Re: why space opera won't fly (long)

Harry Erwin wrote:
Tim S <Tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Richard Kennaway wrote:
John Roth <JohnRoth1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If you're talking about the evolution of speech, you're talking about
something that there's almost no evidence about. The Church of
Chomsky, for example, up until recently denied that speech could
possibly have evolved. Their "syntax is everything" approach didn't
allow a gradual acquisition.
How did they think it came into existence? Divine creation? Alien
space bats? A Mystery not to be enquired about?

The force of necessity.

Tim

I don't know what 'they' think, but there appear to be neurons in monkey
cortex that specialise in detecting behaviours, either in self or in
others and that feed the input areas of the basal ganglia. This sets up
a mechanism for learning the values of behaviours by imitation.

That's interesting -- but it tells us less about behaviour than the study of actual behaviour.

One of
the regions that does this becomes a speech area in humans.

OK, so they possibly observe and imitate one another's mouth movements.

That is,
human speech appears to have originated in metaphorical signalling.

What?


Also, audible signals are adaptive for grassland foragers, as they can
be used to communicate at longer distances than gestures.

That's even more true in a forest, on account of the trees ...

Tim
.

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