Month: February 2018

Monkeys Swinging Through Trees and Your Ability to Parse this Sentence

On By Gabriella L. GarlockIn language, writing3 Comments

Fun Language Factoid

Some of my favorite ideas about the brain and language are posited in Robert Ornstein’s book The Evolution of Consciousness: the Origins of the Way We Think. His fascinating theories about the evolution of the human brain are back-engineered from its amazing structural advantages today (e.g., we walk upright in part because it’s air conditioning for the fast-growing human brain. Oh, and humans have bigger butts than most mammals in order for them to walk upright.)

Check it out

The brain region primates developed to coordinate the complex sequences of movements needed to swing through trees is the very part later co-opted for language. The hominid brain expanded rapidly for other skills long before language developed, but when language did become necessary, it was possible because that part of the primate brain was ready and waiting to adapt to the similar task.

Reading this very sentence requires an ability to use rhythm and to suspend understanding until the completion of a task. Our ability to anticipate then assimilate input is what allows us to construct complex grammar.

I wonder if it works on a smaller scale. Is my lifelong love of languages enhanced because I spent most of first and second grade recess on the monkey bars?

One Discovery Can Change All of History

On By Gabriella L. GarlockIn history, language, writingLeave a comment

This is a really nice example of how a single discovery or breakthrough can change all of history. Of course, the iconoclasts who love the existing history books have to be flexible and allow it to happen! Cracking the Rosetta Stone: BIG, big deal.  Dead Sea Scrolls: not as earth-shattering as you might think. Go figure.

We’ve had the Voynich manuscript in our hot little hands for centuries, yet because no one had cracked the code, we haven’t known exactly what it was we had. Now because of computers, that may all finally change. As was noted in Star Trek: the Next Generation, “As far as we know, it might just be a recipe for biscuits” (The Chase).

But it will be fun to finally find out.