title: Cast iron

text: The earliest cast-iron artefacts date to the 5th century BC, and were discovered by archaeologists in what is now Jiangsu in China. Cast iron was used in ancient China for warfare, agriculture, and architecture. During the 15th century, cast iron became utilized for cannon in Burgundy, France, and in England during the Reformation. The amounts of cast iron used for cannons required large-scale production. The first cast-iron bridge was built during the 1770s by Abraham Darby III, and is known as The Iron Bridge in Shropshire, England. Cast iron was also used in the construction of buildings.


title: Cast iron

text: Cast iron is made from pig iron, which is the product of melting iron ore in a blast furnace. Cast iron can be made directly from the molten pig iron or by re-melting pig iron, often along with substantial quantities of iron, steel, limestone, carbon (coke) and taking various steps to remove undesirable contaminants. Phosphorus and sulfur may be burnt out of the molten iron, but this also burns out the carbon, which must be replaced. Depending on the application, carbon and silicon content are adjusted to the desired levels, which may be anywhere from 2–3.5% and 1–3%, respectively. If desired, other elements are then added to the melt before the final form is produced by casting.


title: Cast iron

text: Cast iron is sometimes melted in a special type of blast furnace known as a cupola, but in modern applications, it is more often melted in electric induction furnaces or electric arc furnaces. After melting is complete, the molten cast iron is poured into a holding furnace or ladle.


title: Cast iron

text: Cast iron's properties are changed by adding various alloying elements, or alloyants. Next to carbon, silicon is the most important alloyant because it forces carbon out of solution. A low percentage of silicon allows carbon to remain in solution forming iron carbide and the production of white cast iron. A high percentage of silicon forces carbon out of solution forming graphite and the production of grey cast iron. Other alloying agents, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, titanium and vanadium counteracts silicon, promotes the retention of carbon, and the formation of those carbides. Nickel and copper increase strength, and machinability, but do not change the amount of graphite formed. The carbon in the form of graphite results in a softer iron, reduces shrinkage, lowers strength, and decreases density. Sulfur, largely a contaminant when present, forms iron sulfide, which prevents the formation of graphite and increases hardness. The problem with sulfur is that it makes molten cast iron viscous, which causes defects. To counter the effects of sulfur, manganese is added because the two form into manganese sulfide instead of iron sulfide. The manganese sulfide is lighter than the melt, so it tends to float out of the melt and into the slag. The amount of manganese required to neutralize sulfur is 1.7 × sulfur content + 0.3%. If more than this amount of manganese is added, then manganese carbide forms, which increases hardness and chilling, except in grey iron, where up to 1% of manganese increases strength and density.


title: Cast iron

text: Nickel is one of the most common alloying elements because it refines the pearlite and graphite structure, improves toughness, and evens out hardness differences between section thicknesses. Chromium is added in small amounts to reduce free graphite, produce chill, and because it is a powerful carbide stabilizer; nickel is often added in conjunction. A small amount of tin can be added as a substitute for 0.5% chromium. Copper is added in the ladle or in the furnace, on the order of 0.5–2.5%, to decrease chill, refine graphite, and increase fluidity. Molybdenum is added on the order of 0.3–1% to increase chill and refine the graphite and pearlite structure; it is often added in conjunction with nickel, copper, and chromium to form high strength irons. Titanium is added as a degasser and deoxidizer, but it also increases fluidity. 0.15–0.5% vanadium is added to cast iron to stabilize cementite, increase hardness, and increase resistance to wear and heat. 0.1–0.3% zirconium helps to form graphite, deoxidize, and increase fluidity.


title: Cast iron

text: In malleable iron melts, bismuth is added, on the scale of 0.002–0.01%, to increase how much silicon can be added. In white iron, boron is added to aid in the production of malleable iron; it also reduces the coarsening effect of bismuth.


title: Cast iron

text: Grey cast iron is characterised by its graphitic microstructure, which causes fractures of the material to have a grey appearance. It is the most commonly used cast iron and the most widely used cast material based on weight. Most cast irons have a chemical composition of 2.5–4.0% carbon, 1–3% silicon, and the remainder iron. Grey cast iron has less tensile strength and shock resistance than steel, but its compressive strength is comparable to low- and medium-carbon steel. These mechanical properties are controlled by the size and shape of the graphite flakes present in the microstructure and can be characterised according to the guidelines given by the ASTM.


title: Cast iron

text: White cast iron displays white fractured surfaces due to the presence of an iron carbide precipitate called cementite. With a lower silicon content (graphitizing agent) and faster cooling rate, the carbon in white cast iron precipitates out of the melt as the metastable phase cementite, FeC, rather than graphite. The cementite which precipitates from the melt forms as relatively large particles. As the iron carbide precipitates out, it withdraws carbon from the original melt, moving the mixture toward one that is closer to eutectic, and the remaining phase is the lower iron-carbon austenite (which on cooling might transform to martensite). These eutectic carbides are much too large to provide the benefit of what is called precipitation hardening (as in some steels, where much smaller cementite precipitates might inhibit [plastic deformation] by impeding the movement of dislocations through the pure iron ferrite matrix). Rather, they increase the bulk hardness of the cast iron simply by virtue of their own very high hardness and their substantial volume fraction, such that the bulk hardness can be approximated by a rule of mixtures. In any case, they offer hardness at the expense of toughness. Since carbide makes up a large fraction of the material, white cast iron could reasonably be classified as a cermet. White iron is too brittle for use in many structural components, but with good hardness and abrasion resistance and relatively low cost, it finds use in such applications as the wear surfaces (impeller and volute) of slurry pumps, shell liners and lifter bars in ball mills and autogenous grinding mills, balls and rings in coal pulverisers, and the teeth of a backhoe's digging bucket (although cast medium-carbon martensitic steel is more common for this application).


title: Cast iron

text: It is difficult to cool thick castings fast enough to solidify the melt as white cast iron all the way through. However, rapid cooling can be used to solidify a shell of white cast iron, after which the remainder cools more slowly to form a core of grey cast iron. The resulting casting, called a "chilled casting", has the benefits of a hard surface with a somewhat tougher interior.


title: Cast iron

text: High-chromium white iron alloys allow massive castings (for example, a 10-tonne impeller) to be sand cast, as the chromium reduces cooling rate required to produce carbides through the greater thicknesses of material. Chromium also produces carbides with impressive abrasion resistance. These high-chromium alloys attribute their superior hardness to the presence of chromium carbides. The main form of these carbides are the eutectic or primary MC carbides, where "M" represents iron or chromium and can vary depending on the alloy's composition. The eutectic carbides form as bundles of hollow hexagonal rods and grow perpendicular to the hexagonal basal plane. The hardness of these carbides are within the range of 1500-1800HV.


title: Cast iron

text: Malleable iron starts as a white iron casting that is then heat treated for a day or two at about and then cooled over a day or two. As a result, the carbon in iron carbide transforms into graphite and ferrite plus carbon. The slow process allows the surface tension to form the graphite into spheroidal particles rather than flakes. Due to their lower aspect ratio, the spheroids are relatively short and far from one another, and have a lower cross section vis-a-vis a propagating crack or phonon. They also have blunt boundaries, as opposed to flakes, which alleviates the stress concentration problems found in grey cast iron. In general, the properties of malleable cast iron are more like those of mild steel. There is a limit to how large a part can be cast in malleable iron, as it is made from white cast iron.


title: Cast iron

text: Developed in 1948, "nodular" or "ductile cast iron" has its graphite in the form of very tiny nodules with the graphite in the form of concentric layers forming the nodules. As a result, the properties of ductile cast iron are that of a spongy steel without the stress concentration effects that flakes of graphite would produce. The carbon percentage present is 3-4% and percentage of silicon is 1.8-2.8%.Tiny amounts of 0.02 to 0.1% magnesium, and only 0.02 to 0.04% cerium added to these alloys slow the growth of graphite precipitates by bonding to the edges of the graphite planes. Along with careful control of other elements and timing, this allows the carbon to separate as spheroidal particles as the material solidifies. The properties are similar to malleable iron, but parts can be cast with larger sections.


title: Cast iron

text: Cast iron and wrought iron can be produced unintentionally when smelting copper using iron ore as a flux.


title: Cast iron

text: The earliest cast-iron artifacts date to the 5th century BC, and were discovered by archaeologists in what is now modern Luhe County, Jiangsu in China during the Warring States period. This is based on an analysis of the artifact's microstructures.


title: Cast iron

text: Because cast iron is comparatively brittle, it is not suitable for purposes where a sharp edge or flexibility is required. It is strong under compression, but not under tension. Cast iron was invented in China in the 5th century BC and poured into molds to make ploughshares and pots as well as weapons and pagodas. Although steel was more desirable, cast iron was cheaper and thus was more commonly used for implements in ancient China, while wrought iron or steel was used for weapons. The Chinese developed a method of annealing cast iron by keeping hot castings in an oxidizing atmosphere for a week or longer in order to burn off some carbon near the surface in order to keep the surface layer from being too brittle.


title: Cast iron

text: In the west, where it did not become available until the 15th century, its earliest uses included cannon and shot. Henry VIII initiated the casting of cannon in England. Soon, English iron workers using blast furnaces developed the technique of producing cast-iron cannons, which, while heavier than the prevailing bronze cannons, were much cheaper and enabled England to arm her navy better. The technology of cast iron was transferred from China. Al-Qazvini in the 13th century and other travellers subsequently noted an iron industry in the Alburz Mountains to the south of the Caspian Sea. This is close to the silk route, so that the use of technology derived from China is conceivable. The ironmasters of the Weald continued producing cast irons until the 1760s, and armament was one of the main uses of irons after the Restoration.


title: Cast iron

text: Cast-iron pots were made at many English blast furnaces at the time. In 1707, Abraham Darby patented a new method of making pots (and kettles) thinner and hence cheaper than those made by traditional methods. This meant that his Coalbrookdale furnaces became dominant as suppliers of pots, an activity in which they were joined in the 1720s and 1730s by a small number of other coke-fired blast furnaces.


title: Cast iron

text: Application of the steam engine to power blast bellows (indirectly by pumping water to a waterwheel) in Britain, beginning in 1743 and increasing in the 1750s, was a key factor in increasing the production of cast iron, which surged in the following decades. In addition to overcoming the limitation on water power, the steam-pumped-water powered blast gave higher furnace temperatures, which allowed the use of higher lime ratios, enabling the conversion from charcoal, supplies of wood for which were inadequate, to coke.


title: Cast iron

text: The use of cast iron for structural purposes began in the late 1770s, when Abraham Darby III built the Iron Bridge, although short beams had already been used, such as in the blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale. Other inventions followed, including one patented by Thomas Paine. Cast-iron bridges became commonplace as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace. Thomas Telford adopted the material for his bridge upstream at Buildwas, and then for Longdon-on-Tern Aqueduct, a canal trough aqueduct at Longdon-on-Tern on the Shrewsbury Canal. It was followed by the Chirk Aqueduct and the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, both of which remain in use following the recent restorations.


title: Cast iron

text: The best way of using cast iron for bridge construction was by using arches, so that all the material is in compression. Cast iron, again like masonry, is very strong in compression. Wrought iron, like most other kinds of iron and indeed like most metals in general, is strong in tension, and also tough – resistant to fracturing. The relationship between wrought iron and cast iron, for structural purposes, may be thought of as analogous to the relationship between wood and stone.


title: Cast iron

text: Cast-iron beam bridges were used widely by the early railways, such as the Water Street Bridge in 1830 at the Manchester terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, but problems with its use became all too apparent when a new bridge carrying the Chester and Holyhead Railway across the River Dee in Chester collapsed killing five people in May 1847, less than a year after it was opened. The Dee bridge disaster was caused by excessive loading at the centre of the beam by a passing train, and many similar bridges had to be demolished and rebuilt, often in wrought iron. The bridge had been badly designed, being trussed with wrought iron straps, which were wrongly thought to reinforce the structure. The centres of the beams were put into bending, with the lower edge in tension, where cast iron, like masonry, is very weak.


title: Cast iron

text: Nevertheless, cast iron continued to be used in inappropriate structural ways, until the Tay Rail Bridge disaster of 1879 cast serious doubt on the use of the material. Crucial lugs for holding tie bars and struts in the Tay Bridge had been cast integral with the columns, and they failed in the early stages of the accident. In addition, the bolt holes were also cast and not drilled. Thus, because of casting's draft angle, the tension from the tie bars was placed on the hole's edge rather than being spread over the length of the hole. The replacement bridge was built in wrought iron and steel.


title: Cast iron

text: Further bridge collapses occurred, however, culminating in the Norwood Junction rail accident of 1891. Thousands of cast-iron rail underbridges were eventually replaced by steel equivalents by 1900 owing to the widespread concern about cast iron under bridges on the rail network in Britain.


title: Cast iron

text: Cast-iron columns, pioneered in mill buildings, enabled architects to build multi-storey buildings without the enormously thick walls required for masonry buildings of any height. They also opened up floor spaces in factories, and sight lines in churches and auditoriums. By the mid 19th century, cast iron columns were common in warehouse and industrial buildings, combined with wrought or cast iron beams, eventually leading to the development of steel-framed skyscrapers. Cast iron was also used sometimes for decorative facades, especially in the United States, and the Soho district of New York has numerous examples. It was also used occasionally for complete prefabricated buildings, such as the historic Iron Building in Watervliet, New York.


title: Cast iron

text: Another important use was in textile mills. The air in the mills contained flammable fibres from the cotton, hemp, or wool being spun. As a result, textile mills had an alarming propensity to burn down. The solution was to build them completely of non-combustible materials, and it was found convenient to provide the building with an iron frame, largely of cast iron, replacing flammable wood. The first such building was at Ditherington in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Many other warehouses were built using cast-iron columns and beams, although faulty designs, flawed beams or overloading sometimes caused building collapses and structural failures.


title: Cast iron

text: During the Industrial Revolution, cast iron was also widely used for frame and other fixed parts of machinery, including spinning and later weaving machines in textile mills. Cast iron became widely used, and many towns had foundries producing industrial and agricultural machinery.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: Candy (released internationally as Candy: A Death In Texas) is an American true crime drama streaming television limited series created by Nick Antosca and Robin Veith. The series stars Jessica Biel as the real-life Candy Montgomery, who was accused of the axe murder of her neighbor, Betty Gore (played by Melanie Lynskey) in 1980, in Texas. It premiered on May 9, 2022, on Hulu, with a new episode for five nights until May 13.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: In Wylie, Texas, in 1980 suburban housewife Candy Montgomery is accused of murdering her neighbor Betty Gore, after having an affair with Gore's husband Allan.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: In July 2020, it was announced UCP was developing a series revolving around Candy Montgomery, with Robin Veith writing the pilot for the series, and Nick Antosca set to executive produce under his Eat the Cat banner, with no network attached. In December 2020, it was announced Hulu had landed the series. In October 2021, it was announced Elisabeth Moss, who was originally set to star as Candy, had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts and would be replaced by Jessica Biel.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: Principal photography began in December 2021 and continued through February 2022, and took place in Austell, Georgia.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: "Candy" premiered on the streaming service Hulu in the United States on May 9, 2022, with new episodes airing for five subsequent nights until May 13. Hulu majority-owner Disney has also confirmed that "Candy" will be coming to its Disney+ Hotstar service in India on July 15.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: "Candy" was released on Disney+ in Canada, Australia and New Zealand on July 27 and for Singapore on August 10 and in the UK and Ireland on October 12 as a Star Original. On Latin America, the series debuted on July 27, 2022, on Star+.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: Internationally, the show's main title is "Candy: A Death In Texas" despite the thumbnail on Disney+ simply listing it as "Candy".


title: Candy (TV series)

text: According to Whip Media's viewership tracking app TV Time, "Candy" was the 5th most anticipated new television series of May 2022. According to the streaming aggregator JustWatch, "Candy" was the most streamed television series across all platforms in the U.S., during the week of May 9, 2022 to May 15, 2022. According to the streaming aggregator Reelgood, "Candy" was the 8th most streamed television series across all platforms, during the week of May 14, 2022, and the 3rd during the week of May 21, 2022.


title: Candy (TV series)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the limited series holds a 71% approval rating based on 34 critic reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads, ""Candy"s sour aftertaste is counterbalanced by uniformly terrific performances, but it only takes a couple licks before this true crime drama loses its flavor." On Metacritic, the series has a score of 64 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Candy (TV series)

text: Josh Bell of "CBR.com" stated that the series manages to provide a late 1970s aesthetic through its decor and costumes, complimented how the miniseries succeeds to depict the struggles of the main characters through its dark tone, and praised Biel's performance as Candy Montgomery, while complimenting the rest of the supporting actors. Brian Lowry of CNN found that "Candy" manages to be more effective than most true crime drama series, stating that Biel and Lynskey's performances are convincing and well-rendered, while complimenting how the miniseries manages to provide solid additional scripted elements compared to other contemporary series of the same genre. Joel Keller of "Decider" praised the performances of the cast, especially Biel and Lynskey's, and found interesting the choice to start the miniseries with Betty Gore's death, followed by the reconstitution of what has occurred between the characters in the later episodes. Matt Fowler of "IGN" rated the miniseries 7 out of 10 and complimented the performances of the cast members, while praising how the show manages to keep an atmosphere of tension without providing too much information during its first episodes. Maggie Boccella of "Collider" gave the miniseries a C rating and claimed that the show manages to be a satisfactory true crime drama, while praising the performances of the actors, but criticized the lack of development of the characters.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Traffic were an English rock band formed in Birmingham in April 1967 by Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason. They began as a psychedelic rock group and diversified their sound through the use of instruments such as keyboards (such as the Mellotron and harpsichord), sitar, and various reed instruments, and by incorporating jazz and improvisational techniques in their music.


title: Traffic (band)

text: The band had early success in the UK with their debut album "Mr. Fantasy" and non-album singles "Paper Sun", "Hole in My Shoe", and "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush," Their self-titled 1968 album was their most successful in Britain and featured one of their most popular songs, the widely covered "Feelin' Alright?" Dave Mason left the band shortly after the album's release, as did Steve Winwood the following year when he joined the supergroup Blind Faith, and Traffic effectively disbanded. An album compiled from studio and live recordings, "Last Exit", was released in 1969.


title: Traffic (band)

text: By 1970, Blind Faith had also broken up and Winwood reunited with Chris Wood and Jim Capaldi in the process of recording a solo album, which led to Traffic reforming and the resulting album, "John Barleycorn Must Die", serving as the band's comeback record. It became the band's biggest success in the United States to that point, reaching number 5. Their next LP, "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" (1971), went platinum in the US and became popular on FM radio, establishing Traffic as a leading progressive rock band. 1973's "Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory" and 1974's "When the Eagle Flies" were further top 10 successes for the band in the US, and were both certified gold, though neither sold well in the UK. In 1974, the band broke up again.


title: Traffic (band)

text: A partial reunion, with Winwood and Capaldi alongside several new musicians, took place in 1994. In the intervening years Steve Winwood had a successful solo career, with several hit singles and albums during the 1980s. Dave Mason had his own solo career that produced a few minor hit songs in the 1970s, played as a session musician with a number of bands, and was briefly a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1995 and Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band in 1997. Jim Capaldi also had some minor solo hits in the 1970s in his native UK but was less successful abroad. During the 1990s, Capaldi primarily worked as a songwriter, working with Santana and The Eagles. Chris Wood did sporadic session work after the breakup of Traffic in 1974, and died in 1983. Traffic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Traffic's singer, keyboardist, and guitarist Steve Winwood was the lead singer for the Spencer Davis Group at age 14. The Spencer Davis Group released four Top Ten singles and three Top Ten albums in the United Kingdom, as well as two Top Ten singles in the United States. Drummer/vocalist/lyricist Jim Capaldi and guitarist Dave Mason had both been in the Hellions and Deep Feeling, while woodwinds player Chris Wood came out of Locomotive.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Winwood, Capaldi, Mason, and Wood met when they jammed together at The Elbow Room, a club in Aston, Birmingham. After Winwood left the Spencer Davis Group in April 1967, the quartet formed Traffic. Capaldi came up with the name of the group while the four of them were waiting to cross the street in Dorchester. Soon thereafter, they rented a cottage near the rural village of Aston Tirrold, Berkshire to write and rehearse new music.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Traffic signed to Chris Blackwell's Island Records label (where Winwood's elder brother Muff, also a member of the Spencer Davis Group, later became a record producer and executive), and their debut single "Paper Sun" became a UK hit in mid-1967 (#4 Canada). Their second single, Mason's psych-pop "Hole in My Shoe", was an even bigger hit (#4 Canada), and it became one of their best-known tracks. The band's third single, "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", was made for the soundtrack of the 1967 British feature film of the same name. Their debut album was "Mr. Fantasy", produced by Jimmy Miller, and like the singles, was a hit in the UK but not as big elsewhere, although it did reach number 88 in the US.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Mason left the group due to artistic differences just after "Mr. Fantasy" was released, but rejoined for a few months of 1968, long enough to contribute to a slim majority of the songs on their second album, "Traffic". Released in 1968, it included the original version of Mason's "Feelin' Alright", which was later recorded with great success by Joe Cocker and Three Dog Night. Winwood, Wood, and Capaldi wanted to take the group in a different direction, opting for a folk/blues style rather than their earlier psychedelic/eclectic rock sound, while Mason was oriented towards psychedelic pop. Mason also cited discomfort with the Traffic lifestyle. The band toured the US as a trio in late 1968, which led to the following year's release of Traffic's next album, "Last Exit," one side of which was recorded live. During 1968 Winwood and Wood often played with Jimi Hendrix, and they both appear on The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1968 double album "Electric Ladyland", as did an uncredited Mason.


title: Traffic (band)

text: The band was dissolved by Winwood's leaving in early 1969. His departure went unexplained at the time, even to Capaldi and Wood, but he later said "Because of the way I ended the Spencer Davis Group, I saw no reason why I shouldn't leave Traffic and move on. It seemed to me a normal thing to do." Winwood's comments clash with the fact that the Davis group continued after he left.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Winwood then formed the supergroup Blind Faith, which lasted less than a year, recording one album and undertaking one US tour. The remaining members of Traffic began a project with Mick Weaver (a.k.a. Wynder K. Frog), the short-lived Mason, Capaldi, Wood and Frog (later shortened to Wooden Frog), they played a few live dates and recorded some BBC sessions, but broke up before releasing any formal recordings.


title: Traffic (band)

text: After the break-up of Blind Faith in 1969, Winwood began working on a solo recording, bringing in Wood and Capaldi to contribute, and the project eventually turned into a new Traffic album, "John Barleycorn Must Die," their most successful album yet. Traffic went on to expand its lineup late in 1970, adding Winwood's former Blind Faith bandmate Ric Grech on bass. After Capaldi lost his infant son to cot death, he stopped drumming and nearly left the band, resulting in an expanded lineup with drummer Jim Gordon of Derek and the Dominos and Ghanaian percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah in 1971. The live album "Welcome to the Canteen" was released in September and marked the band's break with United Artists Records. It did not bear the "Traffic" name on the cover, and instead was credited to the band's individual members including Mason, who returned for his third and final spell with the band. The album ended with a version of The Spencer Davis Group song "Gimme Some Loving", which became a minor hit.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Following the departure of Mason, Traffic released "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" (1971), which was a Top 10 American album but did not chart in the UK. It sold over half a million copies in 1972 when it received a gold disc, and was awarded a R.I.A.A. platinum disc in March 1976 for over a million total sales. Once again, however, personnel problems wracked the band as Grech and Gordon were fired in December 1971 due to excessive drug use, and the month after, Winwood's struggles with peritonitis brought Traffic to a standstill. Jim Capaldi used this hiatus to record a solo album, "Oh How We Danced", which proved to be the beginning of a long and successful solo career. The album included a surplus recording from "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys", "Open Your Heart", and the new tracks featured drummer Roger Hawkins and bassist David Hood, from the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio house band. Capaldi soon brought them on board to replace Grech and Gordon.


title: Traffic (band)

text: The new lineup (Winwood, Capaldi, Wood, Kwaku Baah, Hawkins, Hood) toured America in early 1972 to promote the LP, and their concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on 21 February was recorded in multitrack audio and captured on colour videotape with multiple cameras. The 64-minute performance is thought to be the only extended live footage of the group. It was evidently not broadcast on television at the time, but was later released on home video and DVD.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Following Winwood's recovery from peritonitis, Traffic's sixth studio album, "Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory", released in 1973, met with a cold critical reception, but in sales it was another major hit. It was shortly followed by a major world tour, for which Muscle Shoals keyboardist Barry Beckett was added to the lineup. The double live album "On the Road" was drawn from this tour. It broke the band's string of British flops by reaching number 40 in the UK Albums Chart. However, after the tour Winwood informed the Muscle Shoals trio that he was returning to a smaller lineup more like their original one, and their services were no longer needed. Meanwhile, Chris Wood's problems with drug use and depression were increasing.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Rosko Gee was recruited on bass, while Capaldi switched back to drums. The resulting quintet began to record a new album in late 1973, but Kwaku Baah was fired partway through the sessions, leaving most of the album to be recorded by the quartet of Winwood, Capaldi, Wood, and Gee. "When the Eagle Flies", released in 1974, was yet another Top Ten album in the US, and moderately successful in the UK. However, a subsequent tour of the US, while successful in terms of ticket sales, was emotionally exhausting for the band. Capaldi later recalled "Rosko Gee and I were the only ones in anything like normal shape. Steve was having recurrent problems with the peritonitis, and Chris's body was suffering from chemical warfare." Winwood ultimately passed his boiling point, walking off the stage in the middle of what turned out to be the band's final show, in Chicago. The following day he left the tour without a word to anyone, leaving the rest of the band waiting for him at the venue for that night's scheduled performance. Feeling Winwood had been integral to Traffic's music, the remaining members opted not to continue the band without him.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Traffic's break-up was followed by two compilations from United Artists ("Heavy Traffic" and "More Heavy Traffic"), both of which only drew from the first half of their output.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Steve Winwood embarked on a solo career, while Rosko Gee and Rebop Kwaku Baah joined German band Can. Kwaku Baah died on stage from a cerebral hemorrhage in Stockholm, Sweden in 1983, and Capaldi dedicated his solo album "Fierce Heart" to his memory. Chris Wood also died that year from pneumonia.


title: Traffic (band)

text: All the still living members of Traffic's most recent lineup reunited in 1994 for a one-off tour, after a fan left a voice mail message at Bob Weir's (of the Grateful Dead) hotel in Chicago during the 1992 "Scaring the Children" tour, and suggested it would be cool if Traffic toured with the (then Grateful) Dead. Traffic opened for the Grateful Dead during their summer tour. The flute/sax role on the tour was played by Randall Bramblett, who had worked extensively with Steve Winwood. Mike McEvoy joined the line up playing keyboards, guitar and viola, and Walfredo Reyes, Jr. played drums and percussion. Winwood and Capaldi recorded and released a new Traffic album, "Far from Home", with no involvement from the other four members. It broke the top 40 in both the UK and USA. "The Last Great Traffic Jam", a double live album and DVD released in 2005, documents the band's 1994 reunion tour.


title: Traffic (band)

text: The four original members of Traffic were inducted for their contributions in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 15 March 2004. Winwood, Capaldi, Mason, and Stephanie Wood (standing in for her late brother Chris) all attended the ceremony. Winwood and Capaldi took part in the induction performance, but were joined by Dave Mason performing his song 'Feelin' Alright' for the grand finale which also featured Keith Richards, Tom Petty, and the Temptations. The induction lineup was completed by Bramblett on organ and bass pedals, even though he was not one of the members inducted.


title: Traffic (band)

text: Tentative plans for another Traffic project were cut short by Jim Capaldi's death from stomach cancer at age 60 in January 2005, ending the songwriting partnership with Winwood that had fueled Traffic from its beginning. Winwood subsequently dedicated "The Last Great Traffic Jam" "to the man without whom Traffic could never be: my lifelong friend and partner, Jim Capaldi."


title: Traffic (band)

text: "Dear Mr. Fantasy" was a celebration for Capaldi that took place at The Roundhouse in Camden Town, London on 21 January 2007. Guests included Steve Winwood, Paul Weller, Pete Townshend, and many more. "Dear Mr. Fantasy" featured the music of Jim Capaldi and Traffic, and all profits went to The Jubilee Action Street Children Appeal.


title: The Road Not Taken

text: "The Road Not Taken" is a narrative poem by Robert Frost, first published in the August 1915 issue of "The Atlantic Monthly", and later published as the first poem in the collection "Mountain Interval" of 1916. Its central theme is the divergence of paths, both literally and figuratively, although its interpretation is noted for being complex and potentially divergent.


title: The Road Not Taken

text: The first 1915 publication differs from the 1916 republication in "Mountain Interval": In line 13, "marked" is replaced by "kept" and a dash replaces a comma in line 18.


title: The Road Not Taken

text: Frost spent the years 1912 to 1915 in England, where among his acquaintances was the writer Edward Thomas. Thomas and Frost became close friends and took many walks together. One day, as they were walking together, they came across two roads. Thomas was indecisive about which road to take, and in retrospect often lamented that they should have taken the other one. After Frost returned to New Hampshire in 1915, he sent Thomas an advance copy of "The Road Not Taken". Thomas took the poem seriously and personally, and it may have been significant in Thomas' decision to enlist in World War I. Thomas was killed two years later in the Battle of Arras.


title: The Road Not Taken

text: The poem consists of four stanzas of five lines each. With the rhyme scheme as 'ABAAB', the first line rhymes with the third and fourth, and the second line rhymes with the fifth. The meter is basically iambic tetrameter, with each line having four two-syllable feet, though in almost every line, in different positions, an iamb is replaced with an anapest.


title: The Road Not Taken

text: "The Road Not Taken" reads naturally or conversationally, beginning as a kind of photographic depiction of a quiet moment in yellow woods. The variation of its rhythm gives naturalness, a feeling of thought occurring spontaneously, affecting the reader's sense of expectation. In one of the few lines containing strictly iambs, the more regular rhythm supports the idea of a turning towards an acceptance of a kind of reality: "Though as for that the passing there … " In the final line, the way the rhyme and rhythm work together is significantly different, and catches the reader off guard.


title: The Road Not Taken

text: "The Road Not Taken" is one of Frost's most popular works. Yet, it is a frequently misunderstood poem, often read simply as a poem that champions the idea of "following your own path". Actually, it expresses some irony regarding such an idea. A critique in "The Paris Review" by David Orr described the misunderstanding this way:


title: The Road Not Taken

text: ""The poem’s speaker tells us he 'shall be telling,' at some point in the future, of how he took the road less traveled…yet he has already admitted that the two paths 'equally lay / In leaves' and 'the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.' So the road he will later call less traveled is actually the road equally traveled. The two roads are interchangeable.""


title: The Road Not Taken

text: Frost himself wrote the poem as a joke for his friend Edward Thomas, who was often indecisive about which route to take when the two went walking. A "New York Times" book review on Brian Hall's 2008 biography "Fall of Frost" states: "Whichever way they go, they're sure to miss something good on the other path." Regarding the "sigh" that is mentioned in the last stanza, it may be seen as an expression of regret or of satisfaction. However, there is significance in the difference between what the speaker has just said of the two roads, and what he will say in the future. According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost's biographer, as Frost was once about to read the poem, he commented to his audience, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem—very tricky," perhaps intending to suggest the poem's ironic possibilities.


title: The Road Not Taken

text: Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected." Thompson also says that when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that the speaker was based on his friend Edward Thomas. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way."


title: Danny Aiello

text: Daniel Louis Aiello Jr. () (June 20, 1933 – December 12, 2019) was an American actor. He appeared in numerous motion pictures, including "The Godfather Part II" (1974), "The Front" (1976), "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), "Hide in Plain Sight" (1984), "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985), "Moonstruck" (1987), "Harlem Nights" (1989), "Do the Right Thing" (1989), "Jacob's Ladder" (1990), "Hudson Hawk" (1991), "Ruby" (1992), "" (1994), "2 Days in the Valley" (1996), "Dinner Rush" (2000), and "Lucky Number Slevin" (2006). He played Don Domenico Clericuzio in the miniseries "The Last Don" (1997).


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Salvatore "Sal" Frangione in the Spike Lee film "Do the Right Thing" (1989).


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello, the fifth of six children, was born on West 68th Street, Manhattan, the son of parents Frances Pietrocova, a seamstress from Naples, Italy, and Daniel Louis Aiello, a laborer who deserted the family after his wife lost her eyesight and became legally blind. For many years, Aiello publicly condemned his father, but the two reconciled in 1993, although Aiello harbored a resentment of his father's conduct. He was of Italian descent. He moved to the South Bronx when he was seven, and later attended James Monroe High School.


title: Danny Aiello

text: At the age of 16, Aiello lied about his age to enlist in the United States Army. After serving for three years, he returned to New York City and did various jobs in order to support himself and, later, his family.


title: Danny Aiello

text: In the 1960s, Aiello served as president of New York Local 1202 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, representing Greyhound Bus workers. In 1967, he presided over an unsanctioned wildcat strike when the company changed bus driver schedules. The strike was called without authorization by the parent union and he was suspended for that action. He called off the strike after one day.


title: Danny Aiello

text: He was also a bouncer at the legendary New York City comedy club, The Improv. In the mid-1980s, he was a nightly regular at Café Central, a bistro frequented by celebrities on 79th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, in Manhattan, and at an eatery named Columbus restaurant on 66th Street and Columbus Avenue.


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello broke into films in the early 1970s. One of his earliest roles came as a ballplayer in the baseball drama, "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973), with Robert De Niro. Aiello had a walk-on role as small-time hood Tony Rosato in "The Godfather Part II" (1974), ad-libbing the line "Michael Corleone says hello!" during a hit on rival gangster Frank Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo).


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello had a co-lead role with Jan-Michael Vincent in "Defiance" (1980), about some Manhattan residents who fight back against the thugs terrorizing the neighborhood. He received considerable acclaim for playing a racist New York City cop in "Fort Apache, The Bronx" (1981) with Paul Newman. In 1981, Aiello won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in Children's Programming for his appearance in an "ABC Afterschool Special" called "A Family of Strangers".


title: Danny Aiello

text: He was paired with De Niro again for the Sergio Leone gangster epic, "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), as a police chief whose name was also "Aiello." His many film appearances included two for director Woody Allen, who cast him in "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985), and "Radio Days" (1987). He played a main role in the 1985-86 television series "Lady Blue".


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello played the pizzeria owner Sal in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" (1989). At the time of the film's release, in an interview with the "Chicago Tribune", he called the role his "first focal part". He further identified the film as a very collaborative effort, during which Spike Lee at one point told him, "Whatever you wanna do, you do." Aiello went on to write a crucial scene he shared with John Turturro ten minutes prior to its production. The role earned him nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, while the film critics' associations of Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles each named him best supporting actor.


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello also portrayed more sympathetic characters. He gained recognition as the befuddled fiancé of Cher opposite her Oscar-winning performance in the romantic comedy "Moonstruck" (1987), and made a comic appearance in drag for the Robert Altman fashion-industry film "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994). He also had sympathetic roles in the horror thriller "Jacob's Ladder" (1990) and the comedy-drama "29th Street" (1991).


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello played nightclub owner and Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby in the biopic "Ruby" (1992), the lead role in Paul Mazursky's film business satire "The Pickle" (1993), the titular character in the Academy Award-winning short film "Lieberman in Love" (1995), and a political big shot with mob ties in "City Hall" (1996), starring Al Pacino. He later starred in the independent feature film "Dolly Baby" (2012), written and directed by Kevin Jordan; Aiello also starred in Jordan's "Brooklyn Lobster", which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005.


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello's singing was on display in films such as "Hudson Hawk" (1991), "Once Around" (1991), and "Remedy" (2005) that starred his son Ricky Aiello and Jonathan Doscher. He released several albums featuring a big-band including "I Just Wanted to Hear The Words" (2004), "Live from Atlantic City" (2008), and "My Christmas Song for You" (2010). Aiello and EMI songwriter Hasan Johnson released an album of standards fused with rap entitled "Bridges" in 2011.


title: Danny Aiello

text: He played the father for the video of Madonna's song, "Papa Don't Preach" (1986), and recorded his own answer song, "Papa Wants the Best for You", written by Artie Schroeck.


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello appeared on the Broadway stage many times throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He appeared in three plays by Louis La Russo II: "Lamppost Reunion" (his Broadway debut - 1975), "Wheelbarrow Closers" (1976), and "Knockout" (1979). In 1977, he originated the role of Fran Geminiani in the long-running play "Gemini".


title: Danny Aiello

text: In 1981, Aiello starred in Woody Allen's play "The Floating Light Bulb" alongside Beatrice Arthur. The play, set in 1945, is a semi-autobiographical tale of a lower middle class family living in Brooklyn, New York City. Frank Rich, critic from "The New York Times" gave the play a mild review, writing "there are a few laughs, a few well-wrought characters, and, in Act II, a beautifully written scene that leads to a moving final curtain". Rich also compared the play to the work of Tennessee Williams.


title: Danny Aiello

text: In the mid 1980s, Aiello starred in a replacement cast version of "Hurlyburly" (1984) alongside Christine Baranski, Frank Langella, Ron Silver, and Candice Bergen. He also starred in "The House of Blue Leaves" (1986) alongside John Mahoney (who earned a Tony Award for his performance), Ben Stiller, Stockard Channing, and Julie Hagerty


title: Danny Aiello

text: In 2002, Aiello starred in Elaine May's comedic play, "Adult Entertainment" alongside May's daughter, Jeannie Berlin. The play was directed by Stanley Donen and opened off-broadway at the Variety Arts Theatre. Critic Ben Brantley of "The New York Times", described the play as an "often very funny, but overstretched comedy sketch".


title: Danny Aiello

text: In July 2011, Aiello appeared Off-Broadway in the two-act drama "The Shoemaker", written by Susan Charlotte and directed by Antony Marsellis. The play is a stage version of his 2006 movie "A Broken Sole", which began life in 2001 as a one-act play.


title: Danny Aiello

text: In 2014, Aiello published his autobiography, "I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else: My Life on the Street, on the Stage, and in the Movies" via Simon & Schuster. He was the father of stuntman and actor Danny Aiello III, who died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer. His son Rick, who was also an actor, died in 2021 of the same disease. His surviving children are Jaime, and Stacey Aiello. His nephew is Michael Kay, broadcaster for the New York Yankees.


title: Danny Aiello

text: Many in the entertainment industry voiced their sadness either on Twitter or released statements, such as his "Moonstruck" co-star Cher, and Robert De Niro, who starred alongside Aiello in four films: "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973), "The Godfather Part II" (1974), "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), and "Mistress" (1992). De Niro wrote, "I am very saddened to hear of Danny's passing. I have known him for almost 50 years. See you in Heaven, Danny."


title: Danny Aiello

text: Aiello's funeral was held on December 19, 2019, at the Riverside Memorial Chapel on the Upper West Side. Director Spike Lee and actor John Turturro gave eulogies. Lee stated, "We recognized our differences, political or whatever else you want to talk about it, but we truly loved each other."


title: Origin of language

text: The origin of language (spoken and signed, as well as language-related technological systems such as writing), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study the origins of language must draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of communication existing among animals (particularly other primates). Many argue that the origins of language probably relate closely to the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement about the facts and implications of this connection.


title: Origin of language

text: The shortage of direct, empirical evidence has caused many scholars to regard the entire topic as unsuitable for serious study; in 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris banned any existing or future debates on the subject, a prohibition which remained influential across much of the Western world until late in the twentieth century. Various hypotheses have been developed about how, why, when, and where language might have emerged. Still, little more has been universally agreed upon today (as of 1996) than over a century and a half ago, when Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection provoked a surge of speculation on the topic. Since the early 1990s, however, a number of linguists, archaeologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and others have attempted to address this issue with new, modern methods.


title: Origin of language

text: A majority of linguistic scholars favour continuity-based theories, but they vary in how they hypothesize language development. Among those who consider language as mostly innate, some avoid speculating about specific precursors in nonhuman primates, stressing simply that the language faculty must have evolved in the usual gradual way. Others in this intellectual camp—notably Ib Ulbæk—hold that language evolved not from primate communication but from primate cognition, which is significantly more complex.


title: Origin of language

text: Those who consider language as learned socially, such as Michael Tomasello, consider it developing from the cognitively controlled aspects of primate communication, these being mostly gestural as opposed to vocal. Where vocal precursors are concerned, many continuity theorists envisage language evolving from early human capacities for song.


title: Origin of language

text: Noam Chomsky, a proponent of discontinuity theory, argues that a single chance mutation occurred in one individual in the order of 100,000 years ago, installing the language faculty (a hypothetical component of the mid-brain) in "perfect" or "near-perfect" form.


title: Origin of language

text: Transcending the continuity-versus-discontinuity divide, some scholars view the emergence of language as the consequence of some kind of social transformation that, by generating unprecedented levels of public trust, liberated a genetic potential for linguistic creativity that had previously lain dormant. "Ritual/speech coevolution theory" exemplifies this approach. Scholars in this intellectual camp point to the fact that even chimpanzees and bonobos have latent symbolic capacities that they rarely—if ever—use in the wild. Objecting to the sudden mutation idea, these authors argue that even if a chance mutation were to install a language organ in an evolving bipedal primate, it would be adaptively useless under all known primate social conditions. A very specific social structure—one capable of upholding unusually high levels of public accountability and trust—must have evolved before or concurrently with language to make reliance on "cheap signals" (words) an evolutionarily stable strategy.


title: Origin of language

text: Since the emergence of language lies so far back in human prehistory, the relevant developments have left no direct historical traces; neither can comparable processes be observed today. Despite this, the emergence of new sign languages in modern times—Nicaraguan Sign Language, for example—may potentially offer insights into the developmental stages and creative processes necessarily involved. Another approach inspects early human fossils, looking for traces of physical adaptation to language use. In some cases, when the DNA of extinct humans can be recovered, the presence or absence of genes considered to be language-relevant—FOXP2, for example—may prove informative. Another approach, this time archaeological, involves invoking symbolic behavior (such as repeated ritual activity) that may leave an archaeological trace—such as mining and modifying ochre pigments for body-painting—while developing theoretical arguments to justify inferences from symbolism in general to language in particular.


title: Origin of language

text: The time range for the evolution of language or its anatomical prerequisites extends, at least in principle, from the phylogenetic divergence of "Homo" (2.3 to 2.4 million years ago) from "Pan" (5 to 6 million years ago) to the emergence of full behavioral modernity some 50,000–150,000 years ago. Few dispute that "Australopithecus" probably lacked vocal communication significantly more sophisticated than that of great apes in general, but scholarly opinions vary as to the developments since the appearance of "Homo" some 2.5 million years ago. Some scholars assume the development of primitive language-like systems ("proto-language") as early as "Homo habilis", while others place the development of symbolic communication only with "Homo erectus" (1.8 million years ago) or with "Homo heidelbergensis" (0.6 million years ago) and the development of language proper with "Homo sapiens", currently estimated at less than 200,000 years ago.


title: Origin of language

text: Using statistical methods to estimate the time required to achieve the current spread and diversity in modern languages, Johanna Nichols—a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley—argued in 1998 that vocal languages must have begun diversifying in the human species at least 100,000 years ago. A further study by Q. D. Atkinson suggests that successive population bottlenecks occurred as human African ancestors migrated to other areas, leading to a decrease in genetic and phenotypic diversity. Atkinson argues that these bottlenecks also affected culture and language, suggesting that the farther away a particular language is from Africa, the fewer phonemes it contains. By way of evidence, Atkinson claims that today's African languages tend to have relatively large numbers of phonemes, whereas languages of Oceania (the last region to be populated by humans) have relatively few. Relying heavily on Atkinson's work, a subsequent study has explored the rate at which phonemes develop naturally, comparing this rate to some of Africa's oldest languages. The results suggest that language first evolved around 50,000–150,000 years ago, which is around the time when modern "Homo sapiens" evolved. Estimates of this kind are not universally accepted, but jointly considering genetic, archaeological, palaeontological, and much other evidence indicates that language probably emerged somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Stone Age, roughly contemporaneous with the speciation of "Homo sapiens".


title: Origin of language

text: In 1861, historical linguist Max Müller published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language:


title: Origin of language

text: Most scholars today consider all such theories not so much wrong—they occasionally offer peripheral insights—as naïve and irrelevant. The problem with these theories is that they are so narrowly mechanistic. They assume that once human ancestors had discovered the appropriate ingenious "mechanism" for linking sounds with meanings, language automatically evolved.


title: Origin of language

text: Medieval Muslim scholars also developed theories on the origin of language. Their theories were of five general types:


title: Origin of language

text: From the perspective of signalling theory, the main obstacle to the evolution of language-like communication in nature is not a mechanistic one. Rather, it is the fact that symbols—arbitrary associations of sounds or other perceptible forms with corresponding meanings—are unreliable and may well be false. As the saying goes, "words are cheap". The problem of reliability was not recognized at all by Darwin, Müller or the other early evolutionary theorists.


title: Origin of language

text: Animal vocal signals are, for the most part, intrinsically reliable. When a cat purrs, the signal constitutes direct evidence of the animal's contented state. The signal is trusted, not because the cat is inclined to be honest, but because it just cannot fake that sound. Primate vocal calls may be slightly more manipulable, but they remain reliable for the same reason—because they are hard to fake. Primate social intelligence is "Machiavellian"—self-serving and unconstrained by moral scruples. Monkeys and apes often attempt to deceive each other, while at the same time remaining constantly on guard against falling victim to deception themselves. Paradoxically, it is theorized that primates' resistance to deception is what blocks the evolution of their signalling systems along language-like lines. Language is ruled out because the best way to guard against being deceived is to ignore all signals except those that are instantly verifiable. Words automatically fail this test.


title: Origin of language

text: Words are easy to fake. Should they turn out to be lies, listeners will adapt by ignoring them in favor of hard-to-fake indices or cues. For language to work, then, listeners must be confident that those with whom they are on speaking terms are generally likely to be honest. A peculiar feature of language is "displaced reference", which means reference to topics outside the currently perceptible situation. This property prevents utterances from being corroborated in the immediate "here" and "now". For this reason, language presupposes relatively high levels of mutual trust in order to become established over time as an evolutionarily stable strategy. This stability is born of a longstanding mutual trust and is what grants language its authority. A theory of the origins of language must therefore explain why humans could begin trusting cheap signals in ways that other animals apparently cannot (see signalling theory).


title: Origin of language

text: The "mother tongues" hypothesis was proposed in 2004 as a possible solution to this problem. W. Tecumseh Fitch suggested that the Darwinian principle of "kin selection"—the convergence of genetic interests between relatives—might be part of the answer. Fitch suggests that languages were originally "mother tongues". If language evolved initially for communication between mothers and their own biological offspring, extending later to include adult relatives as well, the interests of speakers and listeners would have tended to coincide. Fitch argues that shared genetic interests would have led to sufficient trust and cooperation for intrinsically unreliable signals—words—to become accepted as trustworthy and so begin evolving for the first time.


title: Origin of language

text: Critics of this theory point out that kin selection is not unique to humans. So even if one accepts Fitch's initial premises, the extension of the posited "mother tongue" networks from close relatives to more distant relatives remains unexplained. Fitch argues, however, that the extended period of physical immaturity of human infants and the postnatal growth of the human brain give the human-infant relationship a different and more extended period of intergenerational dependency than that found in any other species.


title: Origin of language

text: Ib Ulbæk invokes another standard Darwinian principle—"reciprocal altruism"—to explain the unusually high levels of intentional honesty necessary for language to evolve. "Reciprocal altruism" can be expressed as the principle that "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". In linguistic terms, it would mean that "if you speak truthfully to me, I'll speak truthfully to you". Ordinary Darwinian reciprocal altruism, Ulbæk points out, is a relationship established between frequently interacting individuals. For language to prevail across an entire community, however, the necessary reciprocity would have needed to be enforced universally instead of being left to individual choice. Ulbæk concludes that for language to evolve, society as a whole must have been subject to moral regulation.


title: Origin of language

text: Critics point out that this theory fails to explain when, how, why or by whom "obligatory reciprocal altruism" could possibly have been enforced. Various proposals have been offered to remedy this defect. A further criticism is that language does not work on the basis of reciprocal altruism anyway. Humans in conversational groups do not withhold information to all except listeners likely to offer valuable information in return. On the contrary, they seem to want to advertise to the world their access to socially relevant information, broadcasting that information without expectation of reciprocity to anyone who will listen.


title: Origin of language

text: Gossip, according to Robin Dunbar in his book "Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language", does for group-living humans what manual grooming does for other primates—it allows individuals to service their relationships and so maintain their alliances on the basis of the principle: "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". Dunbar argues that as humans began living in increasingly larger social groups, the task of manually grooming all one's friends and acquaintances became so time-consuming as to be unaffordable. In response to this problem, humans developed "a cheap and ultra-efficient form of grooming"—"vocal grooming". To keep allies happy, one now needs only to "groom" them with low-cost vocal sounds, servicing multiple allies simultaneously while keeping both hands free for other tasks. Vocal grooming then evolved gradually into vocal language—initially in the form of "gossip". Dunbar's hypothesis seems to be supported by the fact that the structure of language shows adaptations to the function of narration in general.


title: Origin of language

text: Critics of this theory point out that the very efficiency of "vocal grooming"—the fact that words are so cheap—would have undermined its capacity to signal commitment of the kind conveyed by time-consuming and costly manual grooming. A further criticism is that the theory does nothing to explain the crucial transition from vocal grooming—the production of pleasing but meaningless sounds—to the cognitive complexities of syntactical speech.


title: Origin of language

text: The ritual/speech coevolution theory was originally proposed by social anthropologist Roy Rappaport before being elaborated by anthropologists such as Chris Knight, Jerome Lewis, Nick Enfield, Camilla Power and Ian Watts. Cognitive scientist and robotics engineer Luc Steels is another prominent supporter of this general approach, as is biological anthropologist and neuroscientist Terrence Deacon.


title: Origin of language

text: These scholars argue that there can be no such thing as a "theory of the origins of language". This is because language is not a separate adaptation but an internal aspect of something much wider—namely, human symbolic culture as a whole. Attempts to explain language independently of this wider context have failed, say these scientists, because they are addressing a problem with no solution. Language would not work outside a specific array of social mechanisms and institutions. For example, it would not work for a nonhuman ape communicating with others in the wild. Not even the cleverest nonhuman ape could make language work under such conditions.


title: Origin of language

text: Advocates of this school of thought point out that words are cheap. Should an especially clever nonhuman ape, or even a group of articulate nonhuman apes, try to use words in the wild, they would carry no conviction. The primate vocalizations that do carry conviction—those they actually use—are unlike words, in that they are emotionally expressive, intrinsically meaningful, and reliable because they are relatively costly and hard to fake.


title: Origin of language

text: Language consists of contrasts whose cost is essentially zero. As pure social conventions, signals of this kind cannot evolve in a Darwinian social world—they are a theoretical impossibility. Being intrinsically unreliable, language works only if one can build up a reputation for trustworthiness within a certain kind of society—namely, one where symbolic cultural facts (sometimes called "institutional facts") can be established and maintained through collective social endorsement. In any hunter-gatherer society, the basic mechanism for establishing trust in symbolic cultural facts is collective "ritual". Therefore, the task facing researchers into the origins of language is more multidisciplinary than is usually supposed. It involves addressing the evolutionary emergence of human symbolic culture as a whole, with language an important but subsidiary component.


title: Origin of language

text: Critics of the theory include Noam Chomsky, who terms it the "non-existence" hypothesis—a denial of the very existence of language as an object of study for natural science. Chomsky's own theory is that language emerged in an instant and in perfect form, prompting his critics in turn, to retort that only something that does not exist—a theoretical construct or convenient scientific fiction—could possibly emerge in such a miraculous way. The controversy remains unresolved.


title: Origin of language

text: Acheulean tool use began during the Lower Paleolithic approximately 1.75 million years ago. Studies focusing on the lateralization of Acheulean tool production and language production have noted similar areas of blood flow when engaging in these activities separately; this theory suggests that the brain functions needed for the production of tools across generations is consistent with the brain systems required for producing language. Researchers used functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTDC) and had participants perform activities related to the creation of tools using the same methods during the Lower Paleolithic as well as a task designed specifically for word generation. The purpose of this test was to focus on the planning aspect of Acheulean tool making and cued word generation in language (an example of cued word generation would be someone giving you a random letter and then you list all words beginning with that letter that you can think of). Theories of language developing alongside tool use has been theorized by multiple individuals, however until recently there has been little empirical data to support these hypotheses. Focusing on the results of the study performed by Uomini et al. evidence for the usage of the same brain areas has been found when looking at cued word generation and Achuelean tool use. The relationship between tool use and language production is found in working and planning memory respectively and was found to be similar across a variety of participants furthering evidence that these areas of the brain are shared. This evidence lends credibility to the theory that language developed alongside tool use in the Lower Paleolithic.


title: Origin of language

text: The humanistic tradition considers language as a human invention. Renaissance philosopher Antoine Arnauld gave a detailed description of his idea of the origin of language in Port-Royal Grammar. According to Arnauld, people are social and rational by nature, and this urged them to create language as a means to communicate their ideas to others. Language construction would have occurred through a slow and gradual process. In later theory, especially in functional linguistics, the primacy of communication is emphasised over psychological needs.


title: Origin of language

text: The exact way language evolved is however not considered as vital to the study of languages. Structural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure abandoned evolutionary linguistics after having come to the firm conclusion that it would not be able to provide any further revolutionary insight after the completion of the major works in historical linguistics by the end of the 19th century. Saussure was particularly sceptical of the attempts of August Schleicher and other Darwinian linguists to access prehistorical languages through series of reconstructions of proto-languages.


title: Origin of language

text: Evolutionary research had many other critics, too. The Paris linguistic society famously banned the topic of language evolution in 1866 because it was considered as lacking scientific proof. Around the same time, Max Müller ridiculed popular accounts to explain language origin. In his classifications, the "bow-wow theory" is the type of explanation that considers languages as having evolved as an imitation of natural sounds. The "pooh-pooh theory" holds that speech originated from spontaneous human cries and exclamations; the "yo-he-ho theory" suggests that language developed from grunts and gasps evoked by physical exertion; while the "sing-song theory" claims that speech arose from primitive ritual chants.


title: Origin of language

text: Saussure's solution to the problem of language evolution involves dividing theoretical linguistics in two. Evolutionary and historical linguistics are renamed as diachronic linguistics. It is the study of language change, but it has only limited explanatory power due to the inadequacy of all of the reliable research material that could ever be made available. Synchronic linguistics, in contrast, aims to widen scientists' understanding of language through a study of a given contemporary or historical language stage as a system in its own right.


title: Origin of language

text: Although Saussure paid much focus to diachronic linguistics, later structuralists who equated structuralism with the synchronic analysis were sometimes criticised of ahistoricism. According to structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, language and meaning—in opposition to "knowledge, which develops slowly and progressively"—must have appeared in an instant.


title: Origin of language

text: Structuralism, as first introduced to sociology by Émile Durkheim, is nonetheless a type of humanistic evolutionary theory which explains diversification as necessitated by growing complexity. There was a shift of focus to functional explanation after Saussure's death. Functional structuralists including the Prague Circle linguists and André Martinet explained the growth and maintenance of structures as being necessitated by their functions. For example, novel technologies make it necessary for people to invent new words, but these may lose their function and be forgotten as the technologies are eventually replaced by more modern ones.


title: Origin of language

text: According to Noam Chomsky's single-mutation theory, the emergence of language resembled the formation of a crystal; with digital infinity as the seed crystal in a super-saturated primate brain, on the verge of blossoming into the human mind, by physical law, once evolution added a single small but crucial keystone. Thus, in this theory, language appeared rather suddenly within the history of human evolution. Chomsky, writing with computational linguist and computer scientist Robert C. Berwick, suggests that this scenario is completely compatible with modern biology. They note that "none of the recent accounts of human language evolution seem to have completely grasped the shift from conventional Darwinism to its fully stochastic modern version—specifically, that there are stochastic effects not only due to sampling like directionless drift, but also due to directed stochastic variation in fitness, migration, and heritability—indeed, all the "forces" that affect individual or gene frequencies... All this can affect evolutionary outcomes—outcomes that as far as we can make out are not brought out in recent books on the evolution of language, yet would arise immediately in the case of any new genetic or individual innovation, precisely the kind of scenario likely to be in play when talking about language's emergence."


title: Origin of language

text: Citing evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo, they concur that a substantial difference must have occurred to differentiate "Homo sapiens" from Neanderthals to "prompt the relentless spread of our species, who had never crossed open water, up and out of Africa and then on across the entire planet in just a few tens of thousands of years... What we do not see is any kind of 'gradualism' in new tool technologies or innovations like fire, shelters, or figurative art." Berwick and Chomsky therefore suggest language emerged approximately between 200,000 years ago and 60,000 years ago (between the appearance of the first anatomically modern humans in southern Africa and the last exodus from Africa respectively). "That leaves us with about 130,000 years, or approximately 5,000–6,000 generations of time for evolutionary change. This is not 'overnight in one generation' as some have (incorrectly) inferred—but neither is it on the scale of geological eons. It's time enough—within the ballpark for what Nilsson and Pelger (1994) estimated as the time required for the full evolution of a vertebrate eye from a single cell, even without the invocation of any 'evo-devo' effects."


title: Origin of language

text: The single-mutation theory of language evolution has been directly questioned on different grounds. A formal analysis of the probability of such a mutation taking place and going to fixation in the species has concluded that such a scenario is unlikely, with multiple mutations with more moderate fitness effects being more probable. Another criticism has questioned the logic of the argument for single mutation and puts forward that from the formal simplicity of Merge, the capacity Berwick and Chomsky deem the core property of human language that emerged suddenly, one cannot derive the (number of) evolutionary steps that led to it.


title: Origin of language

text: The Romulus and Remus hypothesis, proposed by neuroscientist Andrey Vyshedskiy, seeks to address the question as to why the modern speech apparatus originated over 500,000 years before the earliest signs of modern human imagination. This hypothesis proposes that there were two phases that led to modern recursive language. The phenomenon of recursion occurs across multiple linguistic domains, arguably most prominently in syntax and morphology. Thus, by nesting a structure such as a sentence or a word within themselves, it enables the generation of potentially (countably) infinite new variations of that structure. For example, the base sentence [Peter likes apples.] can be nested in irrealis clauses to produce Mary said [Peter likes apples., [Paul believed [Mary said [Peter likes apples.]]] and so forth.


title: Origin of language

text: The first phase includes the slow development of non-recursive language with a large vocabulary along with the modern speech apparatus, which includes changes to the hyoid bone, increased voluntary control of the muscles of the diaphragm, the evolution of the FOXP2 gene, as well as other changes by 600,000 years ago. Then, the second phase was a rapid Chomskian single step, consisting of three distinct events that happened in quick succession around 70,000 years ago and allowed the shift from non-recursive to recursive language in early hominins.


title: Origin of language

text: It is not enough for children to have a modern prefrontal cortex (PFC) to allow the development of PFS; the children must also be mentally stimulated and have recursive elements already in their language to acquire PFS. Since their parents would not have invented these elements yet, the children would have had to do it themselves, which is a common occurrence among young children that live together, in a process called cryptophasia. This means that delayed PFC development would have allowed more time to acquire PFS and develop recursive elements.


title: Origin of language

text: Delayed PFC development also comes with negative consequences, such as a longer period of reliance on one's parents to survive and lower survival rates. For modern language to have occurred, PFC delay had to have an immense survival benefit in later life, such as PFS ability. This suggests that the mutation that caused PFC delay and the development of recursive language and PFS occurred simultaneously, which lines up with evidence of a genetic bottleneck around 70,000 years ago. This could have been the result of a few individuals who developed PFS and recursive language which gave them significant competitive advantage over all other humans at the time.


title: Origin of language

text: The gestural theory states that human language developed from gestures that were used for simple communication.


title: Origin of language

text: Research has found strong support for the idea that verbal language and sign language depend on similar neural structures. Patients who used sign language, and who suffered from a left-hemisphere lesion, showed the same disorders with their sign language as vocal patients did with their oral language. Other researchers found that the same left-hemisphere brain regions were active during sign language as during the use of vocal or written language.


title: Origin of language

text: Primate gesture is at least partially genetic: different nonhuman apes will perform gestures characteristic of their species, even if they have never seen another ape perform that gesture. For example, gorillas beat their breasts. This shows that gestures are an intrinsic and important part of primate communication, which supports the idea that language evolved from gesture.


title: Origin of language

text: Further evidence suggests that gesture and language are linked. In humans, manually gesturing has an effect on concurrent vocalizations, thus creating certain natural vocal associations of manual efforts. Chimpanzees move their mouths when performing fine motor tasks. These mechanisms may have played an evolutionary role in enabling the development of intentional vocal communication as a supplement to gestural communication. Voice modulation could have been prompted by preexisting manual actions.


title: Origin of language

text: From infancy, gestures both supplement and predict speech. This addresses the idea that gestures quickly change in humans from a sole means of communication (from a very young age) to a supplemental and predictive behavior that is used despite the ability to communicate verbally. This too serves as a parallel to the idea that gestures developed first and language subsequently built upon it.


title: Origin of language

text: Two possible scenarios have been proposed for the development of language, one of which supports the gestural theory:


title: Origin of language

text: The first perspective that language evolved from the calls of human ancestors seems logical because both humans and animals make sounds or cries. One evolutionary reason to refute this is that, anatomically, the centre that controls calls in monkeys and other animals is located in a completely different part of the brain than in humans. In monkeys, this centre is located in the depths of the brain related to emotions. In the human system, it is located in an area unrelated to emotion. Humans can communicate simply to communicate—without emotions. So, anatomically, this scenario does not work. This suggests that language was derived from gesture(humans communicated by gesture first and sound was attached later).


title: Origin of language

text: The important question for gestural theories is why there was a shift to vocalization. Various explanations have been proposed:


title: Origin of language

text: A comparable hypothesis states that in 'articulate' language, gesture and vocalisation are intrinsically linked, as language evolved from equally intrinsically linked dance and song.


title: Origin of language

text: Humans still use manual and facial gestures when they speak, especially when people meet who have no language in common. There are also a great number of sign languages still in existence, commonly associated with deaf communities. These sign languages are equal in complexity, sophistication, and expressive power, to any oral language. The cognitive functions are similar and the parts of the brain used are similar. The main difference is that the "phonemes" are produced on the outside of the body, articulated with hands, body, and facial expression, rather than inside the body articulated with tongue, teeth, lips, and breathing. (Compare the motor theory of speech perception.)


title: Origin of language

text: It is suggested that nature has allotted psychological representations to all gestures, including vocal gestures. Animals have no intellectual purpose. Hence animals of the same species from different continents can communicate psychologically without learning any sign language. In the case of humans, in addition to the gestures, the vocal gestures are arbitrarily converted into the intellectual sense. This arbitrariness depends on biological, psychological, and intellectual needs and capabilities, which differ from place to place, creating language differences.


title: Origin of language

text: Critics of gestural theory note that it is difficult to name serious reasons why the initial pitch-based vocal communication (which is present in primates) would be abandoned in favor of the much less effective non-vocal, gestural communication. However, Michael Corballis has pointed out that it is supposed that primate vocal communication (such as alarm calls) cannot be controlled consciously, unlike hand movement, and thus it is not credible as precursor to human language; primate vocalization is rather homologous to and continued in involuntary reflexes (connected with basic human emotions) such as screams or laughter (the fact that these can be faked does not disprove the fact that genuine involuntary responses to fear or surprise exist). Also, gesture is not generally less effective, and depending on the situation can even be advantageous, for example in a loud environment or where it is important to be silent, such as on a hunt. Other challenges to the "gesture-first" theory have been presented by researchers in psycholinguistics, including David McNeill.


title: Origin of language

text: Proponents of the motor theory of language evolution have primarily focused on the visual domain and communication through observation of movements. The "Tool-use sound hypothesis" suggests that the production and perception of sound also contributed substantially, particularly "incidental sound of locomotion" ("ISOL") and "tool-use sound" ("TUS"). Human bipedalism resulted in rhythmic and more predictable "ISOL". That may have stimulated the evolution of musical abilities, auditory working memory, and abilities to produce complex vocalizations, and to mimic natural sounds. Since the human brain proficiently extracts information about objects and events from the sounds they produce, "TUS", and mimicry of "TUS", might have achieved an iconic function. The prevalence of sound symbolism in many extant languages supports this idea. Self-produced TUS activates multimodal brain processing (motor neurons, hearing, proprioception, touch, vision), and "TUS" stimulates primate audiovisual mirror neurons, which is likely to stimulate the development of association chains. Tool use and auditory gestures involve motor-processing of the forelimbs, which is associated with the evolution of vertebrate vocal communication. The production, perception, and mimicry of "TUS" may have resulted in a limited number of vocalizations or protowords that were associated with tool use. A new way to communicate about tools, especially when out of sight, would have had selective advantage. A gradual change in acoustic properties, meaning, or both could have resulted in arbitrariness and an expanded repertoire of words. Humans have been increasingly exposed to "TUS" over millions of years, coinciding with the period during which spoken language evolved.


title: Origin of language

text: In humans, functional MRI studies have reported finding areas homologous to the monkey mirror neuron system in the inferior frontal cortex, close to Broca's area, one of the language regions of the brain. This has led to suggestions that human language evolved from a gesture performance/understanding system implemented in mirror neurons. Mirror neurons have been said to have the potential to provide a mechanism for action-understanding, imitation-learning, and the simulation of other people's behavior. This hypothesis is supported by some cytoarchitectonic homologies between monkey premotor area F5 and human Broca's area.


title: Origin of language

text: Rates of vocabulary expansion link to the ability of children to vocally mirror non-words and so to acquire the new word pronunciations. Such speech repetition occurs automatically, quickly and separately in the brain to speech perception. Moreover, such vocal imitation can occur without comprehension such as in speech shadowing and echolalia. Further evidence for this link comes from a recent study in which the brain activity of two participants was measured using fMRI while they were gesturing words to each other using hand gestures with a game of charades—a modality that some have suggested might represent the evolutionary precursor of human language. Analysis of the data using Granger Causality revealed that the mirror-neuron system of the observer indeed reflects the pattern of activity of in the motor system of the sender, supporting the idea that the motor concept associated with the words is indeed transmitted from one brain to another using the mirror system.


title: Origin of language

text: Not all linguists agree with the above arguments, however. In particular, supporters of Noam Chomsky argue against the possibility that the mirror neuron system can play any role in the hierarchical recursive structures essential to syntax.


title: Origin of language

text: According to Dean Falk's "putting-down-the-baby" theory, vocal interactions between early hominid mothers and infants began a sequence of events that led, eventually, to human ancestors' earliest words. The basic idea is that evolving human mothers, unlike their counterparts in other primates, could not move around and forage with their infants clinging onto their backs. Loss of fur in the human case left infants with no means of clinging on. Frequently, therefore, mothers had to put their babies down. As a result, these babies needed to be reassured that they were not being abandoned. Mothers responded by developing 'motherese'—an infant-directed communicative system embracing facial expressions, body language, touching, patting, caressing, laughter, tickling and emotionally expressive contact calls. The argument is that language developed out of this interaction.


title: Origin of language

text: In "The Mental and Social Life of Babies", psychologist Kenneth Kaye noted that no usable adult language could have evolved without interactive communication between very young children and adults. "No symbolic system could have survived from one generation to the next if it could not have been easily acquired by young children under their normal conditions of social life."


title: Origin of language

text: The "from where to what" model is a language evolution model that is derived primarily from the organization of language processing in the brain into two structures: the auditory dorsal stream and the auditory ventral stream. It hypothesizes seven stages of language evolution (see illustration). Speech originated for the purpose of exchanging contact calls between mothers and their offspring to find one another in the event they became separated (illustration part 1). The contact calls could be modified with intonations in order to express either a higher or lower level of distress (illustration part 2). The use of two types of contact calls enabled the first question-answer conversation. In this scenario, the child would emit a low-level distress call to express a desire to interact with an object, and the mother would respond with either another low-level distress call (to express approval of the interaction) or a high-level distress call (to express disapproval) (illustration part 3). Over time, the improved use of intonations and vocal control led to the invention of unique calls (phonemes) associated with distinct objects (illustration part 4). At first, children learned the calls (phonemes) from their parents by imitating their lip-movements (illustration part 5). Eventually, infants were able to encode into long-term memory all the calls (phonemes). Consequentially, mimicry via lip-reading was limited to infancy and older children learned new calls through mimicry without lip-reading (illustration part 6). Once individuals became capable of producing a sequence of calls, this allowed multi-syllabic words, which increased the size of their vocabulary (illustration part 7). The use of words, composed of sequences of syllables, provided the infra structure for communicating with sequences of words (i.e., sentences).


title: Origin of language

text: The theory's name is derived from the two auditory streams, which are both found in the brains of humans and other primates. The auditory ventral stream is responsible for sound recognition, and so it is referred to as the auditory "what" stream. In primates, the auditory dorsal stream is responsible for sound localization, and thus it is called the auditory "where" stream. Only in humans (in the left hemisphere), is it also responsible for other processes associated with language use and acquisition, such as speech repetition and production, integration of phonemes with their lip movements, perception and production of intonations, phonological long-term memory (long-term memory storage of the sounds of words), and phonological working memory (the temporary storage of the sounds of words). Some evidence also indicates a role in recognising others by their voices. The emergence of each of these functions in the auditory dorsal stream represents an intermediate stage in the evolution of language.


title: Origin of language

text: A contact call origin for human language is consistent with animal studies, as like human language, contact call discrimination in monkeys is lateralised to the left hemisphere. Mice with knock-out to language related genes (such as FOXP2 and SRPX2) also resulted in the pups no longer emitting contact calls when separated from their mothers. Supporting this model is also its ability to explain unique human phenomena, such as the use of intonations when converting words into commands and questions, the tendency of infants to mimic vocalisations during the first year of life (and its disappearance later on) and the protruding and visible human lips, which are not found in other apes. This theory could be considered an elaboration of the putting-down-the-baby theory of language evolution.


title: Origin of language

text: "Grammaticalisation" is a continuous historical process in which free-standing words develop into grammatical appendages, while these in turn become ever more specialised and grammatical. An initially "incorrect" usage, in becoming accepted, leads to unforeseen consequences, triggering knock-on effects and extended sequences of change. Paradoxically, grammar evolves because, in the final analysis, humans care less about grammatical niceties than about making themselves understood. If this is how grammar evolves today, according to this school of thought, similar principles at work can be legitimately inferred among distant human ancestors, when grammar itself was first being established.


title: Origin of language

text: In order to reconstruct the evolutionary transition from early language to languages with complex grammars, it is necessary to know which hypothetical sequences are plausible and which are not. In order to convey abstract ideas, the first recourse of speakers is to fall back on immediately recognizable concrete imagery, very often deploying metaphors rooted in shared bodily experience. A familiar example is the use of concrete terms such as "belly" or "back" to convey abstract meanings such as "inside" or "behind". Equally metaphorical is the strategy of representing temporal patterns on the model of spatial ones. For example, English speakers might say "It is going to rain", modelled on "I am going to London." This can be abbreviated colloquially to "It's gonna rain." Even when in a hurry, English speakers do not say "I'm gonna London"—the contraction is restricted to the job of specifying tense. From such examples it can be seen why grammaticalisation is consistently unidirectional—from concrete to abstract meaning, not the other way around.


title: Origin of language

text: Grammaticalisation theorists picture early language as simple, perhaps consisting only of nouns. Even under that extreme theoretical assumption, however, it is difficult to imagine what would realistically have prevented people from using, say, "spear" as if it were a verb ("Spear that pig!"). People might have used their nouns as verbs or their verbs as nouns as occasion demanded. In short, while a noun-only language might seem theoretically possible, grammaticalisation theory indicates that it cannot have remained fixed in that state for any length of time.


title: Origin of language

text: Creativity drives grammatical change. This presupposes a certain attitude on the part of listeners. Instead of punishing deviations from accepted usage, listeners must prioritise imaginative mind-reading. Imaginative creativity—emitting a leopard alarm when no leopard was present, for example—is not the kind of behaviour which, say, vervet monkeys would appreciate or reward. Creativity and reliability are incompatible demands; for "Machiavellian" primates as for animals generally, the overriding pressure is to demonstrate reliability. If humans escape these constraints, it is because in their case, listeners are primarily interested in mental states.


title: Origin of language

text: To focus on mental states is to accept fictions—inhabitants of the imagination—as potentially informative and interesting. An example is metaphor: a metaphor is, literally, a false statement. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo declares "Juliet is the sun!". Juliet is a woman, not a ball of plasma in the sky, but human listeners are not (or not usually) pedants insistent on point-by-point factual accuracy. They want to know what the speaker has in mind. Grammaticalisation is essentially based on metaphor. To outlaw its use would be to stop grammar from evolving and, by the same token, to exclude all possibility of expressing abstract thought.


title: Origin of language

text: A criticism of all this is that while grammaticalisation theory might explain language change today, it does not satisfactorily address the really difficult challenge—explaining the initial transition from primate-style communication to language as it is known today. Rather, the theory assumes that language already exists. As Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva acknowledge: "Grammaticalisation requires a linguistic system that is used regularly and frequently within a community of speakers and is passed on from one group of speakers to another". Outside modern humans, such conditions do not prevail.


title: Origin of language

text: Human language is used for self-expression; however, expression displays different stages. The consciousness of self and feelings represents the stage immediately prior to the external, phonetic expression of feelings in the form of sound, i.e., language. Intelligent animals such as dolphins, Eurasian magpies, and chimpanzees live in communities, wherein they assign themselves roles for group survival and show emotions such as sympathy. When such animals view their reflection (mirror test), they recognise themselves and exhibit self-consciousness. Notably, humans evolved in a quite different environment than that of these animals. Human survival became easier with the development of tools, shelter, and fire, thus facilitating further advancement of social interaction, self-expression, and tool-making, as for hunting and gathering. The increasing brain size allowed advanced provisioning and tools and the technological advances during the Palaeolithic era that built upon the previous evolutionary innovations of bipedalism and hand versatility allowed the development of human language.