The language-thought-hand link and the origin of language
David McNeill
McNeill Lab - Center for Gesture and Speech Research
Dept. of Linguistics, Dept. of Psychology, University of Chicago
Montag, 23.05.2005, 16 Uhr c.t., H 10
This talk highlights the case of a man, known as IW, who was suddenly
deafferented from the neck down at the age of 19, and has since
taught himself to control his movements in a new way, with vision and
cognition. IW can move well so long as he can see, but without
vision instrumental or 'transitive' actions are impossible. Yet under
these same conditions he performs gestures that are accurate both
semantically and temporally. The resulting dissociation of gesture
from action suggests a dedicated 'thought-language-hand link' in the
human brain. From this possible link, I argue that the evolution of
language could in part have been the establishment of a new kind of
action whereby meanings other than the actions themselves came to
co-opt motion, an idea going back to Condillac and (outstandingly)
Vygotsky. I conclude with an evolutionary scenario for selecting
this co-opting of action that emphasizes the role of gesture in the
origins story as a vehicle of socially-referenced meanings, but in
which, unlike the currently fashionable 'gesture-first' theory, the
ability to control speech and gesture had to be jointly evolved.
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