developed as late offshoots of an originally rich and diverse form of
multivoiced,expressive,collaborative,jam session talking.Being many-
voiced and collaborative in the construction of utterances,using long
sequences,being maximally emotionally expressive,and being rhythmi-
cally interactive describe a kind of talking that is surprisingly prevalent
and powerful in many cultures and gives us a good model of the rich and
diverse kind of vocalizing that existed at language’s beginnings,a model
that can most easily explain further developments in human language
(but not the reverse).
There are good reasons for assuming that each feature of many-voiced
talking represents primary,original features of human spoken vocaliza-
tions and not later developments.The long sequences that occur today
can only have come from a history of people producing long sequences.
People must have been quite adept at producing such sequences quite
fluently from a very early time.The only alternative,the usual pointing-
and-grunting-at-objects story that says that language began with isolated,
monosyllabic,gruntlike separate “words,”suffers from the problem of
explaining how these separate,isolated units were ever forged into long,
fluent sequences.In addition,rhythmic complexity must have come from
previous rhythmic complexity.The incredibly intricate rhythmic forms of
speech and speech interaction that occur when many voices converse
must have come from a long history of intricate control and many-voiced
interaction of rhythms.
For another thing,intense emotional expressivity must have been at
the heart of spoken utterances from the beginning for two reasons.First,
combining many different emotionally expressive vocal gestures during
talking is the best model for how a sufficiently rich and diverse inven-
tory of vocal raw materials was initially available for later use in socially
constructed language.Second,unless sequences mattered intensely to
people in an emotional way,they never would have become embedded
so deeply into the human limbic system as to be stored there perma-
nently.The limbic system originally evolved to deal with events that seri-
ously mattered to creatures and their survival.That is what emotions
were evolved to tell us.But if people originally spoke with little emotion,
if the original functions of speech were as rational and unemotional as
some think,no sequences would have penetrated and stayed in the limbic
system.Only as gut responses and as limbic responses can we explain the
original staying power of the first formulas.
The final reason for assuming that all these expressive,sequential,
interactive features were in place at the earliest stages of the evolution
of human language is that this allows us to see a remarkable continuity
of vocal interactions with the complexity of choral and expressive vocal
interactions of some nonhuman animals.Animals,as diverse as geladas309 On Rhythm,Repetition,and Meaning