New research says humans learned to speak partly because babies are too hard to take care of alone
Earlier this week, while we were all busy with the (now paused) war in Iran and the (very much ongoing) court battle over soldiers in L.A. streets, my baby started saying my name.
It's a moment every mother waits for — particularly those among us who are aggrieved that our offspring decide to learn 'baba' or 'dada' or 'papa' first. My own infant has been saying 'abba' for almost two months. But this week, for the first time, he started saying 'ima' — not EEE-ma as my older children howl it, but i-mAH, i-mAH, i-mAH, like a tiny body builder huffing through a dead lift.
Then, in typical Leo fashion, he clapped for himself.
Like all babies, my youngest son learned this through arduous repetition. You may have seen the fascinating paper in Science Advances this week (discussed in the New York Times) analyzing 'infant-directed communication' — i.e., baby talk — in primates.
That paper concludes that we talk 'orders of magnitude' more to our babies than our ape cousins do, and hypothesizes that this habit likely played a 'critical role in the emergence of human language.'
In her forthcoming book, 'The Origin of Language,' evolutionary biologist Madeleine Beekman argues the genetic fluke that left our ancestors with huge brains and vocal apparatus capable of complex sound also forced us to give birth to infants so radically 'premature' that we'd have gone extinct trying to care for them as independently as other social primates do. To survive, we had to learn to yap.
I spoke to Beekman about her book. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I've read other language origin stories, including Yuval Noah Harari's 'Sapiens' and a bit of Noam Chomsky's 'Language and Mind.' Where do you diverge?
They all have examples of why language is important once you have it, but no one explains how we got it.
Your explanation really begins with Lucy, the first of our ancestors who could not give birth unassisted and would have had a more difficult early motherhood than modern great apes. That pushed our social evolution. What's the next big leap?
There's a particular gene that we call a pseudogene because it stopped functioning [in other closely related primates]. In our species, for some reason, it got repaired and started to copy itself. That led to this ballooning brain. It also changed our throat, so we are now able to make sounds that are able to be molded into a language.
[Now] babies needed to be born much earlier, way before their brain was developed.
[Many scientists now believe it's this energetic cost of building our brains, not the 'obstetric dilemma' between big head and narrow pelvis, that determines when humans give birth.]
They're born with extremely neuroplastic brains — they're basically sponges for information, and they needed to be such responsive and quick learners because they basically had to manipulate the individuals around them to take care of them.
The baby brain is a great gateway for language to be transferred from brain to brain. All the main connections in the brain still have to be formed, and that all happens in a social context, because it all happens outside of the womb.
We are extremely social because language allowed us to be extremely social.
So the problem of child care forced us to learn to talk to each other?
People have done calculations that show for a hunter-gatherer child, it takes 15 years before she's able to gather enough nutrients to sustain herself. For 15 years, she's dependent on other individuals.
Women in the western world have been indoctrinated that you are the most important individual for your child. Of course you are, but you're not the only important individual for your child, and the more loving individuals you have around your child the better it is for them.
A selection of the very best reads from The Times' 143-year archive.
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorKarim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.
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Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
New research says humans learned to speak partly because babies are too hard to take care of alone
Earlier this week, while we were all busy with the (now paused) war in Iran and the (very much ongoing) court battle over soldiers in L.A. streets, my baby started saying my name. It's a moment every mother waits for — particularly those among us who are aggrieved that our offspring decide to learn 'baba' or 'dada' or 'papa' first. My own infant has been saying 'abba' for almost two months. But this week, for the first time, he started saying 'ima' — not EEE-ma as my older children howl it, but i-mAH, i-mAH, i-mAH, like a tiny body builder huffing through a dead lift. Then, in typical Leo fashion, he clapped for himself. Like all babies, my youngest son learned this through arduous repetition. You may have seen the fascinating paper in Science Advances this week (discussed in the New York Times) analyzing 'infant-directed communication' — i.e., baby talk — in primates. That paper concludes that we talk 'orders of magnitude' more to our babies than our ape cousins do, and hypothesizes that this habit likely played a 'critical role in the emergence of human language.' In her forthcoming book, 'The Origin of Language,' evolutionary biologist Madeleine Beekman argues the genetic fluke that left our ancestors with huge brains and vocal apparatus capable of complex sound also forced us to give birth to infants so radically 'premature' that we'd have gone extinct trying to care for them as independently as other social primates do. To survive, we had to learn to yap. I spoke to Beekman about her book. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. I've read other language origin stories, including Yuval Noah Harari's 'Sapiens' and a bit of Noam Chomsky's 'Language and Mind.' Where do you diverge? They all have examples of why language is important once you have it, but no one explains how we got it. Your explanation really begins with Lucy, the first of our ancestors who could not give birth unassisted and would have had a more difficult early motherhood than modern great apes. That pushed our social evolution. What's the next big leap? There's a particular gene that we call a pseudogene because it stopped functioning [in other closely related primates]. In our species, for some reason, it got repaired and started to copy itself. That led to this ballooning brain. It also changed our throat, so we are now able to make sounds that are able to be molded into a language. [Now] babies needed to be born much earlier, way before their brain was developed. [Many scientists now believe it's this energetic cost of building our brains, not the 'obstetric dilemma' between big head and narrow pelvis, that determines when humans give birth.] They're born with extremely neuroplastic brains — they're basically sponges for information, and they needed to be such responsive and quick learners because they basically had to manipulate the individuals around them to take care of them. The baby brain is a great gateway for language to be transferred from brain to brain. All the main connections in the brain still have to be formed, and that all happens in a social context, because it all happens outside of the womb. We are extremely social because language allowed us to be extremely social. So the problem of child care forced us to learn to talk to each other? People have done calculations that show for a hunter-gatherer child, it takes 15 years before she's able to gather enough nutrients to sustain herself. For 15 years, she's dependent on other individuals. Women in the western world have been indoctrinated that you are the most important individual for your child. Of course you are, but you're not the only important individual for your child, and the more loving individuals you have around your child the better it is for them. A selection of the very best reads from The Times' 143-year archive. Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Vox
4 days ago
- Vox
The hidden pressure messing with teen birthdays
is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can preorder here This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. Birthdays are supposed to be fun. You eat cake, you open presents, maybe you have a party. They can also, however, become a source of pressure and anxiety. And for many teens today, birthdays are a time when the public nature of social media and the private joys of friendship awkwardly collide. Teens often post celebratory photos or messages on their Instagram stories for friends' birthdays, Kashika, 19, told me a few weeks ago in a conversation about kids and friendship. Then the birthday kid will reshare those posts to their own account. The number of posts you share 'forms an image of how many friends you might have,' Kashika explained. Kashika, a contributor to the podcast This Teenage Life, remembered seeing classmates share tons of birthday stories, and thinking, 'Oh my God, they're so popular.' Then, on her birthday, not a single person posted a story for her. 'I felt really bad,' she said. The birthday post (or lack thereof) has become a common source of anxiety, according to experts who work with kids. Teens report 'feeling a lot of pressure to post for people's birthdays, to post in a certain way, to post efficiently, effusively,' Emily Weinstein, executive director of Harvard's Center for Digital Thriving, told me. On the flip side, teenagers worry about having enough people post on their birthdays to 'signal that you have people who really care about you' or to 'show that you have a sufficient number of friends,' Weinstein said. Birthday wishes are one way that teens feel pressure to 'perform closeness' on social media, posting photos and messages of affection publicly 'both as part of being a good friend and as a way of validating their own social acceptance and connectedness,' Weinstein and Carrie James wrote in their 2022 book, Behind Their Screens. Performing closeness isn't new — teens used to decorate one another's lockers for birthdays, Devorah Heitner, author of the book Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World, told me (we did not do this at my school, and now I feel left out). But social media adds a new layer of labor to kids' already fraught social lives, forcing them to make calculations about how to celebrate their friends online — and how to respond if their friends don't do the same for them. The pressure to post Birthdays on social media offer a whole buffet of new stressors, kids and experts told me. For one thing, posts are easier to quantify than locker decorations. 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Forbes
4 days ago
- Forbes
Improve Your Communication By Improving Your Language
If you were to look up the word 'secretive' (meaning, disposed to secrecy) in an old analog paper dictionary, you would find that the preferred pronunciation was with the accent on the second syllable. Although you might think that that made the word sound biological, it was correct—at the time. Language. Open book with language hand drawn doodles and lettering on white background. Education ... More vector illustration. Flash forward to any digital dictionary today and you'll find that the preferred pronunciation is with the accent on the first syllable, while the accent on the second syllable has been relegated to merely acceptable—a vivid demonstration that language is dynamic and constantly evolving. John McWhorter, an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University and the author of numerous bestselling books, as well as podcasts, blogs, and newsletters, described the continuous evolution of language in his New York Times column: 'we all know language inevitably changes; it's the way we got from Latin to French or from Beowulf to Tom Wolfe. But while that change is happening, we tend to see it as decay, sloth, maybe even a scourge.' So to culminate June as Effective Communication Month, which is 'dedicated to highlighting the importance of good communication in our personal and professional lives,' this blog will focus on how you can improve your communication by eliminating one slothful word that has become overly popular in today's language and by adding a word that deserves to become more popular. The slothful word in question is 'literally.' Sound familiar? I hear it used repeatedly as an intensifier, such as in, 'I literally ate the whole pizza.'The word is intended to mean in a literal sense rather than figurative, but the usage in previous sentence is to add emphasis. Merriam-Webster derides that usage, 'It is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.' I derided the word, too, in my prior Forbes post but it continues to be overused, if not abused, prompting Taiwo Sotikare to write on Medium, 'Language evolves, I get it. Words change meaning over time, slang infiltrates the mainstream, and sometimes, a little creative license is acceptable. But the rampant, egregious, and utterly baffling misuse of the word 'literally' has pushed me to the brink.' Steve Eighinger agrees in a post on Muddy River News, 'Do we really need to put an emphasis on what happened? I would argue that if it's a genuinely interesting event, there isn't a need for an extra word – especially that one. So, challenge yourself this week, month or forever not to use 'literally' anymore.' Three other words have become pervasive in our business language: 'believe,' 'think,' and 'feel,' as in 'We believe/think/feel that our new product/service will make us the market leader.' This usage has proliferated because companies want to avoid making forward-looking statements. But those words express uncertainty and imply doubt—not a useful image when a presenter is trying to be persuasive. This is not to say that you should start making forward-looking statements or forecasts in your presentations. Doing so is risky business in this day and age when corporate attorneys insist on avoiding class action suits. To avoid litigation and avoid using the weak words 'think,' 'believe,' and 'feel,' replace them with one word: 'confident.' One powerful word with two big benefits: you avoid being predictive and you sound far more assertive. As William Shakespeare had Hamlet say, 'Suit the action to the words, the word to the action.'
