Pre-Test

True or False

1. The title of the story is

From Mouth to Hand?
 Pre-Test
2. The author of From Hand to
Mouth is Michille C. Corballis?

3. On the part of the story

there is Three Hands Better
Than One?
 Pre-Test
4. On the 2nd paragraph of the
story says that it doesn’t have an
evidence?
5.Grammatical language begun to
emerge around 2 million years
ago?
 (1) Imagine trying to teach a child to
talk without using your hands or any
other means of pointing of gesturing.
g
The task would surely be impossible.
There can be little doubt that bodily
gestures are involved in the
development of language, both in the
individual and in the species.
The common ancestor of 5 or 6
million years ago would have been
utterly incapable of a telephone
conversation but would have been
able to make voluntary movements
of hands and face that could the
least serve as a platform upon
which to build a language.
(2) Grammatical language may well have
begun to emerge around 2 million years
ago but would at first have been primary
gestural, though no doubt punctuated with
grunts and other vocal cries that were at
first largely involuntary and emotional
The complex adjustments necessary
to produce speech as we know it
today would have taken some time to
evolve, and may not have been
complete until some 170,000years
ago, or even later, when Homo
sapiens emerged to grace, but more
often disgrace, the planet.
(3) The question now is what were the
selective pressures that led to the
eventual dominance of speech? On the
face of it, an acoustic medium seems a
poor way to convey information about
the world; not for nothing is it said that
a picture is worth a thousand words.
Moreover, signed language has all the
lexical and grammatical complexity of
spoken language
(4) Before we consider the
pressures that may have
favored vocalization over
gestures, it bears repeating
that the switch from hand
to mouth was almost
certainly not an abrupt one.
The essential feature modern
expressive language is not that
it is purely vocal, but rather that
the component can function
autonomously and provide the
grammar as well as meaning of
linguistics communication
(5) What, then, are the advantages of a
language that can operate autonomously
through voice and ear, rather than hand and
eye? Why speech?
 (6) One of possible advantage of
vocal is its arbitrariness.
The fact that more frequent words
tends to be shorter than less
frequent one was noted by the
American philologist George
kingsley Zipf who related it to
principle of "least effort".
(7) Jared Diamond observes that the people
living largely traditional lifestyle in New Guinea
can name hundreds of birds, animals, and
plants, along with details about each of them.
Diamond points out that the people in New
Guinea are illiterate, relying on word of
mouth to pass on information.
(8) In the naming and
transmission of such detailed
information, iconic representation
would almost certainly be
inefficient: edible plants or berries
could be confused with poisonous
ones, and animals that attack
confused with those that are
benign.
This is not to say that
gestural signs could to do
the trick. Manual signs
readily become
conventionalized and
convey abstract
information.
(9) I would be on
dangerous ground,
however, if I were to insist
too strongly that speech
is linguistically superior to
signed language.
The iconic component is
often important, and as I
look the quadrangles
outside my office I see how
freely the students there
are embellishing their
conversations with manual
gestures.
(10) Another
advantages of speech
over gesture is
obvious, we can use it
in the dark! This
enables us to
communicate a night.
We of the gentle species
Homo sapiens have a
legacy of invasion, having
migrated out of Africa into
territories inhabited by other
hominins who migrated
earlier.
(11) It is not only a question of
being able to communicate at
night. We can also speak to
people when objects intervene
and you can't see them, as
when you yell to your friend in
another room
In terms of the sheer
ability to reach those
with whom you are
trying to
communicate, words
speak louder than
actions.
(12) Speech does have one
disadvantage though it is
generally accessible to those
around you and is therefore less
convenient for sending
confidential or secret messages
or for planning an attack in
enemies within earshot.
When Mark Anthony cried,
"Friends, Romans,
countrymen, len me ears"
he was trying to attract
attention as well as deliver
a message.
(13) In the evolution of speech,
the alerting component of
language might have consisted
at first simply of grunt that
accompany gestures to give
emphasis to specific actions or
encourage reluctant offspring to
attend while a parent lays down
the law.
Sounds may therefore have
played a similar and largely
alerting role in early
evolution of language,
gradually assuming more
prominence in conveying
the message itself.
(14) For humans, visual signals can only attract
attention if they occur within a fairly restricted
region of space, whereas the alerting power of
sound is more or less independent of where its
source is located relative to listener.
Visual signals are relatively
inefficient because they may
elude our gaze, and in any case
we can shut them out by closing
our eyes.
(15) Speech has another and
subtler attentional advantage.
Manual gestures is much more
demanding of attention.
(16) Another reason why
vocal language may have
arisen is that it proves an
extra medium.
(17) Susan Golden-
Meadow and David
McNeill suggest that
speech may have
evolved
Speech is perfectly
adequate to convey
syntax, which has no
iconic or mimetic
aspect, and can relieve
hands and arms of this
chore.
(18) Charles Darwin,
who seems to have
thought of almost
everything wrote.
We might have used
our fingers as efficient
instruments, for a
person with practice can
report to a deaf man.
(19) Involving
grammatical structure
and symbolic content.
Would interfere with
manual demonstration if
they were too a vocal
language did not become
autonomous until the
emergence of homo
sapiens.
(20) The language be
a dominant made of
inheritance in the
life of human.
Post-Test
 True or False

True False
1. The title of
the story is
From Hand to
Mouth?
2. The proponent
of the story is
Michael C.
Corballis?
 3. The language
be a nominal
made of
inheritance in the
life of human
4. We don’t have
used our fingers
as efficient
instruments
 5. Another
disadvantages of
speech over gesture is
obvious, we can use it
in the dark!