
If language began in the hands, why did it ever leave? - prostoalex
https://aeon.co/essays/if-language-began-in-the-hands-why-did-it-ever-leave?MvBriefArticleId=20602
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kerkeslager
One of the things that became really apparent to me during a brief period of
dating a hearing-impaired person, was the utility of sign language as a
supplement to spoken language. Sign language works better than speech in noisy
environments.

But this drew my attention to situations where sign language _doesn 't_ work:
in the dark, around obstacles, when hands are occupied.

Guess which situation our ancestors were more frequently confronted with?

EDIT: The article does address this, but I'm not sure I buy it. Maybe it's a
function of my limited ability with sign, but I don't think signs pressed
against the skin are particularly effective, and while our ancestors may have
had fires, the most survival-critical situations could be ones where no light
is present. I agree that sign remains extremely useful, but I'm skeptical of
the claim, "[I]f language had first built a home in the hands, it would have
had no compelling reason to leave. Thus, it must have been spoken from the
start."

~~~
SilasX
Naive question: I thought seeing in the dark was _easier_ pre-electricity
because there was no “light pollution” and everything was lit up uniformly, so
you could see well enough outdoors once your eyes adjusted, based on moon- and
starlight?

That is, above some threshold, the main barrier is contrast, not dimness?

~~~
tgv
Then you should be able to see even better now, since there is more light.

The places I've visited where light pollution is low, are really, really dark
at night.

~~~
SilasX
Maybe my point wasn't clear? To the extent that we have difficulty seeing
unassisted in dark today, it's because:

1) There are many artificial sources of light, which creates a sharp contrast.
If the stuff near those sources is illuminated, everything else becomes harder
to see.

2) You spend very little time outside, so even when there isn't a sharp
contrast, you haven't waited for your eyes to adjust.

Obviously, _given_ artificial illumination _where we want it_ , stuff is
easier to see.

See sibling reply about navigating by moonlight remote places.

~~~
tgv
Ad 1. Background light pollution doesn't create a sharp contrast. But it's
irrelevant, since that's something so recent that it can't have any influence
on this topic.

2\. Where it's really dark, you can't see. Period. No amount of waiting will
help.

~~~
SilasX
1\. Yes, that's why I put "light pollution" in quotes with a clarification,
because I wasn't using it in the sense it's generally used (the kind that
affects your ability to see stars), and describing a different mode of
pollution (of pockets of light that leave other areas much darker and thus
hard to see because of the high contrast).

2\. Hence the last paragraph of my original post, that you do need some
minimum level of light. I was specifically speaking about conditions above
some minimal threshold.

Is there a better way I could have said either of those things so you wouldn't
miss them?

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i_love_lamp
I do not believe language began in the hands for a simpler reason than I'm
seeing in the rest of the comments here. Here's my armchair philosophy:

How do you begin a conversation? You first have to get the other person's
attention. You can't get someone's attention with sign language if they are
not looking at you.

Necessity breeds invention, and the ultimate necessity is survival. If a chimp
sees a pack of hyenas coming, she doesn't walk in front of each chimp in her
clan and point to the hyenas. Instead she makes some kind of guttural yell to
make the clan aware of the danger. The clan then looks at her, and _then_
utilizes body language of her eye tracking or pointing. The most dangerous
situations in nature are when one is not aware of a threat because one cannot
see it, and vocalization can solve that in ways sign language cannot. This
behavior (vocalization used before signing) is exhibited in most social
mammals.

Assuming we evolved from primates, I'm betting it's likely vocalizations were
already an established form of communication before humans as we know them
began coming up with more advanced signs, but by that point we likely had more
advanced vocalizations as well. Since vocalizations have a better SYN/ACK
methodology, it was the easier and more effective form of communication
throughout our entire history.

~~~
rikroots
If we're going for some armchair philosophy (with added tinfoil hat) - I agree
with all your points. I'll also claim that language developed from
vocalisations because humans are excellent at mimicking the sounds they hear
around them, and they developed this mimicking ability mainly to impress
members of the other sex and, well, the rest is history.

Totally unprovable, of course.

------
simonebrunozzi
It never leaves the hands!! At least for us Italians!

We don't speak Italian; we just pretend we have a language so you guys out
there don't freak out :)

How do you silence an Italian? Tie his hands.

</sillyjokes>

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adrianmonk
The article mentions some possible advantages of speech over gestures:

(1) Abstractness (which it debunks, I think successfully).

(2) Better in the dark.

(3) Frees the hands.

(4) Energy usage.

There are some others I can think of, too:

(5) Not only does it free the hands of the speaker, it frees the eyes of the
listener. I can only look in one direction at a time. If you're trying to
communicate to me about a task I'm doing which involves looking at something,
with gestures I need to shift my gaze to you and then back to what I'm doing.
This makes real-time coordination of physical tasks difficult.

(6) Distance. If two people are far apart (say, 100 meters), they can shout
and be understood. With gestures, that could be possible but only if they
involve large movements. Verbal communication can be scaled to large distances
with a more straightforward modification.

(7) Vision problems are more prevalent and strike at a younger age than
hearing problems. What percentage of otherwise-healthy 35 year old people have
myopia vs. have hearing loss?

~~~
tgv
(8) Animals communicate mainly via sound. Most don't even have hands.

~~~
woodandsteel
(9) Talking in a group. It seems to me with gestures you can understand only
one person at a time. Though maybe deaf people who use sign language have a
good way to handle this.

~~~
kqr
This is a potential strength of hand signals, too, though. As the article
mentions, voice is more of a broadcast medium, while hand signals would be a
more discreet multicast kind of thing.

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pessimizer
Alexander Bogdanov, in _The Philosophy of Living Experience_ (1913) posits a
social labor-first basis for most human concepts. He thought that language
moved from gestures and imitations of the actual sounds that different labor
processes made to onomatopoetic words due to the need of a foreperson to
coordinate and direct labor being done by groups.

When people work, their hands are occupied, they may not be that near to each
other, and they may not be able to look away from their immediate workspace.

I think of construction workers yelling back and forth to each other at a
worksite as a glimpse at language being invented.

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ntsplnkv2
There are a ton of problems with hand gestures.

One, they're hard to see and blocked by line of sight (voice isn't.)

Two, they require hands to be free to communicate (not always the case, and in
situations of survival it's probably not doable at all.)

Three, they're limited versus voice. Voice has soft and loud and more sounds
can be made than variations of hands. More meaning can be ascribed to a sound.

~~~
kerkeslager
> Three, they're limited versus voice. Voice has soft and loud and more sounds
> can be made than variations of hands.

I agree with your first two points, but I have to disagree with you on this
third point. Mute your computer and check out the way she provides emphasis in
this[1], or the way Lydia Callis signs so expressively[2]. Large motions are
like loud exclamations, smooth, slow motions are like a crooning voice, etc.
People who sign have a "voice"\--a style of signing. Signing without any sort
of emphasis or expression is the sign equivalent of speaking in a monotone,
and can actually make it harder to understand someone, because these elements
communicate a lot of meaning, just as intonation and volume communicate
meaning in speech.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P_4D26hApY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P_4D26hApY)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5w09Po5bLA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5w09Po5bLA)

~~~
ntsplnkv2
Of course - I never said there was no expression in sign language. But I don't
think that expression has as many degrees of freedom as using voice. Plus as
the article said - it's tiresome.

~~~
kerkeslager
_shrug_ I suppose it's a bit silly to argue over a spectrum of expression, but
I'd say that the Lose Yourself video shows someone communicating in sign with
a level of expressiveness that verbal speakers rarely achieve. Now granted,
that's comparing an above-average signer to average speakers, so it's not a
fair comparison. Perhaps a better comparison would be between the signer and
the original artist (Eminem). But if advanced signers can compete with
advanced speakers for expressiveness, I think it's hard to argue that sign is
less expressive.

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woodandsteel
Here's something else that seems to support the gesture-first hypothesis. A
friend of mine worked in an institute for severely developmentally children.
Many had little or no spoken linguistic ability, but most of them had a
considerable ability to learn sign language. That makes me think gesturing
came first.

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jxramos
Does anyone know any metrics regarding sheer throughput of words? How
efficient is ASL in terms of words per minute vs relaxed speech. I'm thinking
of something like comparing typing words per minute vs speech recognition
words per minute.

Here's some context I quickly found in Wikipedia

    
    
        Audiobooks are recommended to be 150–160 words per minute, which is the range that people comfortably hear and vocalize words.[14]
        An average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other time-sensitive typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm.[4] 
    

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute)

~~~
jxramos
Looks like its in the realm of

    
    
        Yes, you need to be able to "sign" 110-130 wpm.

[https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/how-fast-should-i-
si...](https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/how-fast-should-i-sign.htm)

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totetsu
I wonder if this is related to why it's easy to learn touch typing while
saying the keys out loud.

~~~
michaelcampbell
I didn't know it was. Can you direct me to some research there; I'm curious
about that now.

~~~
totetsu
Just speaking of my own experience.

~~~
michaelcampbell
Fair enough, thanks. I might try that.

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lqet
> But there is at least one key feature of speech that is harder to dismiss:
> it takes very little effort. Attempts to measure the caloric expenditures
> involved in speech report that they are essentially negligible. This is both
> because the movements involved are so tiny, and because spoken words often
> hitch a ride on our outgoing breath. (Speaking can be thought of as a way of
> upcycling an abundant waste-product – air – as it leaves the body.) This is
> not to say that gesturing or signing is an especially athletic or strenuous
> endeavour by any means, but it is certainly more expensive than talking – by
> an order of magnitude at least, Fitch estimates.

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deltron3030
Maybe because it could leave at some point. Not overnight, but maybe gradually
after primitive language or sounds being bundled with gestures for some time.
Considering that humanity were hunter gatherers the main topic was likely
animals and the weather. I think it grew out of those campfire situations and
planning huntings, map making (drawing scenarios on the ground) and then
basically animating it with sounds and signs.

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t0mbstone
Because people like to talk even when they are holding things.

Duh.

~~~
woodandsteel
Good point. Like suppose some men are coming back from a successful hunt, and
each of them is using both hands to carry a limb cut off from a large animal.

Another case: when two people are swimming in deep water.

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rdmcelrath
Because you cannot communicate with your hands, and use tools at the same
time.

