A multimodal and socio-semiotic theory of early language evolution

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a multimodal and socio-semiotic theory of early evolution of language. It argues that the evolution of spoken language was multimodal but that the emergence of its experiential meanings, including those of transitivity, as well as of the associated semantic and formal units, was helped by similar meanings and units being formed earlier and more easily in gestures. The role of rhythm in this process is also discussed. The indexical quality of early gestural-vocal communication, including that about displaced contexts, is explained by reference to the social organization of groups of early humans.

KEYWORDS:

• Multimodal
• socio-semiotic
• language evolution
• gestures
• iconic
• indexical

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I consider the relationship between spoken language and speech to be of instantiation, as in Halliday's (e.g. 1992) relationship between the linguistic system and text, which he compares to the relationship between climate and weather. In this conceptualization, speech simultaneously instantiates the phonological, lexicogrammatical and semantic strata of language. My use of the term ‘speech’ thus differs from how this is sometimes used in language origin studies, viz. relating to only the sound aspect of language as in, e.g. Arbib and Rizzolatti (1997). It also means that the systems of significant contrasts at all the strata of language have been constructed, and language has thus evolved, by innumerable, repeated instances of occurrence of such contrasts in speech. The system of transitivity gestures which will be presented later has presumably been constructed by a similar process.

2 I do not make a distinction between the gestures’ forms and expressions since there is a completely iconic relationship between them. Because of that, there are no two levels of different contrasts involved.

3 I became aware of Givon's and Everett's ‘society of intimates’ thanks to a reviewer's comment after the submission of this article in which my socio-semiotic explanation was already articulated.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Radan Martinec

Radan Martinec has a PhD in linguistics from Sydney University. He has taught at universities in Australia, Italy, the United Kingdom and the USA. For the last ten years, he has had a research and consulting company IKONA, based mainly in California, USA. His main publications include The Language of New Media Design (with Theo Van Leeuwen), Routledge, 2008; “Nascent and Mature Semiotic Systems.” Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 2010; “Nascent and Mature Uses of a Semiotic System: The Case of Image-Text Relations.” Visual Communication, 2013; “A system for image-text relations in new (and old) media.” Visual Communication, 2005 (with Andrew Salway).