way of upcycling an abundant waste-product – air – as it leaves the body.) This is not to say that gesturing or signing is an especially athletic or strenuous endeavour by any means, but it is certainly more expensive than talking – by an order of magnitude at least, Fitch estimates.
rdmcelrath 6y ago
Because you cannot communicate with your hands, and use tools at the same time.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
There are a ton of problems with hand gestures. One, they're hard to see and blocked by line of sight (voice isn't.) Two, they require hands to be free to communicate (not always the case, and in situations of survival it's probably not doable at all.) Three, they're limited versus voice. Voice has soft and loud and more sounds can be made than variations of hands. More meaning can be ascribed to a sound.
- war1025 6y ago
  True, but deaf people are able to communicate quite effectively with sign language. So it's not like hands are completely worthless for communication. Plus, in certain cases the "hard to see" is an advantage.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Of course - never implied that this was the case, it is a useful tool, but it's easy to see why we primarily use our voices.
- James_Henry 6y ago
  The article talks about this and then goes on to point out some of the advantages of signing. The article convincingly argues there's more to this than just your list of problems with hand gestures and the article
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  > Three, they're limited versus voice. Voice has soft and loud and more sounds can be made than variations of hands. I agree with your first two points, but I have to disagree with you on this third point. Mute your computer and check out the way she provides emphasis in this[1], or the way Lydia Callis signs so expressively[2]. Large motions are like loud exclamations, smooth, slow motions are like a crooning voice, etc. People who sign have a "voice"--a style of signing. Signing without any sort of emphasis or expression is the sign equivalent of speaking in a monotone, and can actually make it harder to understand someone, because these elements communicate a lot of meaning, just as intonation and volume communicate meaning in speech. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P_4D26hApY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P_4D26hApY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5w09Po5bLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5w09Po5bLA
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
It never leaves the hands!! At least for us Italians! We don't speak Italian; we just pretend we have a language so you guys out there don't freak out :) How do you silence an Italian? Tie his hands. </sillyjokes>
deltron3030 6y ago
Maybe because it could leave at some point. Not overnight, but maybe gradually after primitive language or sounds being bundled with gestures for some time. Considering that humanity were hunter gatherers the main topic was likely animals and the weather. I think it grew out of those campfire situations and planning huntings, map making (drawing scenarios on the ground) and then basically animating it with sounds and signs.
kerkeslager 6y ago
One of the things that became really apparent to me during a brief period of dating a hearing-impaired person, was the utility of sign language as a supplement to spoken language. Sign language works better than speech in noisy environments. But this drew my attention to situations where sign language doesn't work: in the dark, around obstacles, when hands are occupied. Guess which situation our ancestors were more frequently confronted with? EDIT: The article does address this, but I'm not sure I buy it. Maybe it's a function of my limited ability with sign, but I don't think signs pressed against the skin are particularly effective, and while our ancestors may have had fires, the most survival-critical situations could be ones where no light is present. I agree that sign remains extremely useful, but I'm skeptical of the claim, "[I]f language had first built a home in the hands, it would have had no compelling reason to leave. Thus, it must have been spoken from the start."
- James_Henry 6y ago
  The article talks to this. "A second supposed advantage is that speech is better in the dark – that, as Levelt put it, gesture is ‘functionally dead during, on average, 12 hours a day’. This is probably overstated. As Emmorey points out, modern signers get by without much problem, even in dim lighting, and can use tactile forms of signing – that is, signing in contact with another’s skin – in a pinch. Our prehistoric ancestors likely didn’t spend many waking hours in pitch-black. Rather, they would have used fires for warmth, cooking, illumination and protection from predators. And, whether or not there’s anything to Hewes’s palmar depigmentation story, hand movements can certainly be seen by firelight. "Another advantage of speech, it has been argued, is that it frees the hands for other activities. But, here again, this is likely too swift. Signers don’t seem to have much of a problem with this, using one-handed signs when necessary. And though most of what we think of as gesture takes place in the hands, critical visual signals can also be produced with the head and face – pointing, affirming, questioning. The list of putative advantages of speech goes still further. But this kind of ‘rear-view mirror’ reasoning is inherently shaky: we know the outcome and are motivated to explain it."
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > But this kind of ‘rear-view mirror’ reasoning is inherently shaky: we know the outcome and are motivated to explain it." The other side of this, though, is there's presumably some sort of reason, and these ones are plausible. We should be open to more compelling hypotheses, but waiving away "it's good to have two hands free" with "you can sorta get by with one" is "inherently shaky" too. Stuff like grinding corn and butchering game are two-hand jobs, for example. It helps to be able to chat while you do it.
pessimizer 6y ago
Alexander Bogdanov, in The Philosophy of Living Experience (1913) posits a social labor-first basis for most human concepts. He thought that language moved from gestures and imitations of the actual sounds that different labor processes made to onomatopoetic words due to the need of a foreperson to coordinate and direct labor being done by groups. When people work, their hands are occupied, they may not be that near to each other, and they may not be able to look away from their immediate workspace. I think of construction workers yelling back and forth to each other at a worksite as a glimpse at language being invented.
jxramos 6y ago
Does anyone know any metrics regarding sheer throughput of words? How efficient is ASL in terms of words per minute vs relaxed speech. I'm thinking of something like comparing typing words per minute vs speech recognition words per minute. Here's some context I quickly found in Wikipedia Audiobooks are recommended to be 150–160 words per minute, which is the range that people comfortably hear and vocalize words.[14] An average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other time-sensitive typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm.[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute
- jxramos 6y ago
  Looks like its in the realm of Yes, you need to be able to "sign" 110-130 wpm. https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/how-fast-should-i-sign.htm https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/how-fast-should-i-si...
t0mbstone 6y ago
Because people like to talk even when they are holding things. Duh.
- woodandsteel 6y ago
  Good point. Like suppose some men are coming back from a successful hunt, and each of them is using both hands to carry a limb cut off from a large animal. Another case: when two people are swimming in deep water.
i_love_lamp 6y ago
I do not believe language began in the hands for a simpler reason than I'm seeing in the rest of the comments here. Here's my armchair philosophy: How do you begin a conversation? You first have to get the other person's attention. You can't get someone's attention with sign language if they are not looking at you. Necessity breeds invention, and the ultimate necessity is survival. If a chimp sees a pack of hyenas coming, she doesn't walk in front of each chimp in her clan and point to the hyenas. Instead she makes some kind of guttural yell to make the clan aware of the danger. The clan then looks at her, and then utilizes body language of her eye tracking or pointing. The most dangerous situations in nature are when one is not aware of a threat because one cannot see it, and vocalization can solve that in ways sign language cannot. This behavior (vocalization used before signing) is exhibited in most social mammals. Assuming we evolved from primates, I'm betting it's likely vocalizations were already an established form of communication before humans as we know them began coming up with more advanced signs, but by that point we likely had more advanced vocalizations as well. Since vocalizations have a better SYN/ACK methodology, it was the easier and more effective form of communication throughout our entire history.
- rikroots 6y ago
  If we're going for some armchair philosophy (with added tinfoil hat) - I agree with all your points. I'll also claim that language developed from vocalisations because humans are excellent at mimicking the sounds they hear around them, and they developed this mimicking ability mainly to impress members of the other sex and, well, the rest is history. Totally unprovable, of course.
adrianmonk 6y ago
The article mentions some possible advantages of speech over gestures: (1) Abstractness (which it debunks, I think successfully). (2) Better in the dark. (3) Frees the hands. (4) Energy usage. There are some others I can think of, too: (5) Not only does it free the hands of the speaker, it frees the eyes of the listener. I can only look in one direction at a time. If you're trying to communicate to me about a task I'm doing which involves looking at something, with gestures I need to shift my gaze to you and then back to what I'm doing. This makes real-time coordination of physical tasks difficult. (6) Distance. If two people are far apart (say, 100 meters), they can shout and be understood. With gestures, that could be possible but only if they involve large movements. Verbal communication can be scaled to large distances with a more straightforward modification. (7) Vision problems are more prevalent and strike at a younger age than hearing problems. What percentage of otherwise-healthy 35 year old people have myopia vs. have hearing loss?
- tgv 6y ago
  (8) Animals communicate mainly via sound. Most don't even have hands.
  - woodandsteel 6y ago
    (9) Talking in a group. It seems to me with gestures you can understand only one person at a time. Though maybe deaf people who use sign language have a good way to handle this.
    - kqr 6y ago
      This is a potential strength of hand signals, too, though. As the article mentions, voice is more of a broadcast medium, while hand signals would be a more discreet multicast kind of thing.
woodandsteel 6y ago
Here's something else that seems to support the gesture-first hypothesis. A friend of mine worked in an institute for severely developmentally children. Many had little or no spoken linguistic ability, but most of them had a considerable ability to learn sign language. That makes me think gesturing came first.

24 points by prostoalex 6y ago

totetsu 6y ago

I wonder if this is related to why it's easy to learn touch typing while saying the keys out loud.

michaelcampbell 6y ago
I didn't know it was. Can you direct me to some research there; I'm curious about that now.
- totetsu 6y ago
  Just speaking of my own experience.
  - michaelcampbell 6y ago
    Fair enough, thanks. I might try that.

lqet 6y ago

> But there is at least one key feature of speech that is harder to dismiss: it takes very little effort. Attempts to measure the caloric expenditures involved in speech report that they are essentially negligible. This is both because the movements involved are so tiny, and because spoken words often hitch a ride on our outgoing breath. (Speaking can be thought of as a way of upcycling an abundant waste-product – air – as it leaves the body.) This is not to say that gesturing or signing is an especially athletic or strenuous endeavour by any means, but it is certainly more expensive than talking – by an order of magnitude at least, Fitch estimates.

rdmcelrath 6y ago

Because you cannot communicate with your hands, and use tools at the same time.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago

There are a ton of problems with hand gestures. One, they're hard to see and blocked by line of sight (voice isn't.) Two, they require hands to be free to communicate (not always the case, and in situations of survival it's probably not doable at all.) Three, they're limited versus voice. Voice has soft and loud and more sounds can be made than variations of hands. More meaning can be ascribed to a sound.

war1025 6y ago
True, but deaf people are able to communicate quite effectively with sign language. So it's not like hands are completely worthless for communication. Plus, in certain cases the "hard to see" is an advantage.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Of course - never implied that this was the case, it is a useful tool, but it's easy to see why we primarily use our voices.
James_Henry 6y ago
The article talks about this and then goes on to point out some of the advantages of signing. The article convincingly argues there's more to this than just your list of problems with hand gestures and the article
kerkeslager 6y ago
> Three, they're limited versus voice. Voice has soft and loud and more sounds can be made than variations of hands. I agree with your first two points, but I have to disagree with you on this third point. Mute your computer and check out the way she provides emphasis in this[1], or the way Lydia Callis signs so expressively[2]. Large motions are like loud exclamations, smooth, slow motions are like a crooning voice, etc. People who sign have a "voice"--a style of signing. Signing without any sort of emphasis or expression is the sign equivalent of speaking in a monotone, and can actually make it harder to understand someone, because these elements communicate a lot of meaning, just as intonation and volume communicate meaning in speech. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P_4D26hApY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P_4D26hApY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5w09Po5bLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5w09Po5bLA

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

It never leaves the hands!! At least for us Italians! We don't speak Italian; we just pretend we have a language so you guys out there don't freak out :) How do you silence an Italian? Tie his hands. </sillyjokes>

deltron3030 6y ago

Maybe because it could leave at some point. Not overnight, but maybe gradually after primitive language or sounds being bundled with gestures for some time. Considering that humanity were hunter gatherers the main topic was likely animals and the weather. I think it grew out of those campfire situations and planning huntings, map making (drawing scenarios on the ground) and then basically animating it with sounds and signs.

kerkeslager 6y ago

One of the things that became really apparent to me during a brief period of dating a hearing-impaired person, was the utility of sign language as a supplement to spoken language. Sign language works better than speech in noisy environments. But this drew my attention to situations where sign language doesn't work: in the dark, around obstacles, when hands are occupied. Guess which situation our ancestors were more frequently confronted with? EDIT: The article does address this, but I'm not sure I buy it. Maybe it's a function of my limited ability with sign, but I don't think signs pressed against the skin are particularly effective, and while our ancestors may have had fires, the most survival-critical situations could be ones where no light is present. I agree that sign remains extremely useful, but I'm skeptical of the claim, "[I]f language had first built a home in the hands, it would have had no compelling reason to leave. Thus, it must have been spoken from the start."

James_Henry 6y ago
The article talks to this. "A second supposed advantage is that speech is better in the dark – that, as Levelt put it, gesture is ‘functionally dead during, on average, 12 hours a day’. This is probably overstated. As Emmorey points out, modern signers get by without much problem, even in dim lighting, and can use tactile forms of signing – that is, signing in contact with another’s skin – in a pinch. Our prehistoric ancestors likely didn’t spend many waking hours in pitch-black. Rather, they would have used fires for warmth, cooking, illumination and protection from predators. And, whether or not there’s anything to Hewes’s palmar depigmentation story, hand movements can certainly be seen by firelight. "Another advantage of speech, it has been argued, is that it frees the hands for other activities. But, here again, this is likely too swift. Signers don’t seem to have much of a problem with this, using one-handed signs when necessary. And though most of what we think of as gesture takes place in the hands, critical visual signals can also be produced with the head and face – pointing, affirming, questioning. The list of putative advantages of speech goes still further. But this kind of ‘rear-view mirror’ reasoning is inherently shaky: we know the outcome and are motivated to explain it."
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > But this kind of ‘rear-view mirror’ reasoning is inherently shaky: we know the outcome and are motivated to explain it." The other side of this, though, is there's presumably some sort of reason, and these ones are plausible. We should be open to more compelling hypotheses, but waiving away "it's good to have two hands free" with "you can sorta get by with one" is "inherently shaky" too. Stuff like grinding corn and butchering game are two-hand jobs, for example. It helps to be able to chat while you do it.

pessimizer 6y ago

Alexander Bogdanov, in The Philosophy of Living Experience (1913) posits a social labor-first basis for most human concepts. He thought that language moved from gestures and imitations of the actual sounds that different labor processes made to onomatopoetic words due to the need of a foreperson to coordinate and direct labor being done by groups. When people work, their hands are occupied, they may not be that near to each other, and they may not be able to look away from their immediate workspace. I think of construction workers yelling back and forth to each other at a worksite as a glimpse at language being invented.

jxramos 6y ago

Does anyone know any metrics regarding sheer throughput of words? How efficient is ASL in terms of words per minute vs relaxed speech. I'm thinking of something like comparing typing words per minute vs speech recognition words per minute. Here's some context I quickly found in Wikipedia Audiobooks are recommended to be 150–160 words per minute, which is the range that people comfortably hear and vocalize words.[14] An average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other time-sensitive typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm.[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

jxramos 6y ago
Looks like its in the realm of Yes, you need to be able to "sign" 110-130 wpm. https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/how-fast-should-i-sign.htm https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/how-fast-should-i-si...

t0mbstone 6y ago

Because people like to talk even when they are holding things. Duh.

woodandsteel 6y ago
Good point. Like suppose some men are coming back from a successful hunt, and each of them is using both hands to carry a limb cut off from a large animal. Another case: when two people are swimming in deep water.

i_love_lamp 6y ago

I do not believe language began in the hands for a simpler reason than I'm seeing in the rest of the comments here. Here's my armchair philosophy: How do you begin a conversation? You first have to get the other person's attention. You can't get someone's attention with sign language if they are not looking at you. Necessity breeds invention, and the ultimate necessity is survival. If a chimp sees a pack of hyenas coming, she doesn't walk in front of each chimp in her clan and point to the hyenas. Instead she makes some kind of guttural yell to make the clan aware of the danger. The clan then looks at her, and then utilizes body language of her eye tracking or pointing. The most dangerous situations in nature are when one is not aware of a threat because one cannot see it, and vocalization can solve that in ways sign language cannot. This behavior (vocalization used before signing) is exhibited in most social mammals. Assuming we evolved from primates, I'm betting it's likely vocalizations were already an established form of communication before humans as we know them began coming up with more advanced signs, but by that point we likely had more advanced vocalizations as well. Since vocalizations have a better SYN/ACK methodology, it was the easier and more effective form of communication throughout our entire history.

rikroots 6y ago
If we're going for some armchair philosophy (with added tinfoil hat) - I agree with all your points. I'll also claim that language developed from vocalisations because humans are excellent at mimicking the sounds they hear around them, and they developed this mimicking ability mainly to impress members of the other sex and, well, the rest is history. Totally unprovable, of course.

adrianmonk 6y ago

The article mentions some possible advantages of speech over gestures: (1) Abstractness (which it debunks, I think successfully). (2) Better in the dark. (3) Frees the hands. (4) Energy usage. There are some others I can think of, too: (5) Not only does it free the hands of the speaker, it frees the eyes of the listener. I can only look in one direction at a time. If you're trying to communicate to me about a task I'm doing which involves looking at something, with gestures I need to shift my gaze to you and then back to what I'm doing. This makes real-time coordination of physical tasks difficult. (6) Distance. If two people are far apart (say, 100 meters), they can shout and be understood. With gestures, that could be possible but only if they involve large movements. Verbal communication can be scaled to large distances with a more straightforward modification. (7) Vision problems are more prevalent and strike at a younger age than hearing problems. What percentage of otherwise-healthy 35 year old people have myopia vs. have hearing loss?

tgv 6y ago
(8) Animals communicate mainly via sound. Most don't even have hands.
- woodandsteel 6y ago
  (9) Talking in a group. It seems to me with gestures you can understand only one person at a time. Though maybe deaf people who use sign language have a good way to handle this.
  - kqr 6y ago
    This is a potential strength of hand signals, too, though. As the article mentions, voice is more of a broadcast medium, while hand signals would be a more discreet multicast kind of thing.

woodandsteel 6y ago

Here's something else that seems to support the gesture-first hypothesis. A friend of mine worked in an institute for severely developmentally children. Many had little or no spoken linguistic ability, but most of them had a considerable ability to learn sign language. That makes me think gesturing came first.