Linguistics

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A 65-year-old linguistics framework challenged by modern research (phys.org)

submitted 1 month ago by cm0002@lemmy.cafe to c/linguistics@mander.xyz

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In a re-evaluation of Hockett's foundational features that have long dominated linguistic theory—concepts like "arbitrariness," "duality of patterning," and "displacement"—an international team of linguists and cognitive scientists shows that modern science demands a radical shift in how we understand language and how it evolved.

The conclusion? Language is not a spoken code. It's a dynamic, multimodal, socially embedded system that evolves through interaction, culture, and meaning-making.

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 points 1 month ago

A few of those developments are well consistent with what people already knew; it's only a matter of tidying it up into a new or updated framework, and that's what the paper is trying to.

For example. Hockett puts some "hard" barrier between human language and non-human communication. Nowadays we know it's more like a gradient; like, we can agree something like the song of a whale is not language yet, but closer to it than the whimper of a dog, right?

Multimodality (or: how human language uses multiple channels at the same time, not just audio) is also something a bit obvious. Specially for those from cultures where gestures are common; you can convey multiple meanings through the same voice sentence, depending on the gestures and expressions you use.

Challenges outdated textbook narratives that equate language with speech.

Speaking on that: it always makes me roll my eyes when people compare sign languages with dancing bees. That's as silly as comparing voice languages with crickets, for roughly the same reasons.