Abstract
In recent years there has been much conjecture on the origins of language, and it has been suggested that current linguistic phenomena such as motherese, pidgin languages or homesigns created by deaf children of non-signing parents offer us a window on the origins and evolution of language. This paper seeks to show that spontaneous spoken language (in this case, English) can also be seen as a window on language evolution. Drawing on work by Deacon (1997) on symbolic communication, and on the mirror neuron hypothesis first proposed by Arbib and others (see Rizzolatti and Arbib 1998; Arbib 2005), the paper uses data from the British National Corpus to suggest that spontaneous spoken language still bears the imprint of the ‘nonvocal symbolic forms’ that supported early language (Deacon 1997: 353), and is strongly oriented toward the ‘actions together with … objects acted on and … locations toward which actions are directed’ of the mirror system (Feldman and Narayanan 2004: 385–386). It is concluded that spontaneous spoken English, in its use of indexical function words (Deacon 1997: 299) and action/location (multi-word) verbs, illustrates clearly what Saussure calls ‘l'essence double du langage.’
About the author
Robin Melrose (b. 1945). His research interests include neural processing of language, critical discourse analysis, interface between linguistics and literary theory, and analysing indeterminacy in language. His publications include ‘Conflict and social man: The role of the ‘unconscious’ in meaning making’ (2003); ‘How a neurological account of language can be reconciled with a linguist's account of language: The case of systemic-functional linguistics’ (2005); ‘Text semantics and the ideological patterning of texts’ (2005); and ‘Sites and parasites of meaning: Browning's “My Last Duchess” ’ (in press).
© Walter de Gruyter