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BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 432
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 432 – PASSAGE – 3
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 432
READING PASSAGE – 3
How human language could have evolved from birdsong
Linguistics and biology researchers propose a new theory on the deep roots of human speech.
‘The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language,’ Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man (1871), while contemplating how humans learned to speak. Language, he speculated, might have had its origins in singing, which ‘might have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions.’
Now researchers from MIT, along with a scholar from the University of Tokyo, say that Darwin was on the right path. The balance of evidence, they believe, suggests that human language is a grafting of two communication forms found elsewhere in the animal kingdom: first, the elaborate songs of birds, and second, the more utilitarian, information bearing types of expression seen in a diversity of other animals. ‘It’s this adventitious combination that triggered human language,’ says Shigeru Miyagawa, a professor of linguistics in MIT’s Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, and co-author of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
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The idea builds upon Miyagawa’s conclusion, detailed in his previous work, that there are two ‘layers’ in all human languages: an ‘expression’ layer, which involves the changeable organisation of sentences, and a ‘lexical’ layer, which relates to the core content of a sentence. His conclusion is based on earlier work by linguists including Noam Chomsky, Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser.
Based on an analysis of animal communication, and using Miyagawa’s framework, the authors say that birdsong closely resembles the expression layer of human sentences, whereas the communicative waggles of bees or the short, audible messages of primates are more like the lexical layer. At some point, between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago, humans may have merged these two types of expression into a uniquely sophisticated form of language.
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‘There were these two pre-existing systems,’ Miyagawa says, ‘like apples and oranges that just happened to be put together.’ These kinds of adaptations of existing structures are common in natural history, notes Robert Berwick, a co-author of the paper, who is a professor of computational linguistics in MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. ‘When something new evolves, it is often built out of old parts,’ he says. ‘We see this over and over again in evolution. Old structures can change just a little bit, and acquire radically new functions.’
The new paper, ‘The Emergence of Hierarchical Structure in Human Language,’ was co-written by Miyagawa, Berwick and Kazuo Okanoya, a bio-psychologist and expert on animal communication. To consider the difference between the expression layer and the lexical layer, take a simple sentence: ‘Todd saw a condor.’ We can easily create variations of this, such as, ‘When did Todd see a condor?’ This rearranging of elements takes place in the expression layer and allows us to add complexity and ask questions. But the lexical I.ayer remains the same, since it involves the same core elements: the subject, ‘Todd,’ the verb, ‘to see,’ and the object, ‘condor.’
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Birdsong lacks a lexical structure. Instead, birds sing learned melodies with what Berwick calls a ‘holistic’ structure; the entire song has one meaning, whether about mating, territory or other things. The Bengalese finch, as the authors note, can loop back to parts of previous melodies, allowing for greater variation and communication of more things; a nightingale may be able to recite from 100 to 200 different melodies.
By contrast, other types of animals have bare-bones modes of expression without the same melodic capacity. Bees communicate visually, using precise waggles to indicate sources of foods to their peers; other primates can make a range of sounds, comprising warnings about predators and other messages.
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Humans, according to Miyagawa, Berwick and Okanoya, fruitfully combined these systems. We can communicate essential information, like bees or primates, but like birds, we also have a melodic capacity and an ability to recombine parts of our uttered language. For this reason, our finite vocabularies can generate a seemingly infinite string of words. Indeed, the researchers suggest that humans first had the ability to sing, as Darwin conjectured, and then managed to integrate specific lexical elements into those songs. ‘It’s not a very long step to say that what got joined together was the ability to construct these complex patterns, like a song, but with words,’ Berwick says.
As they note in the paper, some of the ‘striking parallels’ between language acquisition in birds and humans include the phase of life when each is best at picking up languages, and the part of the brain used for language. Another similarity as Berwick puts it is that ‘all human languages have a finite number of stress patterns, a certain number of beat patterns. Well, in birdsong, there is also this limited number of beat patterns.’
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Norbert Hornstein, a professor of linguistics at the University of Maryland, says the paper has been ‘very well received’ among linguists, and ‘perhaps will be the standard go-to paper for language-birdsong comparison for the next five years.’ He adds that he would like to see further comparison of birdsong and sound production in human language, as well as more neuroscientific research, pertaining to both birds and humans, to see how brains are structured for making sounds.
The researchers acknowledge that further empirical studies on the subject would be desirable. ‘It’s just a hypothesis,’ Berwick says. ‘But it’s a way to make explicit what Darwin was talking about very vaguely, because we know more about language now.’ Miyagawa, for his part, asserts it is a viable idea in part because it could be subject to more scrutiny, as the communication patterns of other species are examined in further detail. ‘If this is right, then human language has a precursor in nature, in evolution, that we can actually test today,’ he says, adding that bees, birds and other primates could all be sources of further research insight.
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MIT-based research in linguistics has largely been characterised by the search for universal aspects of all human languages. With this paper, Miyagawa, Berwick and Okanoya hope to spur others to think of the universality of language in evolutionary terms. It is not just a random cultural construct, they say, but based in part on capacities humans share with other species.
At the same time, Miyagawa notes, human language is unique, in that two independent systems in nature merged, in our species, to allow us to generate unbounded linguistic possibilities, albeit within a constrained system. ‘Human language is not just freeform, it’s rule-based,’ Miyagawa says. ‘If we are right, human language has a very heavy constraint on what it can and cannot do, based on its antecedents in nature.’
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Questions 27-29
Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.
27. Who initially identified similarities between human language and birdsong?
28. What do most animals wish to convey through the sounds they make?
29. Which word in the second paragraph is used to emphasise that the development of human language probably happened by chance?
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Questions 30-35
Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-J from the box below.
Write the correct letter A-Jin boxes 27-34 on your answer sheet.
30. Birdsong
31 The waggle of bees
32. Human language
33. The expression layer of human language
34. The lexical layer of human language
35. Melody
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A. is as complex as human language.
B. is characterised by form changes that express different meaning.
C. is principally used to indicate danger.
D. conveys simple but clear messages.
E. consists of relatively few components.
F. is an essential ingredient of birdsong.
G. conveys both emotional and practical concepts.
H. is relatively complex compared to language used by other animals.
I. existed before birdsong.
J. is less well understood than other forms of communication.
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Questions 36-38
Use ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Norbert Hornstein admits that 36 ……………. are complimentary about the paper but would like to see more investigation. He would especially like to know more about the formation of both bird and human 37 ……………. . Miyagawa, Berwick and Okanoya agree that further research now needs to be 38 ……………. rather than theoretical.
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Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
39. Miyagawa, Berwick and Okanoya want their research to
A. give people the confidence to challenge theories of evolution.
B. persuade people that early humans imitated birds.
C. help people appreciate the achievements of mankind.
D. encourage people to understand more about how language has evolved in humans and animals.
40. What is the conclusion that can be drawn from reading this passage?
A. Birdsong is more complex than most people would imagine.
B. Humans probably sang before they talked.
C. Human language is less sophisticated than we tend to believe.
D. Insufficient research has been conducted into the origins of human language.
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ANSWERS
27. CHARLES DARWIN
28. INFORMATION
29. ADVENTITIOUS
30. H
31. D
32. G
33. B
34. E
35. F
36. LINGUISTS
37. BRAINS
38. EMPIRICAL
39. D
40. B
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