Roots of Language Run Deeper Than Speech
The rules of grammar you follow while speaking may not reflect what you're thinking.
In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that speakers of subject-verb-object languages -- "Bill eats cake" -- reverted to a subject-object-verb form when asked to communicate with their hands.
"Bill cake eats" may sound counterintuitive to an ear weaned on English or any of the one-half of human languages that modify subjects with verbs, but it appears to follow the natural order of our cognition.
"This may reflect the real thought that comes before language," said study co-author Susan Goldin-Meadow, a University of Chicago psychologist. "It seems pretty natural."
Goldin-Meadow's team asked forty people -- ten speakers apiece of English, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish, each of which follows the SVO order, and ten speakers of Turkish, which follows an SOV order -- to describe a series of simple actions, such as a girl turning a knob, with gestures.
Regardless of their native language, the subjects almost universally preceded object with verb: girl knob turns.
"We expected that the language they spoke would influence the language of their gestures, but it didn't," said Goldin-Meadow.
To test whether the subjects used subject-object-verb as a communicative strategy, they were given a series of illustrated transparencies, each depicting one element of a scene, and told that order was irrelevant: the final layered montage would look the same regardless of its assembly. The subjects still put object before verb.
"It almost speaks to the independence of language from thought," said Goldin-Meadow.
The implications of these unexpected results aren't yet clear. Speakers of subject-verb-object languages may actually experience a constant low-level cognitive stress from translating their thoughts into less-intuitive speech patterns, though Goldin-Meadow said it would likely be so tiny as to be undetectable.
However, such a cognitive load could become more apparent in neurologically damaged children, or in children who have trouble learning a subject-verb-object language.
"There's no evidence for this," she cautioned, "but maybe looking at
kids with problems is the first step. Maybe we could understand that
the child is thinking in a different way, and teach them a translation
strategy."
The natural order of events: How speakers of different languages represent events nonverbally [PNAS]
Image: Paul Wicks
See Also:
- Babies See Pure Color, but Adults Peer Through Prism of Language
- Humans and Chimpanzees Share Roots of Language
- Evolution of Language Parallels Evolution of Species
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.
"Regardless of their native language, the subjects almost universally preceded object with verb: girl knob turns."
This sentence is semantically incorrect. It should read:
""Regardless of their native language, the subjects almost universally preceded verb with object: girl knob turns."
This is because the phrase "preceded X with Y" is logically equivalent to saying "Y precedes X."
So, they ask people to express themselves by gesturing, and then they are surprised when the subjects decide to first point at all the things involved (in order to narrow down the problem) and THEN illustrate the relationship between them. Gee, what a discovery. When is Captain Obvious when you need him?
On a related note, did they bother including some deaf-mute people in the experiment? As in, someone who uses gestures as a native language?
It would be interesting to know if they differentiated between physical and nonphysical subject/objects being communicated, i.e. is "Bill likes pizza" different from "Bill likes running".
What seems more plausible is that people are putting the object before the verb in order to disambiguate their gesture for verb, which I would suspect would be more likely to be ambiguous than the gestures for subject or object. This is because they do not gesture in their spoken language, and so are not using linguistic signs but rather ad hoc gestures, and cannot rely on having their gestures understood reliably in the way that a deaf signer could.
@ Brandon Keim -- The link to the PNAS article doesn't work - it leads to a "page not found" message.
@atomic: thx
-
@felix: they've found SOV in other work on communities of deaf people who invented their own gestural language independently.
-
@me: interesting
-
@Reader: will look into that
Experiencing cognitive stress based on word order? That's a pretty bizarre hypothesis. Imo, it's just that primary feature of gesture communication is that there's you lack a standardized set of words and definitions, so it's important to group the same types of words together (nouns with nouns, verbs with verbs) instead of jumping back and forth between nouns and verbs.
.
But in regular speech, SOV order can actually become more ambiguous than SVO, because the more complex a sentence becomes, the more difficult it is to tell when the subject ends and the object begins. SVO languages solve that problem by slipping the verb in between the subject and the object. If you look at an SOV language like Japanese, they "tag" their words with particles that denote which is the subject and which is the direct/indirect object.
@Memo
I'm no linguist but...
Looking at it from a natural perspective the simpler form would be instinctual. Is SOV more simple than SVO? What about other apes? Do they communicate SOV or SVO?
It seems the more I read about different areas of mental research the more obvious it is that the brain works on layers. Complexity is layered on top of lower proven functions. The same should be true with language. If gesturing at a person, then object then action is common in apes it's probably a basis in our communication too. Complexity is then added to extend that natural communication system.
Then again maybe I'm looking at it to simply.
nice job i like it
jasmine celion
cool-hotstuff.blogspot.com
My first reaction was this is the basic Latin sentence structure which many Romance languages still retain. But they also have more tenses and declensions, making it obvious which noun is what piled in front of the verb. In English, with its simpler Ts & Ds, position determines function.
And maybe the "other half" are this way because it is cognitively easier.
These comments are very, very good. I looked at this paper, and thought 'Eureka!' but maybe I was too hasty.
Eric Y.: You should have known that the local paper wouldn't print that classified ad.
Sinclair (addressing Sammie) :What were you going to write:
Sammie (laughing) : Only 7 words. "Aardvark you liar. I returned that movie."
Sinclair: That is so stupid. What did they say?
Sammie: Two of the three people in there were laughing their asses off. The old lady who got all my information before asking me what the ad would say did not think it was so funny.
Sinclair: Did you experience some low-level cognitive stress translating your thoughts?
Sammie: Hell no. It felt good.
Eric Y.: What kind of video store name is Aardvark?
Sammie: I did what they said. I wrote a letter to the editor instead.
Jay Whitlow: What did it say?
Sammie: That "Strangers with Candy" was turned in on time not 35 days late and that they should aim before emptying out their clip with "call the Sheriff's office" who would "turn it over to the Attorney Genral's office".
Jay Whitlow: They would really do that?
Sammie: Yeah. When I first moved to this small town before getting internet and netflix I had a Leavenworth address. They don't rent outside of the small town because the sheriff's office won't go all the way to Leavenworth.
Eric Y.: That's crazy.
Sammie: Small town busniess are stupid. You have to rent 50 movies or pay a deposit before renting a video game.
Sinclair: If they print your letter to the editor it will be the stupidest letter to the editor ever.
Sammie: That was the point.