What if... language evolved via the legibilization of music? Arguably birds and whales communicate with something closer to music than language. Really an entanglement if the two. Not separate-but-para;lol like lyrical music of today.
Conversation
Epistemologies of modes of signal production
Classical music: musico-logical epistemology
Pop non-lyrical music: emotional ep
Lyrical pop: sentimental ep
Lyrical poetry, no music: narrative ep
Free verse: phenomenological ep
Prose: legibilist
Math: musico-logical again
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Theory: ancient modes did not have this discretized spectrum. It was all one.
Even today’s most integrated form (say the historical ballad set to music) is degenerate relative to ancient humansong (like birdsong or whalesong)
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One data point is the oldest Vedic hymn chanting that nobody can interpre and resemble birdsong. It is written but not meaningful. Somewhere above yodeling or solfege level of content but not quite symbolized language haaretz.com/archaeology/.p
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Theories of language origin seem to be loosely of 3 types (my typology, not academic standard afaik). In increasing order of plausibility: representational, instrumental, generative.
Replying to
1. Representational: Invented to represent and “contain” symbolic knowledge.
This is only a meh description even of how language operates *today* but is ridiculous as an explanation of how it came to be.
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2. Instrumental: Evolved via gradual overload of self/other stimulus/response conditioning, with some pointing/referencing turning into representation. This accounts for some things more plausibly, but is actually worse than representation-based accounts on things like art
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3. Generative: our minds naturally produce low entropy signals with surplus energy. Think children choosing to skip instead of walk. So we basically produce carrier waves to blow off excess life energy. And then we accidentally discover we can modulate it with meaning.
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Emotion, especially acute emotion (distress, lust) is easiest. Bird brains can do it. Just get louder or higher pitched. Competition/differentiation arms races explain the explosive variety that emerges soon. EEG studies show songbirds actually rehearse their songs in REM sleep.
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Add mammalian long memories of place and social relationships and long-term “sentiment signal” language can emerge. Like happiness at recognizing another, signaling youself with a unique individual call sign “signature song” (catchphrases are a musical idea originally I suspect)
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I have a parallel theory of how writing emerged via generative visual projection and eventually converged with oral branch. Writing was not oral language entering a second more advanced phase. It was convergence with a previously parallel behavior.
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