Survival of the wittiest? Scientists debate if wit helped evolve language

Language is a key aspect of human life that most likely came up more than a lakh years ago — but linguists still disagree on how exactly it evolved. The influential U.S. linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky proposed that complex modern language emerged suddenly, a theory that many linguists still stick to. But some believe the languages we speak today, with all the complex grammatical rules nestled within them, must have evolved gradually, the way our cognitive abilities evolved.

Ljiljana Progovac, a linguist in Wayne State University in the U.S., is one of the latter. In a recent study, she argued that humans’ ability to be witty with their words could have been sexually selected for, in a similar way peahens select peacocks with a brighter plumage. She said she believes the idea of “survival of the wittiest” needs to be added to the complex picture of human evolution.

Using syntactic theory, which says sentences have an inherent hierarchical structure to them, she reconstructed what she believes is the earliest stage of grammar: a combination of two words at a time, a verb and a noun (such as “eat food” or “seek truth”). Syntax, the rules that dictate how words and phrases should be used together to form meaningful sentences, grammar, and language — everything must have evolved gradually from these simple verb-noun compounds, she said.

“By deconstructing language evolution and coming up with the first stage, you can actually see why the next stage would evolve, because [the first stage] already provides a foundation.”

‘Living fossils of language’

She then realised many modern languages also have such verb-noun compounds, like “pickpocket”, “killjoy”, “crybaby”, and “scatterbrain” in English.

“So then, because they resemble the stage that I reconstructed, I called them fossils, living fossils of language,” Dr. Progovac said. “Because they show properties that I predicted the earliest stages had to have.”

Some believe language does not leave behind fossils as evidence, but Dr. Progovac’s findings challenge that notion.

“And sure, we are not going to find language in the stones,” she said. “But these are even better fossils, because in a way, language never died. It just kept building and living in different generations.”

According to her, she realised these verb noun compounds mostly seemed to describe humans in a funny, typically negative way — like witty banter.

Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that women are very responsive to humour in men. Men, on the other hand, are less responsive to women being funny. Another study that analysed classified ads for partners and later followed up with the men and women who posted the ads showed that men seemed to prefer women who laughed at the jokes they cracked.

These studies suggest a type of sexual dimorphism in humans, Dr. Progovac said. Thus, this ability to combine words in a humorous way — which may have existed during the earliest stages of language — could have been sexually selected for during the course of evolution, according to her.

“From the very beginning of language, if it started something like this, there was selection for the genetic makeup of those individuals who were just a little better at this game,” she continued. “They would have been more noticed, they would have left more offspring and generation after generation, this would have helped evolve language further and further.”

Wit over fights

Her other argument is that humans who evolved to be quick-witted and to ‘fight’ with words rather than physically could have adapted better.

“Human beings are, to a large extent, characterised by their preference for cognitive contests, for competing with words, and not with physical fighting,” she said.

Another hint that these verb-noun compounds could have been involved in sexual selection is that there are many more of them than one would expect, or even need, in a language.

In her analysis, Dr. Progovac found that hundreds of such words have existed in the English language in the past but have slowly fallen out of use. In the mediaeval times, there may as well have been thousands of such words in use. This is somewhat analogous to the peacock’s feathers being more extravagant than they probably need to be to catch a female’s attention.

Dr. Progovac is also particularly intrigued by these linguistic “living fossils” because they can now help test hypotheses. Using neuroimaging experiments, she decided to test how different regions of people’s brains react when they hear these syntactically simple verb-noun compounds like ‘killjoy’ or ‘pickpocket’, versus the more complex “-er” ending words like “joy killer” or “pocket picker”.

She found that a brain region called the fusiform gyrus — which evolved earlier in mammalian brains than the regions involved in processing language — was more active when people heard the verb-noun compounds versus the “-er” ending words. This region is also responsible for visual processing and is thought to help the brain process imageability and metaphors — which, by their nature, are very visually descriptive.

The words they used, like “scatterbrain” or “rattlesnake”, are also very visual: they “paint a picture that is more abstract,” Dr. Progovac said. “Like when we say ‘scatterbrain’, we don’t mean literally scattering somebody’s brain. But [that that] somebody is absentminded.”

Because these words were more visual and grammatically more simple, she realised they were being processed by the visual area of the brain, “which is certainly much more ancient than any language areas of the brain,” Dr. Progovac said.

A tendency to be abstract

Based on her findings, Dr. Progovac said she believes the emergence of very simple grammar, like combining just a verb and a noun to give rise to many playful words to describe others in a funny or derogatory way, could have played a major role in human evolution.

“Quick wittedness and wittiness, more generally humour, was a very important aspect of human cognitive evolution,” she said.

Prof. Chomsky also believes the primary driver for the emergence of language may have been the need to construct and organise internal thoughts, rather than communicate outwardly. One reason for this is that language has a tendency to be abstract and ambiguous rather than crystal clear at all times.

But Dr. Progovac’s findings challenge that notion, suggesting that language evolved gradually for people to communicate better — or, more specifically, to communicate in an entertaining way.

Kenny Smith, a linguist at the University of Edinburgh, said he agrees that humans don’t just use language in a dry “information transfer” fashion. Finding new, witty ways to express oneself could have helped in driving linguistic creativity and metaphors, in turn acting as an engine for language to change as well.

“Historical linguistics literature is full of examples of language change that seem to be driven by people trying to express the same old kinds of concepts in new entertaining ways,” he said.

‘Revival of the wittiest’

But even though he broadly agreed with the functional importance of linguistic creativity, he is less confident about inferring the earliest stage of language from that perspective.

“I think it’s good to think about additional payoffs you can get from combining words, and one of them is you can start combining words in kind of surprising metaphorical ways,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that  the very earliest stages of language evolution were two-word combinations that were [created] with that goal in mind” (emphasis in the original).

“It’s hard to fit an evolutionary history from a potential function,” he added.

Dr. Smith is also sceptical that sexual selection could necessarily have led to a “survival of the wittiest”.

“I don’t know why it [is] not about trying to make people in general like you, rather than specifically like members of the opposite sex. My observation from hanging out with my male friends is that they’re constantly trying to make each other laugh,” he said. “It’s not because they’re competing [or] trying to attract people. It’s just because they want their friends to like them. They want to be funny. If you’re able to express yourself in an entertaining way, people will want to collaborate with you, hang out with you, work with you, not fight with you. And that’s a payoff regardless of whether that’s a potential sexual partner or not.”

Both men and women are also equally capable of being witty, so the idea of sexual dimorphism doesn’t map well onto human language, Dr. Smith explained — the same way that it would in songbirds.

“It doesn’t really match with how the world looks in societies where men and women both have a more equal role.”

Sexism in society

He also said he thinks any differences we see in sexually selective behaviour says more about sexism in society rather than differences in language abilities specifically.

“It’s really hard to separate it from just a broader society where males and females are expected to have these different stereotypical roles they’re supposed to take on,” he said. 

The idea of pressures that could have favoured creativity — that could have, over longer timescales, selected for individuals who are good at expressing themselves in new, entertaining ways — is interesting to think about, Dr. Smith acknowledged. But it would be challenging to identify if the selection is specific to linguistic creativity or if it is for broadly creative individuals who also happen to have a way with words.

“Not just for language, [but] how you extract resources from the world or how you interact with other people, being quick on your feet mentally probably pays off in a wide number of domains,” he said. “And so maybe wittiness in language is just a reflection of that general selection for being innovative, creative, adaptable. It’s hard to imagine circumstances where that’s not an advantage.”

Rohini Subrahmanyam is a freelance journalist in Bengaluru.