1. A comparative study of two works on the origin of human language
Cally Harris and Brian Oleniacz
Slav 109

2. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition
Michael Tomasello:
The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition
Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner:
The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities
(Ashley’s book)

3. Review of Cultural Origins:
Because 6 million years is too short an amount of time for culture to develop in the genome, the “Ratchet Effect” is a more plausible explanation for the development of culture in humans.

4. Review:
Because 6 million years is too short an amount of time for culture to develop in the genome, the “Ratchet Effect” is a more plausible explanation for the development of culture in humans.
The Ratchet Effect is the theory that small cultural advancements built upon each other to the point that sophisticated language was possible, or that changes in imitative behavior can be preserved generationally.

5. Review:
- Humans are able to understand underlying forces, intentions, and other humans as intentional beings

6. Review:
Humans are able to understand underlying forces, intentions, and other humans as intentional beings
Other primates are able to communicate, predict behavior, and even have relationships, but still have no ability to acknowledge other primates as intentional beings.

7. Review:
Humans are able to understand underlying forces, intentions, and other humans as intentional beings
Other primates are able to communicate, predict behavior, and even have relationships, but still have no ability to acknowledge other primates as intentional beings.
This difference between humans and other primates hinges on the ability of humans to percieve others as being likeminded with themselves as intentional beings.

8. The Way We Think by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner
Fauconnier and Turner reference the Upper Paleolithic era, 50,000 years ago, as when humans developed an unprecedented ability to innovate

9. The Way We Think
Fauconnier and Turner reference the Upper Paleolithic era, 50,000 years ago, as when humans developed an unprecedented ability to innovate
The emergence of imagination, based on conceptual blending, allowed for the emergence of art, science, culture, and language.

10. Tomasello vs. Fauconnier & Turner
All believe that the human species managed to win out evolutionarily as a result of the genetic development of a cognitive ability which in turn allowed for cultural evolution

11. This cultural evolution stands in opposition to ideas such as Noam Chomsky’s, who insinuates that the entire grammar of a universal understanding of language is coded for in the genome

12. Tomasello’s origin of language
Language evolved culturally as a result of the passing of signs between individuals as a means of shifting each other’s attention to a common object
(joint attentional event)

14. Fauconnier & Turner
Language evolved through a crude symbolic system which, because it was so difficult to use, caused natural selection to favor those who could understand it.

15. As the users of these crude symbols evolved, their symbols evolved, too, and their language became more advanced.
(dual inheritance theory)
(genetics + culture)

16. Fauconnier and Turner are convinced that conceptual blending is the key to humanity’s success, and that they are it’s uncoverers.

17. Blending
Blend: taking two ‘factually,’ ‘conceptually’ or ‘objectively’ unrelated concepts and establishing a connection between them using the imagination to bind them together in some way to produce a new conception of some kind.

18. The Way We Think purports that conceptual blends are behind every major human accomplishment as a species.
Conceptual blends are behind the use of words/signs to contain meaning

19. Synthesis of the two
It is possible to represent Tomasello’s ‘joint attentional event’ as a blend, thus showing that Tomasello, Fauconnier and Turner are in agreement about the basic processes at work that created the possibility for language to evolve

21. Bibliography
Tomasello, Michael. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Harvard University Press. Cambridge: 1999
Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. Basic Books. New York: 2002