The starting point is the straightforward question: Where do these words come from? What is the source of the unbroken stream or river of language, which we all experience, both in talking to others and in formulating our own thoughts? The generally accepted view of those who study language professionally is that language is an arbitrary, cultural construct; language is learnt from listening to speakers of the language of the particular community into which an infant finds itself born; the words used in the language as well as the particular grammar or syntax of the language have developed historically as a social product and been handed down by tradition. Differences of language existing in different human communities are the product of chance factors operating over long periods of time.

At first sight, it might seem a purely academic question whether or not language is arbitrary, of interest only to linguisticians, etymologists and so on. But the question in reality is one of profound importance. Arbitrary means chance, unmotivated, without purpose, Those who view languages as wholly arbitrary structures are saying that language is guided by no objective, that the availability of words and the particular structures of a language are completely accidental and purposeless. At the same time all recognise that language is the fundamental instrument for human communities, the essential medium of communication, the precise and powerful tool of thought, the means for consolidating scientific and technological progress. To say that language is arbitrary and a purely cultural product is to assert that there is no possibility of relating language to other aspects of human biology, to evolution as shown in the development of brain-structure and the physiological differences between men and animals.

Many linguists assume not only that words are arbitrary forms but that the arbitrariness extends to every feature of grammar and syntax of particular languages. On this view both the contents of the lexicon - the words of a language - and the grammar (the surface grammar) have no necessary relation to those real aspects of the world with which language has to deal.

It seems a strange outcome that the specific manifestation of the major and many would say, the absolutely crucial human ability, the ability to speak and understand language should be something which cannot be explained and for which, in principle, no explanation can even be attempted. Is language arbitrary or innate?

The thesis presented in this paper (taken with the separate paper submitted to Group 2) is that words and the fabric of language, are not arbitrary, a conventional, cultural product of human ingenuity, but derive directly from, evolutionarily and physiologically, and are integrated with, perception and action as the other major components of total human behaviour.

Though in the 18th century, and indeed in classical times, there was support for belief in a natural origin of words, for the last 100 years or so the principle of the arbitrariness of language has ruled virtually without challenge, The modern science of linguistics takes as its starting point 'the arbitrariness of the sign': that is one can, and should, look for no relation between the sound-structure of the word and its meaning. This doctrine goes back before Saussure (Locke was perhaps the most powerful and influential adherent of the view) but Saussure, as the father of modern linguistics, gave his overwhelming authority to arbitrariness as the foundation for the new science. Whilst some linguists who follow him are prepared to recognise that in minor respects elements of the lexicon may not be totally arbitrary, for example there are onomatopoeic words (though some would say that even these words are conventionalised), linguisticians generally are no more prepared to consider that the forms of language are a natural product than pre-Darwinian zoologists could accept the natural origin of the different species.

To get some flavour of the orthodox view, it may be useful to introduce a few quotations:

SAUSSURE

Language is a convention, and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon does not matter. Because the sign is arbitrary, it follows no law other than that of tradition, and because it is based upon tradition, it is arbitrary... I mean that it is unmotivated i.e. arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connection with the signified. Only differences that make it possible to distinguish this word from all others ... carry signification ... Since one vocal image is no better suited than the next for what it is commissioned to express. 'Arbitrary' and differential are two correlative qualities ,. Language is a system of inter-dependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others.

HOCKETT: Arbitrariness The relation between a meaningful element in language and its denotation is independent of any physical and geometrical resemblance between the two ... or, as we say, the semantic relation is arbitrary rather than iconic.

HORMANN:

What meaning is conditioned to which sign is basically quite arbitrary and therefore there is an element of randomness or absence of logical necessity in the relationship of sign and object signified.

MILLER and JOHNSON-LAIRD:

The absence of direct, tangible connections between physical objects and the acoustic patterns used as names for them is a foundation assumption for studies of linguistic meaning.

WITTGENSTEIN:

I want you to remember that words have these meanings which we have given them and we give them meanings by explanation. A word has the meaning someone has given it.

Besides these quotations (from linguists, psychologists, psycholinguists and an influential philosopher), there are many more which could be given but they would not much change the impression they leave.

The consensus is that

1. A word has the meaning someone has given it. Words are given meaning by explanations;

2. Language is arbitrary, conventional and traditional; words have meaning only as parts of a system - with each word deriving its meaning solely from its difference from the other words in the system;

3. Differences in the words used by different languages for the same things show the unreasonableness of all the words chosen - words are no more than 'flights of fancy';

4, Words are acquired habits. Any word could mean any thing, There is no logical necessity in the relation of sign and signified;

5. There is no geometrical or physical resemblance between word and meaning, Words are arbitrary rather than iconic;

6. Words cannot be innate or built into the nervous system because languages are a recent evolutionary development and differ so much from each other.

When many diverse authorities agree so forcefully, it may seem rash to challenge what they say - but fundamental assumptions of any science ought some time to be challenged. One line of attack is to note that not all of those whose opinions are recorded have expressed themselves in exactly the same way; there are inconsistencies and incoherences in the different accounts, All would agree that 'arbitrary' is opposed to 'natural'. Hockett opposes 'arbitrary' and 'iconic' as meaning physically or geometrically resembling the referent. Others contrast 'arbitrary' and 'innate'. Different writers give different accounts of what 'arbitrary' means. Saussure and others equate 'arbitrary' and 'traditional', 'arbitrary' and 'conventional', 'arbitrary' and 'social' or 'habitual', Hormann puts 'arbitrary' as equivalent to random, lacking logical necessity, For Bloomfield, 'arbitrary' equals 'unreasonable' and for Sapir 'fanciful'. Englefield treats arbitrary and invented as equivalent i.e. artificial, a deliberate product of human construction. Tax equates 'arbitrary' and 'cultural'.

Those who speak of the cultural, social, customary origin of words and language might be reminded of the very relevant comments of Konrad Lorenz: "The undeniable fact that cultures are highly complex intellectual systems, resting on a basis of symbols expressive of cultural values, causes us to forget, given as we are to thinking in terms of opposites, that they are natural structures, which have evolved along natural lines". It seems absolutely clear that what is 'traditional', 'social' or 'conventional' can still be wholly or partly natural, or at the minimum natural in origin. After all, there are obvious examples of what one would call 'conventions', styles of clothes, cookery recipes, matrimonial systems, methods of composing music, but for these one does not need to look very far to find natural bases or natural constraints on the forms they take, Equally, one can easily identify obviously natural forms of behaviour upon which conventional, traditional or social elements have been superimposed. Eating is natural but there are conventions about the manner of eating; one chooses to eat in this way rather than that, even though both ways in a sense are equally natural, Even in the case of walking, which Saussure refers to as a clearly natural form of behaviour, there are different manners of walking including some highly conventionalised ones such as marching, goose-stepping and so on. With the human being, the natural and the social are inextricably mingled in many forms of behaviour - and the essence of the convention or tradition may exactly be the adoption in a community of one particular form of behaviour out of several equally natural possible forms of behaviour. Apart from imprecision or variation in the use of the word 'arbitrary' one finds on closer examination that there is a dismaying lack of clarity in the views of linguists as regards the extent to which the thesis of arbitrariness of language goes. Are phonetics and syntax as arbitrary, in the views of these linguists, as the lexicon of each and every language? Are the types of sound used for forming words and the ranges of sounds selected for use by different languages equally arbitrary? In the area of syntax and grammar, are the differing word-orders selected by different languages equally arbitrary, equally part of Sapir's 'flights of human fancy'? Are inflectional systems (declensions and conjugations), the existence of concordance between nouns, adjectives and verbs, vowel-harmony, agglutinative structures, the product of random forces, the result of deliberate invention, a purposeless weaving of complexity?

Even Saussure is not altogether consistent, so he says:

"A language constitutes a system. In this one respect .. a language is not completely arbitrary but is ruled to some extent by logic.. The system is a complex mechanism that can be grasped only through reflection, Some signs are absolutely arbitrary; in others we note, not its complete absence but the presence of degrees of arbitrariness," The result is rather paradoxical. Though grammar and syntax diverge almost as widely between languages as do the particular words used (and in some cases the grammatical divergences are more striking than the divergences in vocabulary), the proponents of the arbitrariness of language are much less positive about the arbitrariness of grammar and syntax. Saussure comes close to the point of treating grammar and syntax, the derivational and compositional aspects of language, as compensating rational forces whose aim is to create a coherent language system precisely so as to reduce the difficulties caused by the initial, irrational arbitrariness of language.

If one uses Saussure's questionable distinction between the absolutely arbitrary and the rather less arbitrary, the suggestion seems to be that grammar and syntax are rather less arbitrary than are the individual words of languages, Certainly, if it is contended that grammar and syntax are equally arbitrary and equally the product of invention or convention, one marvels how primitive man, throughout the world, decided how to select the grammatical features of his language. Even modern linguisticians, approaching the subject with refined, sophisticated techniques, find great difficulty in analysing and presenting systematically the syntactic functioning of language. Must one assume that in each embryo language community, there was some primeval super-Chomsky, elaborating the forms which eventually became the comprehensive and subtle systematisations of languages such as Latin and Greek? If the arbitrary origin of individual words is difficult to explain, then the arbitrary origin of grammar and syntax is even more of an enigma.

But, if following the other line of argument, one takes it that the origin of grammar and syntax was not arbitrary but was in some sense innate or natural - even though at this point in time we are not able to explain the manner in which the natural or innate development may have taken place - two difficult questions immediately present themselves:

how, assuming that grammar and syntax are in some sense natural or innate, does one in fact explain the diversity of grammar and syntax between languages? This is a question which Chomsky has approached but has not resolved, He postulates a common deep structure underlying all surface grammars but he has not attempted to say or speculate what the physiological or neurological status of this deep structure may be, how in fact it could have originated as an evolutionary development or how in fact a relation can be established between a universal innate deep structure (common to all humans) and the diversity of surface syntax and grammar which one in fact finds - and to which he would deny any innate status;

3 how, if grammar and syntax as has been said are innate, natural, evolutionary, does this biological system (presumably genetically-programmed) establish an intimate, functioning relationship with what is said to be the incoherent, arbitrary collection of individual speech-sound forms (distinct words and morphemes) forming the lexicon of any individual language? At first sight, the genetically-determined syntactic form of language and the arbitrary lexical substance of language would seem totally incompatible, a mixing of chalk and cheese. Yet there is another vital aspect of this particular difficulty Though syntax and lexicon are treated as distinct by traditional grammarians and modern linguists, the distinction is more apparent than real. There is no sharp distinction between the syntactic function of individual words and their semantic function; what appears as a system of inflections in one language is represented as a system of distinct, isolable words (prepositions, auxiliary verbs) in another uninflected language. The relation between the content of traditional grammar and traditional lexicon differs from one language to another; the seamless garment of language in its practical operation is divided up in different ways by the linguists as professional anatomists of language. The result is that language-functions classified as grammatical in one language (and thus, ex hypothesi, biologically-determined, non-arbitrary) are performed in other languages by individual words (by definition arbitrary, accidental)

If one reflects on the proposition that language is essentially arbitrary, certainly in its word-forms but probably or possibly also in the differing surface features of the syntax of different languages, some considerable problems rapidly become apparent, in relation to the origin of languages (and of language generally) in relation to the normal use of language in a community and in relation to the acquisition of language by children. The following list gives an idea of some of these problems:

Problems in connection with language origin

1. If one was asked to construct an arbitrary (unmotivated in any way) set of symbols intended to relate to the ordered items of an area of perception (or to the total space of perception), how would one set about doing this? (This is the problem faced by the individual originator of a language)

2. Why, if someone is engaged in the construction of a language, should he carefully avoid making use of natural linkages of sound and meaning in order to make the meanings of particular words more easily memorable? (one would suppose that someone inventing a language would use every possible means to establish links between words and meanings)

3. How, without the use of language, would it be possible for a group of persons to agree on the use of a particular wholly arbitrary set of speech-sounds (a word-form) to refer to a particular item of experience? How could they be persuaded to do so - indeed understand what was being proposed?

4. How if initially words were allocated arbitrarily to particular items of experience could one overcome the fundamental difficulty, the imprecision of deixis?

5, How, if all languages are arbitrary and were invented, does it happen that every human community has available languages of very comparable degrees of complexity, regardless of the cultural level otherwise of any particular community? Linguists take the view that there are no primitive languages in existence. Why if language is an invention should the position be so different from that for other human inventions - which may be made in one community but not in others? If language was an invention transmitted between communities, why should the character of language differ so widely between communities?

6. If language is totally arbitrary - any word can mean anything - how are the established phenomena of cross-linguistic symbolism to be explained (that is people speaking one language can judge systematically better than chance the likely distinctions of meaning in another language not known to them)?

7. How if, as Saussure and others suggest, the meaning of an individual word depends only on its differentiation from other words (its position in a net of word-sounds) and not in any way on the character of the word itself, does an individual word in fact come to acquire that specific meaning - since on this theory we should need to know the meanings of the whole net of words before we could understand the meaning of any single word (determined by the meanings of the rest of the net)?

8. How, if each language is arbitrary both as a system and in the elements (words) it uses, is translation between languages possible i.e, must there not be some underlying equivalence, isomorphism,between one language and another for translation to be possible - and if, as Jakobson suggests, there is such an isomorphism, where can it come from, if languages in fact are arbitrary systems?

Problems relating to language use

9. How if the association of word and meaning is arbitrary is it possible as a matter of practical experience that the word is so deeply integrated into the structure of our thought that one cannot see an object without the name of the object immediately and inescapably coming to mind?

10. How if we have to deal with a multitude of arbitrary groups of speech-sounds, arbitrary words, can the great problems of the limitation of human short-term memory be overcome? An analogous question would be how many arbitrary telephone numbers do we find it possible to remember, when no clue is given by the number itself to the person whose telephone number a particular one is?

11. Why if language is arbitrary is deliberate innovation in lexicon and grammar so rare and difficult? Why is language so stable?

12. How is it possible, if language, including syntax and grammar, is arbitrary, for ordinary people to be so generally able to distinguish incorrect grammatical forms, even when the complexity of the grammatical rules is such that linguisticians themselves are unable to give a complete and systematic account of them?

13. How is it possible to assert that words are arbitrary (because they differ widely between languages) without at the same time asserting that all grammatical features are equally arbitrary (because they also differ widely between languages)? Or if one argues that there are universal underlying features of grammar, regularly related to surface features of grammar (and that these deep features are innate or natural), why should one not assume universal underlying features of word-formation, which would also be innate or natural and would be related systematically to the divergent 'surface' forms of words in different languages?

Problems in connection with language acquisition by children

14. How if language is totally arbitrary are infants able very soon after birth to discriminate phonemes categorically, not only phonemes used in the parent language but also often phonemes used in other languages? They share this ability to discriminate phonemes categorically (ie to group speech-sounds in sharply divided categories) with a variety of animals e.g. the experimental results with chinchillas described by Kuhl and Miller.

15. How if language is arbitrary can one explain the rapidity with which children learn their first language, and the striking regularity in the order in which they learn the various grammatical features of their language?

16. How, if words are completely arbitrary sounds, can children learn a name for an object almost instantly, without any normal process of reinforcement? What kind of special learning is this?

17 How if words are completely arbitrary do children learn the meaning and use of a word like 'Yet' or the use of 'The' - where there is no possibility of learning by ostension?

There has been little or no recognition by linguists of these problems and few attempts by linguists or others to suggest solutions to them, other than perhaps in the field of language origin. There have been a number of theories or scenarios proposed to account for the origin of language, in gesture, in song, in natural cries, Of the accounts given, some link the origin of 'arbitrary' verbal language to the prior use of gesture and others to the prior use of instinctive cries and call-signs. None of them seems to give a particularly plausible account of the transition from naturally-based signalling systems to a fully arbitrary non-natural use of speech-sounds. Indeed, one might wonder why it should be thought necessary to postulate a transition from a natural base to an 'arbitrary' system. The gradual transformation of natural calls and cries into naturally suitable words would seem more probable. In the case of theories assuming gestural signs as preceding language, much more persuasive accounts can be offered of how gesture could gradually evolve into non-arbitrary language, retaining a natural basis both for word-forms and syntactic structures, None of the accounts seems to deal adequately with the difficulty of explaining how it would be possible to reach a consensus or agreement between individuals in a community on the selection of the particular arbitrary sounds to be used for the particular arbitrary meanings.

In sum, the arguments against the view that language is an arbitrary structure seem strong. It is impossible to explain with any plausibility how, if language is arbitrary, it was constructed by a deliberate act or had some non-natural origin; it is very difficult to explain how the human mind could possibly operate with a totally arbitrary system of signs and it is even more difficult to explain how, if language is arbitrary every child learns to speak its mother tongue with such facility in an astonishingly short period, acquiring not only an extensive lexicon but also a reliable understanding of the complex forms and rules of grammar and syntax (including for many languages inflectional systems of remarkable difficulty and completeness), a feat of learning far outstripping in extent and complexity anything that adults could undertake.

But if an arbitrary origin for language seems implausible, and with it the whole idea of the 'arbitrariness of the sign', one is brought up against the unexplained features of language which originally led to the widespread assumption of arbitrariness, namely the great divergence of lexicons between languages (Bloomfield's worry about the many differing words for 'Horse') and the equally striking divergences between languages in syntactic structure and morphology.

Language is surely not arbitrary but how can it be natural? If an arbitrary origin for language seems implausible, one can hardly rest content with the situation that whilst the present foundation assumption for linguistics is wrong, it seems equally implausible to take as one's assumption that language is natural. Perhaps the conclusion should be that the argument about the arbitrary or natural character of language cannot be resolved within the framework of discussion within which it has so far been conducted, that is very largely within the constrictions of traditional linguistics. Saussure's contention, that the origin of language (and presumably the related question of the acquisition of language by children) was not a problem with which linguistics should properly concern itself should be abandoned, once and for all. For him 'the true and unique object of linguistics is language studied in and for itself', But language unavoidably is a vital part of total human abilities and behaviour, the most complex and most distinctively human. Perhaps what is needed is a new point of view, a closer look at language behaviour as related to and contrasted with other forms of human and animal behaviour, not only the acquisition of language by children as part of their total development but also the relation of language behaviour and development to the development of the closely related faculties of vision and hearing, and the organisation of the motor-coordination system.

The natural potential for the development of language

A great deal of research has been done on human vision and hearing, much of it by way of study of the very similar processes of vision and hearing in cats, monkeys and other animals. Much of what has been learnt is highly suggestive for the course of human development and for human functioning including the functioning of language. One area where this is particularly true is that of what is known as 'imprinting', that is the genetic preprogramming of alternative behavioural lines of development in the young animal. The following account of what has been learnt about imprinting is very largely derived from the work of Konrad Lorenz and other ethologists who have followed his lead.

The phenomenon of imprinting, a highly specialised type of behavioural development, has been most closely investigated in relation to the development of vision and hearing in certain birds and animals. Similar phenomena suggesting imprinting have been observed in fish, arthropods and certain other mammals so that the evidence is of a very widely used genetic developmental process. In the 1930's Konrad Lorenz observed that newly hatched goslings would follow him rather than the mother goose if the goslings saw him before they saw her. Since geese naturally reared manifest a strong attachment for their parent, Lorenz concluded that for some animals at any rate they have the capacity to learn rapidly and permanently in a very specific way at a very early age, and in particular to learn the characteristics of the parent. The sensitive period for this special kind of learning, imprintability, often belongs to an exceptionally early stage in the development of the individual, sometimes a mere matter of hours, but the period is always relatively well defined, Once the determination of the imprinting has been fixed, the fixing of the object imprinted cannot be reversed.

Lorenz regarded the phenomenon of imprinting as being radically different from the usual kind of learning precisely because of its rapidity and its permanence. Not surprisingly, the discovery of imprinting in the rather specific circumstances of Lorenz's research led to widespread search for comparable phenomena in other fields. It has been striking that the majority of known imprinting processes (now examined for a wide range of animals, birds, insects) concern social behaviour, the adaptation of the individual to the community of the species into which it finds itself born. This has been particularly noticed for birds and animals where there is a strong social component in their normal lives. It now seems obvious that for a wide range of organisms imprinting has a vital role to play in the individual creature's development and that the process of imprinting is designed to modify the individual's behaviour in a way that directly serves survival, the adaptation of the individual to the environment in which it in fact finds itself. Lorenz suggests that imprinting involves what has been called an 'open programme', specified genetically. A genetic programme of this kind contains several individual programmes for the construction of various mechanisms and the open programme has the unique capacity to absorb further information from the external world in such a way as to allow this information to determine which of the available possibilities, the available mechanisms, shall be made operational. When this has been done, a new adaptation, serving the survival of the individual, is made permanent. Since Lorenz's first observations on imprinting in geese, much more evidence has been found of processes very similar to imprinting in the development of animal vision (and of course there are close parallels between visual perception in humans and visual perception in animals such as cats and monkeys). In the animal and in the human, the basic structure of the visual system is not produced by learning after birth, since the system is fully structured at birth - but on the other hand one cannot say that vision is wholly innate since there is clear evidence that it can be, and is, restructured by actual visual experience, provided the experience occurs soon after birth within narrowly defined critical periods (similar to the critical periods identified by Lorenz for imprinting) The relation between the genetically-determined structure at birth and the malleable aspect of visual organisation which can be moulded after birth is a complex one. Much of the neurological equipment necessary, for example, for pattern recognition appears to be present at birth, The way this innate equipment interacts with experience has been most closely studied in experiments using newly-born kittens. Kittens are born blind, with their eyes closed, but by 14 days they show evidence of vision and thereafter begin to recognise patterns and objects For the kitten, the critical period, the period of greatest susceptibility when the visual system can be modified by visual experience, occurs at about four to six weeks of age. How the adult cat will see depends critically on the kind of visual environment to which the kitten is exposed during this period. Essentially, this is a period which for a cat developing normally allows it to acquaint itself with the common features of the environment in which it must live, and allows it to integrate its processes of perception with the development of its motor capabilities. If, however, in the critical period, a kitten is exposed to a non-normal visual environment, for example if particular types of visual experience are totally eliminated by letting the kitten live in a world systematically distorted either by removing, for example, all vertical or all horizontal patterning, then the kitten's visual system permanently adjusts to the distorted environment so that it will no longer be able to see vertical lines or horizontal lines and edges (as the case may be); a kitten exposed in the critical period to an environment without verticals can no longer perceive verticals so that, for example, it cannot avoid vertical obstacles. The perceptible environment for the kitten has thus been permanently changed as a result of a process closely analogous to the imprinting identified by Lorenz. Very similar experiments have been performed with monkeys, though for them the critical period is more extensive, beginning at birth and extending over the next six to eight weeks, followed by a period of lower sensitivity lasting for about one year. It seems probable from these experiments that, apart from vision, other sensory systems and higher functions may also have critical periods during which behavioural mechanisms and performance can be sharpened, made more appropriate to the animal's actual environment (or of course distorted when the environment is systematically distorted). The balance between the innate and the imprinted in behaviour varies from species to species and function to function. Even without imprinting, the specificity of wholly innate programming in many animals can be astounding. Many animals, birds, insects, know apparently in fine detail much about the world of objects before they can have had any experience. Migrating birds use the pattern of the stars to guide them, even when they have never before seen the sky. Insects and birds can respond appropriately to particular objects upon first encounter. A foal just born develops the complex behavioural organisation involved in walking within minutes. What is learned by an individual certainly cannot be directly inherited by its descendants but it is clear that the genetic coding underlying behaviour can become modified (by natural selection) to give the capacity to respond appropriately to objects or situations encountered for the first time by the newly-born individual. Animals very low down on the evolutionary scale rely almost entirely upon unlearned (innate) recognition of objects - and it is hardly surprising that animals higher up the scale should have developed similar innate capabilities for behaviour and perception, culminating in the ingenious and vitally important technique of imprinting, the multi-potentiality of genetic structuring.

Perhaps even more interesting and relevant has been research related to imprinting in the development of bird-song. The course of vocal learning in bird-song resembles that already described for imprinting in that the young bird is born with an inherited responsiveness to a broad pattern of external auditory stimulation. In the course of its experience of the range of sounds in its environment, it acquires more selective responsiveness to a particular subset of specific attributes found in the environment. This process can be illustrated by describing more specific experimental results. A male white-crowned sparrow usually begins its full song at between 100 and 200 days of age (a rather lengthy period of learning in terms of the bird's total life-cycle). The song is highly species-specific in certain properties, that is shared with all other members of its species, but the song also exhibits well-marked local dialects. If a young bird becomes deaf before it starts to sing, it subsequently develops a highly abnormal song which is in complete contrast with the highly controlled, tonal morphology of normal song - that is the pattern of song it develops is distorted because of its inability to hear samples of 'normal' bird-song for its species. Perhaps even more relevantly and interesting, if a young bird, with its hearing completely undamaged, is raised in a special restricted environment where it cannot hear any song by others of its species, it also develops an idiosyncratic song which is abnormal but diverges less from normal song than does that of the bird deaf from birth. The song of the isolated bird has a definite patterned morphology, made up of relatively pure and sustained tones which however shows a progressive loss of species-specificity, that is tends to diverge more and more from the norm for its species. To put the matter anthropomorphically, a song-bird, like a child, must learn from other birds if it is to vocalise correctly,

A vital further point, in which the process also resembles imprinting, is that the ability to learn the 'right' song is manifest only during a specially sensitive period of the young bird's life and at this stage it is highly selective. If a sparrow has played back to it both the song of its own species and that of another species, it will learn only the song appropriate to its own species. If the sparrow is allowed to hear only the song of a foreign species, it will ignore it and tend to develop a crude song, like that of a totally untrained sparrow, that is the bird is tuned to learn certain sounds and not others. This is an indication of the precision of the genetic priming, since there is every reason to think that simply in terms of the anatomic mechanisms required, the song patterns of close relatives should be within the vocal compass of the sparrow; thus, motor constraints on sound production do not provide an adequate explanation for the selectivity and instead we have to look to sensory processes involving the neural pathways for auditory processing, sensitising the bird only to certain patterns of sound stimulation (in rather the same way as the human infant is sensitised virtually from birth to discriminate speech-sounds from non-speech sounds).

There is obviously room for debate and much research on how the remarkable phenomena of bird-song development should be explained, neurologically and physiologically. Presumably there must be structures in the auditory system (including the neurological structuring serving the system) which embody information about the structure of 'appropriate' vocal sounds, appropriate patterns of sound, which have a capacity to guide motor development, These 'auditory templates', as Marler describes them, are genetically specified only to an extent adequate to produce an approximation of normal song for the species, though they are still sufficiently specific to focus the young bird's attention preferentially on the song of others of its species (if they have the opportunity to hear it) and thus to provide an explanation of the selectivity of this very special learning process. It is very relevant to note at this point that the selectivity of the learning process in bird-song extends not only to basic sounds going to form the song but also to the groupings of sounds in phrases and the more extensive structuring of song in the complete melody.

It seems a natural and obvious transition in the light of the striking potential of the process of imprinting in the development of adaptive behaviour in birds and animals to consider how far the phenomena of first language-learning in humans show features resembling, for example, those found in developing bird-song. Karl Lashley's firm conviction was that the rudiments of every human behavioural mechanism will be found far down in the evolutionary scale and also represented in primitive activities of the nervous system. It is not a very daring venture down the evolutionary scale to look for similar mechanisms, similar physiological and neurological organisation in young humans and young birds or monkeys. If imprinting, or some analogous process operates in language-learning, then one could conceive of language as a part-innate, part-environmentally determined system in its development; readiness to learn a language would be a manifestation of a genetically primed ability to select, as the mother tongue,one specific language from a range of equally possible languages. Language learning by children would then be very much akin to the learning of the characteristic song by birds, in that the actual learning of the song is developed by exposure to the song sung by others of the species - a potential which leaves room for a good deal of plasticity which can on occasion lead to birds learning songs inappropriate to their species. The 'imprinting' approach to language would also take as a parallel the visual learning of kittens as just described, which allows the environment to which kittens are exposed in the critical period to alter the permanent shape and functioning of the cortical visual apparatus. In all these cases, Konrad Lorenz's geese attaching themselves to humans rather than to parent geese, kittens learning to interpret environments in one way rather than another, birds learning one song rather than another, we have a demonstration of a basic capacity in the nervous system for multi-potentiality, malleability, contingent pretuning of the bird or animal to adapt itself to the particular character of the environment into which it is born and to adjust its behaviour (during a sensitive period) to improve its chances of survival in that particular environment.

To provide a somewhat more specific basis for considering whether some process similar to imprinting appears to operate in the developmental process of children's first language learning, it may be useful to bring together, from Roger Brown and others who have particularly studied children's language, some of the more interesting evidence, relating to infants' learning of speech-sounds, children's learning of particular words and the development of children's grasp of grammar and syntax.

At the New York Conference on the Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech, Marler specifically put forward the hypothesis that some sort of imprinting process might be responsible for children's acquisition of speech sounds (and I have already drawn on much of what he said in the immediately preceding account of imprinting). In the light of the research on the innate and environmental aspects of the development of birdsong, he pointed out that the capacity to modify vocal production as a result of auditory experience and to produce new sounds by the imitation of external models is fundamental to the normal employment of speech in language. 'The categorical feature of our perception of certain speech-sounds is what one might expect if special physiological mechanisms were involved. (In the study of phonemic discrimination) some of the critical boundary features, such as voice onset times, seem to be universals in all languages studied so far, so that one may think of them as species-specific characteristics'.

Segmental processing of speech sounds occurs in infants as young as one month of age and it seems appropriate to infer from these results the existence of special detectors for certain speech sounds, Cross-language studies have even suggested that infants are able to discriminate alien voicing contrasts, that is contrasts that do not occur in the languages of their parents or community and of which, as a consequence, they could have had no previous auditory experience, The ability of human infants to recognise speech-sounds as a class well before the development of speaking is clearly established, These capacities of the human infant raise some thought-provoking questions. The interesting developmental issue is exactly how these phonetic (i.e. categorical) discriminative abilities become functional by 1-3 months of age or earlier. Marler suggests that if we could invoke innate but modifiable components in the auditory and neurological systems of the infant ('templates') for certain speech-sounds, then these could serve as an orderly frame of reference for the infant's developing responsiveness to speech patterns of the culture in which it is born, But there is beyond this the possibility that the imprinting components have a range of modifiability extending beyond the speech-sounds of the parent language to effectively the sounds of all and any human language, whether or not genetic factors tend to give a higher degree of probability to one or other subset of the total range of possibilities e.g. for reasons deriving from the anatomical differences between races.

The evidence so far collected on the development of children's language ability, in terms of their learning of particular words and of grammatical and syntactic forms, is almost equally striking. One of the most comprehensive and careful surveys of the observational material is still that contained in Roger Brown's book, 'A First Language', though study of children's language has been one of the most rapidly growing areas of psychological investigation in recent years. Here no attempt will be made to give a complete survey but simply to list a few of the more salient points. In the learning of particular words, children have a very marked (and not surprising) bias towards the concrete, the graspable, the simple. Concrete objects and verbs that describe movement are the first learned and most frequently used by children - though research evidence shows that the range of words understood by children typically is far wider than the range of words they will themselves actively produce in their speech. Not only are verbs of motion primary but their meanings have a strongly perceptual basis.

As regards grammar and syntax, many writers have commented on the speed with which children learn their mother tongue and the phenomenal ability with which many a child acquires substantial grammatical ability around his second year. Roger Brown concentrated particularly in his studies of several young American children on the order in which the children developed and comprehended the use of grammatical forms (comparing his results with those of parallel research by a number of other child psychologists) His technique allowed him to treat the time and order of appearance of specific grammatical forms and morphemes in a statistically analysable way, since for each of the children he and his helpers noted the order in which and the time at which each of fourteen particular grammatical forms appeared.

The order in which the different children developed their use and understanding of the 14 morphemes was 'quite amazingly constant and statistical tests confirmed the high degree of correlation exhibited. What made the pace at which the forms were acquired and the degree of uniformity in the ordering even more surprising was that in general the parents seemed to pay no attention to bad syntax nor did they even seem to be aware of their children's deviation from correct syntax. For some complex features, such as the correct use of the determiners THE and A, whilst on analysis one might conclude that listeners to speech almost never really need them to disambiguate sentences, nevertheless child speakers learned to operate correctly the exceedingly intricate rules governing the employment of THE and A in correct speech.

It is not out of place at this point to include some reference to the interesting work of Piaget over many years on child-language and child-thought. Some aspects of the answers he got from children when he and his helpers sought to find out what understanding young children have of words and the naming of objects are thought-provoking. The young children studied by Piaget believed that they were doing much more than learning the name of an object; the child typically thinks that it is reaching the essence of the thing and discovering a real explanation of it. Children of 5 or 6, according to Piaget, can only conceive of the name as coming from the thing itself; 'One has only to look at a thing to 'see' its name', Piaget comments: "This inability to dissociate names from things is very curious. The name 'sun' implies a yellow ball that shines and has rays. How did we know the name of the sun? God put it into men's heads. The name is part of the essence of the thing. A star was called a 'star' because people thought that name would go best, The sun was called 'sun' because people thought it was a good name and a bright one." Until the age of six or seven, children say that names come from the things themselves, They were discovered by looking at the things. Only as children grew older were they brought to accept that words and names are conventional and have in fact no intrinsic relation to what they mean.

Most writers on language are content to note as remarkable the infant's ability to acquire these language skills within two years or so. Few attempt to explain why this should be so. What impels the child to 'improve' his speech at all remains something of a mystery - there is no evidence whatever of a difference in communicative efficacy and no selection pressure. The observable facts are the absence of any need for the teaching of language as well as the relative ineffectiveness of programmed training upon the rate of language acquisition. The regularity of language-onset as a milestone that fits into an ordered and fairly constant sequence of other maturational milestones is another observable fact and so is the apparent similarity in language acquisition strategies, the universal similarity of primitive stages, and differences in outer form between primitive stages and adult languages. The picture is of plasticity during childhood with subsequent consolidation for the rest of an individual's life.

Roger Brown comments that it is difficult to imagine how children could acquire language so rapidly from parents who understand it so poorly unless they were already tuned by evolution to select just those aspects that are universally significant. 'There is in short a large biological component that shapes our human languages' and Brown went on to propose a radically different possibility (from any usual learning theory) that children work out rules for the speech they hear, passing from levels of lesser to greater complexity, simply because the human species is programmed at a certain period in its life to operate in this fashion on linguistic output. Linguistic output would be defined by the universal properties of language, and the period of progressive rule extraction would correspond to Lenneberg's proposed 'critical period'.

Richard Gregory, in discussing the extent of innate behaviour in animals and birds, commented that what would be truly surprising on an empiricist view of nature (set against the remarkable feats of navigation of birds already referred to) would be to find immediate 'recognition' by young animals or humans of artificial or unimportant shapes, For example, if a child was found to recognise a language without having been taught it, this would be startling for the knowledge could not have become genetically coded.

Nevertheless, the evidence is that an infant is able, very soon after birth, to discriminate the phonemes used in the language of its community, and other phonemes not so used - and that there seems to be some predisposition for children to recognise morphemes and words and to acquire specific grammatical structures in a surprisingly uniform order. If it could be achieved, one might suppose that there could be nothing more beneficial for a child born into a particular human community than to acquire as rapidly as possible knowledge of the community language - the ability to communicate with other members of the community; such an ability would have much the same advantage for survival as the young bird's innate ability to navigate across previously unvisited territory. The mechanism of imprinting, which operates effectively to allow geese to attach themselves to their parents, birds to acquire the song of their species and many other creatures to achieve remarkable behavioural feats, would seem in principle to be a useful one also for human beings if it allowed them to acquire rapidly 'cultural' aspects of their human environment in much the same way as other creatures are pretuned to learn especially rapidly the vital physical features of the particular environment in which they find themselves at birth.

In his book 'Biological Foundations of Language' Lenneberg advanced a hypothesis rather on these lines in terms of what he described as 'resonance'.

"The unfolding of language is a process of actualisation in which latent structure is transformed into realised structure. Maturation brings cognitive processes to a state that we may call language-readiness. The raw material for the individual's language synthesis is the language spoken by adults surrounding the child - which seems to function as a releaser for the developmental language-synthesising process. Because latent structure is replicated in every child and because all languages must have an inner form of identical type (though an infinity of variations is possible) every child may learn any language with equal ease. The realised structure or outer form of the language that surrounds the growing child serves as a mould upon which the form of the child's own realised structure is modelled. Exposure to adult language has an excitatory effect upon the actualisation process in much the same way as a certain frequency may have an excitatory effect upon a specific resonator ... each natural language being a selected frequency band from the limited possible frequency range that is capable of eliciting resonance'.

Others have advanced very much the same sort of idea, though not necessarily using the same metaphor of resonance'. Teuber, speaking as a neurologist and asked to sum up discussion at the 1967 Conference on Brain Mechanisms Underlying Speech and Language, observed what a staggering task it was to understand how we understand language and went on to say: "I would like to venture a guess: it may well turn out that certain universal features of human language such as the patterning of phonemes in terms of distinctive features are innate. ... We are forced to turn, I believe, from psychologists to ethologists with. ... the innate releasing mechanisms which represent in a sense innate ideas, residing in a given nervous system as a product of evolutionary selection' and he postulated "a central neural apparatus preset for acoustical analysis of phonemes and morphemes and strings"

Marler's interesting discussion of the relevance of imprinting for the child's discrimination of speech-sounds has already been referred to and his approach lends itself to assuming a wider role for imprinting in language acquisition. Other research reported to the New York Conference, from study of aphasia, suggested that there were distinct developmental patterns for the acquisition of lexicon and of syntax, with words being learnt before grammatical forms - and that these differences in timing may reflect different rates of maturation of two neurologically distinct systems; this is of especial interest as suggesting that, beyond any imprinting of a potential for grammar, there may also be imprinting in some sense for the acquisition of words, of the lexicon of an individual language.

Conclusion

In the light of the evidence and the preceding discussion, the proposition at which this paper arrives is that there must be a genetic predisposition in the child to learn the language of some community and beyond this some pretuning to allow it to learn rapidly the language of a particular community. It would be difficult to explain the nature of this genetic predisposition if in fact in any real way the lexicon and syntax of language in general or of specific languages were wholly arbitrary. What kind of neurological or physiological preparation could there be for acquiring a wholly arbitrary system of symbols? If, for example, a genuinely arbitrary set of symbols was constructed (a random system constructed by a computer) and a child was required to match this set of symbols to the equally unfamiliar features of the world to which the symbols were intended to relate, who can doubt that the task would be impossible - as it would be impossible for any adult. The equivalent question for the imprinting of bird-song would be whether a bird could be genetically pretuned to learn any type of sound and any structuring of sound as its song - there must be some definition of the substance from which the possible song is formed and some limitation on the type of sequences of sound to which a bird could be genetically prepared to respond.

But if in some way the infant is pretuned not only to the range of human speech-sound (as it very clearly is in the displayed ability to discriminate phonemes virtually at birth) but also to respond preferentially to the sounds, words and structures of actual human languages (so that every language would be equally easy to learn), what can there be in the nature of existing human languages which makes it possible for them to be related in some way to genetically-determined physiological and neurological structuring of the infant? What are the non-arbitrary features of any human language on which the assumed imprinting mechanisms can operate? A very similar question, of course, can be asked about the neurological and physiological basis of imprinting in birds for bird-song.