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The Role of Prehistoric Mothers in Evolution of Language

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The Leakey Foundation

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Partner:: Leakey Foundation
Location:: California Academy of Sciences
San Francisco, CA
Event Date:: 04.28.12
Speaker:: Dean Falk
Tags:: language; women; female; motherhood; mother

Summary: Clues about the emergence of protolanguage appear every day in the interactions between modern parents and their infants. Parents the world over speak to infants in a special way—known as baby talk, musical speech, or motherese, which helps them acquire their native language. This presentation considers how and why motherese may have been invented by prehistoric mothers and their infants, and the possible role of infant-directed speech in the origin of language."

Bio

Dean Falk

Dean Falk is an evolutionary anthropologist who splits her time between Santa Fe, New Mexico where she is a Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research (SAR), and Tallahassee, Florida where she is the Hale G. Smith Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University. Her work focuses on the evolution of the human brain and cognition. Recent projects include collaborative research on Homo floresiensis (â€œHobbitâ€) and an investigation of the brain of Albert Einstein.

Chapters

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26 min 23 sec

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01.: Gender Roles in Language Development

02 min 18 sec

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02.: Brain Growth in Man and Chimpanzee

02 min 16 sec

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03.: The Obstetric Dilemma

02 min 00 sec

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04.: Differences Between Human and Chimpanzee Infants

02 min 58 sec

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05.: Prehistoric Consequences of Obstetric Dilemma

00 min 42 sec

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06.: Motherese

02 min 26 sec

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07.: 'Putting the Baby Down' Hypothesis

02 min 21 sec

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08.: Language Emerges from Motherese

00 min 58 sec

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09.: Babies' Crying Evolved

01 min 29 sec

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10.: How Did the First Words Spread?

01 min 58 sec

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11.: Development Parallels Between Language and Art

01 min 58 sec

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12.: Importance of Fathers

01 min 25 sec

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13.: Conclusion

03 min 35 sec

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: Watch Full Program

26 min 23 sec

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Dean Falk's 'Putting the Baby Down' Hypothesis

02 min 32 sec

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Evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk posits her theory of the origin of baby talk, which she calls the “Putting the Baby Down” hypothesis.
Watch Full Program

26 min 23 sec

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Encyclopædia Britannica Article

human evolution: Evolution of modern human beings from extinct nonhuman and humanlike forms. Genetic evidence points to an evolutionary divergence between the lineages of humans and the great apes on the African continent 8–5 million years ago (mya). The earliest fossils considered to be remains of hominins (members of the human lineage) date to at least 4 mya in Africa; they include the genus Australopithecus and other forms. The next major evolutionary stage, Homo habilis, inhabited sub-Saharan Africa about 2–1.5 mya. Homo habilis appears to have been supplanted by a taller and more humanlike species, Homo erectus, which lived from c. 1,700,000 to 200,000 years ago, gradually migrating into Asia and parts of Europe. Between c. 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis, sometimes called archaic Homo sapiens, lived in Africa, Europe, and perhaps parts of Asia. Having features resembling those of both H. erectus and modern humans, H. heidelbergensis may have been an ancestor of modern humans and also of the Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis), who inhabited Europe and western Asia from c. 200,000 to 28,000 years ago. Fully modern humans (H. sapiens) seem to have emerged in Africa only c. 150,000 years ago, perhaps having descended directly from H. erectus or from an intermediate species such as H. heidelbergensis.; human evolution on britannica.com