Help with the discussions below.

Discussion 1 :

Your next writing assignment (WA #2) in WRTG 391 will be a six-source essay or an expanded synthesis. This essay will lead you to your final essay (WA #3), a multiple-source synthesis essay, also known as a literature review.

Imagine that you are working for a department within a large company. The manager of your department is considering allowing workers in your department to telework, in other words, to work from home.

However, your manager is not sure what to expect from this possible change.

She is not sure what the advantages, pitfalls, unexpected issues, etc. are of allowing teleworking. For example, she is not sure whether workers becomelessproductive because they will be working from home and not supervised. She also considers the possibility that workers will becomemoreproductive because they won't have to worry about traffic and parking. They won't have to take large amounts of time off to get children to a doctor's appointment, to see a doctor themselves, to take care of errands, etc. It is possible that working from home will improve productivity.

Other questions abound in her mind. For example, how many days a week should the workers be allowed to telework? Should they be limited to one day? Two days? Or should they be unlimited to telework as many days as they would like per week?

In addition, she is not sure if everyone should be allowed to telework or if perhaps only people in certain positions should be allowed to telework. For example, she knows that the janitor cannot telework. His job could not be done at a distance. But some individuals could telework, as their jobs involve meetings and other functions that could be accomplished at a distance.

Overall, your manager is somewhat at a loss on this issue.

Your manager has asked you toreview the literature on teleworking. She has asked that you submit a literature review to her next month on the topic of teleworking.

From what you have gleaned in this class about what a literature review is,what is your manager asking you to do?

• Does she want a proposal thatsupportsa new teleworking arrangement?
• Does she want a persuasive paper that takes a standagainstteleworking?
• Or does she want something entirely different from those two options?

Please give your answer in a short paragraph of 75 to 100 words.

Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdJxY4w9XKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QouxTTEjuvc

Discussion 2:

After reading the two articles and the information on transitions, answer the following questions:

(1) How has the writer altered, or changed, the material from the Annotated Bibliography to the Six-Source Essay? (Answer in 1-3 sentences.) (E.g., "The writer has developed a thesis...; The writer has synthesized sources.....; The writer has clarified connections...")

(2) What sources has she added to the Six Source Essay? What effect do the new source(s) have on the essay? (1-3 sentences) (E.g., "The new sources serve to emphasize the writer's point that...; The new sources illustrate specific ideas in the other articles.....")

(3) Pick a paragraph section of the Six-SourceEssay where synthesis needs to be improved, and add an appropriate transitional phrase/sentence.

As you think about synthesis in the Six Source Essay, consider the use of transitions.Transitions are like signs for your readers. They give direction and they help to link things together. Good transitions move the reader from one point to the next, and they also focus the attention of the reader on the main idea of the essay. You can use words or phrases as transitions, but you must be careful to choose words that indicate the right relationship between ideas. Here are a few examples of relationships you can indicate with transitions:

• to show addition: and, also, in addition, furthermore.
• to give examples: for example, for instance, specifically
• to compare: also, likewise, similarly
• to contrast: however, on the other hand, yet, although
• to summarize or conclude: therefore, in other words
• to show time: after, before, during, next, finally, meanwhile, immediately
• to show place or direction: above, below, nearby, close, far, left, right
• to indicate logical relationships: therefore, consequently, as a result, thus, since, because.

Resource 1:

Assignment: Annotated Bibliography

Bolhuis, J. J., Tattersall, I., Chomsky, N., & Berwick, R. C. (2014). How Could Language Have Evolved? PLoS Biology, 12(8), 1-6.https://doi-org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001934

The authors, Bolhuis et al. take an exclusivist approach and claim that language has a hierarchical structure that is missing from animal communication systems. The authors view the way our minds create language as being by "merging" elements which they call "atoms" (i.e. words, verbs, etc.). Merged elements can both continue indefinitely and apply to themselves, therefore being nested and in a sense, hierarchical. They further state that there's no evidence that animals have conceptual "atoms." They conclude that given the universality of language amongst humans, and the assumption that it has not evolved from animals, that it is this "merge" trait that effectively singlehandedly is responsible for the evolution of language in humans. They mention sign language as a counter argument that studying animal vocal communication is essential to understanding the evolution of language. Also interesting is the point that the unique nature of human language renders a comparison by shared evolutionary descent impossible. I found this article very useful for illustrating this particular school of thought and as a contrast to Fitch, 2019.

Donald, M. (2017). Key cognitive preconditions for the evolution of language. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 204-208.https://doi-org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.3758/s13423-016-1102-x

The author, Donald claims that development of the use of tools to a degree complex enough that their use was culturally embedded and cross-generational was what drove the coevolution of language. Donald further claims that the opposite possibility, that language came first, is unlikely because the acquisition and use of language requires the ability to hone an intrinsically complex hierarchical skillset, as in complex toolmaking. The author does not seem to support this with any specific evidence, but reiterates his claims as a conclusion. I don't think this is well argued but I agree with the premise that human cognitive capacities have been pushed to greater complexity out of the necessity to manipulate tools (I would say our environment) as much as interact socially. I would find this article useful as a jumping off point for this perspective but most likely not as a primary source.

Ten Cate, C. (2017). Assessing the uniqueness of language: Animal grammatical abilities take center stage. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 91-96.https://dx.doi.org/10.3758%2Fs13423-016-1091-9

The author presents the "Strong Minimalist Thesis" that the essence of language is that we combine, or 'merge' elements. An element can be a noun, a verb, an article, a pronoun, etc.. She claims that the ability of a brain to search concepts and output behavior is not unique to humans, but that what is unique is the ability to "merge" concepts. She therefore concludes that arguments about the speech apparatus, such as location of the larynx and hyoid bone in apes vs. humans, are irrelevant to understanding the evolution of language. She also concludes that this ability to "merge" could have evolved very quickly without leaving any fossil evidence, which would be consistent with the fact there is a gap in the fossil record. I found a weakness to be that Ten Cate doesn't deal with how this "merge" concept relates to other ideas about language (e.g. hierarchical structures, etc.) as well as repeating much of Bolhuis et al.'s earlier paper, even some diagrams. The writing itself is confusing and scattered and therefore less likely to be useful to me.

Tecumseh Fitch, W. (2017). Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution. Psychomonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 3-33.https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1236-5

The author claims that severe global aphaisics despite not having the capacity to produce language nevertheless demonstrate complex thought. Broca's area is the center of an extensive network where language syntax is generated. This area, and especially it's connections to other areas is massively expanded in humans as compared to other primates. This is true even of newborn, and even premature human babies. He concludes that this clearly refutes the misconception that we know little to nothing about the neural mechanisms underlying language. I found the paper very clearly written and thoroughly referenced, which is useful for further research. One potential weakness is that it goes into so many other topics that it would be easy to get lost on interesting tangents.

Tecumseh Fitch, W. (2019, November 18).Animal cognition and the evolution of human language: why we cannot focus solely on communication.Philisophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375: 20190046. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0046

The author, Tecumseh Fitch argues that language did not evolve as an extension of great ape vocal communication but rather cognition more generally and that we share certain cognitive processes involved in language with various animals in the same way we share numerous other traits. Apes use species specific unlearned calls, triggered by social-emotional situations. Instead, human language could have evolved from the underlying framework of animal cognition, which is so sophisticated that no huge chasm would have to be bridged. Tecumseh Fitch provides a range of evidence that many animal brains have neural representations of many concepts, and some interesting philosophical discussion of the nature of concepts. He concludes that language could have evolved as a somewhat improved tool for cognition: connecting neural representations of concepts. Once linked to the existing animal capacity to communicate about emotions, the language of thought could be used to communicate about concepts. He further concludes that communication of concepts would have been so useful that language would evolve rapidly. This is an "Oh yeah, of course!" papertotally clear once someone else says it. A possible criticism I would make is that there's a somewhat subtle philosophical section on communication of neural representations of objects, rather than direct communication about objects. This seems valid but I don't see why it's essential to the main point. Overall, this is a useful and thought-provoking paper. The act of a chimp pointing at an object is qualitatively similar to the act of saying a wordeach requiring a mental representation. The chimp has a neural representation of the object and can demonstrably reason about it, so language is much more similar to animal cognition than to animal communication. This raises questions. I think that emotional vocalizing involves right-brain areas that are analogous to our left-brain language areas. I think this will be useful as a primary source.

Resource 2: Six source essay

Introduction

Language is a ubiquitous feature of our lives. As such it may not seem to stand out as a particularly remarkable characteristic of being human, unless one considers what the human animal would be like without the ability to comprehend and use language. In fact, it could be argued that human language is one of the few traits which completely distinguishes human behavior from that of other animals, as so much of our success depends upon our manipulation of complex, language-based, communication. Language involves combining and recombining concepts. You use language in an internal language of thought. It can be used for communication through either speech, signing, or writing. However, in the context of linguistics, writing is considered an externalization which builds upon language, but is not language itself. The capacity for language, rather than the way it is externalized is the issue which has inspired the deepest curiosity. Although over the past seventy years many scientists have studied other animal's communication systems in the search for insight into the origins of human language, it is cognition which now seems to hold the key to understanding its evolution.

What is the Definition of Language?

When people developed an interest in how human language evolved, they began to study animal communication systems. But to compare animal communication systems to human language they first had to have a clear understanding of the features that defined language. Although people have been analyzing language and describing its grammar for centuries, the modern field of linguistics developed only in the last century. Researchers looked to this emerging field, and to the work of Noam Chomsky in particular, for help in defining the essentials of human communication (Jackendoff & Pinker, 2005).

Human language is comprised of certain core elements which are present whether you're using speech or sign language; phonology (sound/spatial-temporal quality), semantics (symbols with meaning, like words), grammar (the particular rules of a given language), and syntax (a subset of grammar; more general rules referring to sentence structure) (Suzuki, et al. 2019; Jackendoff & Pinker, 2005). When considering syntax, Suzuki et al. suggest three criteria for compositional syntax: 1. Thatthe meaning of individual signals, and combinations thereof reflect a context; 2. That the meaning of a combination of words is only understood because the component parts are meaningful; 3. And further, that the precise order of the signals (i.e. words in a sentence) can determine the meaning (2019). With this kind of analysis, researchers could determine if animal communication systems had these important characteristics of human language.

What is Unique About Human Language?

Some researchers came to the opinion that there is another essential aspect of human language which is not only characteristic but unique. Bolhuis et al. (2014) locate this uniqueness in a cognitive ability to combine mental representations, then recursively re-combine these to create mental representations of almost infinitely complex ideasthey call this ability "merge." They claim that merging concepts recursively is the core of human grammar, and that this is innate and uniquely human. The merge concept suggests that these combinations are pairwise: taking n elements, placing them into pairs, and recombining those in nearly infinite compositions.

A competing if similar theory is termed "Unification" (Jackendoff & Pinker, 2005). Based partly on considerations of the nature of idioms, Jackendoff and Pinker propose that a binary rearrangement of similar elements is inadequate to explain the richness of human language. Bolhuis et al. present no explanation for idioms where Jackendoff and Pinker insist that no explanation of human language can ignore sentences which are consistent with proper grammatical usage, but have an actual meaning which is different from their literal meaning (e.g. 'Bite the bullet'). The merge theory assumes that all sentences are comprised of smaller elements for which we have mental representations. The Unification theory proposes that mental representations are much more flexible, even for an entire sentence, which would be the case for an idiom like 'Stick 'em up.' Humans can think non-linguistically, but a large portion of our stream of consciousness and mental life is in the form of language.

The similarity in both the Unification and merge theories is that we compose sentences by recombining elements. It is these processing characteristics which researchers generally agree most fully typify the core of human language. Therefore these features are what were looked for as a basis for comparison in animal communication systems as well as in the cognitive capabilities of animals.

Animal Communication as an Insight into the Evolution of Human Language

Clearly animals communicate too. When researchers first began investigating the question of the evolution of human language they looked mainly to our closest genetic relatives, the great apes, and to birdsong, the most complex observed example of animal communication. Everyone who has heard birdsong can recognize that it consists of different notes, combined in different orders, and one might imagine that it is used for communication rather than expending energy for no purpose. Writing of chick-a-dee birdsong, Hailman observed that "the staggering variety of call-types created from combinations of note-types and their repetitions is not likely to be haphazard variation" (1985, p. 1). As the titleThe "chick-a-dee" calls of Parus atricapillus: A recombinant system of animal communication compared with written English suggests, in 1985 there were very high hopes for finding close analogies between birdsong and human language.

However, the study of birdsong as well as other animal communication systems continues. Suzuki et al. give a brief overview of the current state of the field (2019). They describe observations which suggest that various species may combine predator warning calls with contact calls. The significant point is that different calls with consistently observed responses (i.e. meanings) may when combined with other calls provoke entirely different responses. Nevertheless, the evidence is not overpowering. For instance, paired meanings in putty-nosed monkeys are given as a possible example of idiomatic usage (Suzuki et al., 2019, p. 5). However, this may simply be a recombination of two sounds, each with a meaning, where the combined sound has a third meaning such as in the German word Khlschrankkhl meaning cool, and Schrank meaning cupboard, which combined means refrigerator.

A different research path was to try to teach language to our closest genetic relatives (chimps, gorillas, and bonobos). They were taught sign languages or language through a symbolic interface, as it was clear that they could not mimic sounds. While people enthused over early results, which exhibited how many concepts apes could learn to sign, combinations were another matter. In fact, one of the more impressive outcomes was announced in 1977, when a chimpanzee named Washoe saw a swan in the park and signed 'Water + Bird' (Suzuki et al., 2019). However, given that there were never repeated examples of this kind of spontaneous generation of a combination of words/signs to indicate a concept it is not clear that Washoe's communication even rose to the level of the putty-nosed monkey's Khlschrank.

Cognition as an Insight into the Evolution of Human Language

The research program in the latter half of the previous century attempting to teach great apes human language highlighted the simplicity of great ape signaling behavior, but this stands in great contrast to ongoing research showing the sophistication of great ape cognitive capacities. Tecumseh Fitch points out that "animal signals do not equal animal concepts" (2019, p. 4). In fact, there is now clear evidence that many species have considerable cognitive sophistication. Dolphins for example can demonstrate in their behavioral responses that they are able to interpret complex sentences with grammatical order, as well as concepts like 'same' and 'different' (Tecumseh Fitch, 2019). Yet they have never been successfully trained to communicate in a way which could be viewed as either resembling or even roughly translating to the system of grammar, and semantics that underlies human language.

Many animals display evidence of highly complex mental representations, intricate concepts, planning for the future, social relationships, and mental maps of their environment (Tecumseh Fitch, 2019). Tecumseh Fitch (2019) describes evidence that some animals even have a theory of mind, which does not begin to develop in humans until about age 3-5. This could be deduced from the fact that they will hide something desirable only once their competitor is not looking, or that they can recognize themselves as an individual in a mirror.

There is always skepticism about recognizing whether animals have these cognitive capacities, because they cannot directly tell us. However, more and more researchers are conducting subtle experiments that can demonstrate that the animal subject is not simply being rewarded for giving the 'right' answer without truly having a cognitive representation of the concept under examination. For example, to demonstrate the capacity for the perception of sequencing inherent to syntactic structure, researchers designed an experiment to show that it was not simply incidental rewards that lead to the conclusion that monkeys could make cognitive inferences like, if a is to the left of b, and b is to the left of c, then it follows that a is to the left of c (Jensen et al. 2019). Illustrative of trends in the field, Jensen's senior coauthor Herbert Terrace famously lead a project in the 1970s attempting to teach language to a chimpanzee subject whom they playfully named, Nim Chimpsky (Sukuki et al., 2019). Clearly in the intervening decades Terrace shifted his focus from animal communication to animal cognition as a central means of insight to the evolution of human language.

Conclusion

The most unique attribute of human language, the process of recombining mental representations, whether best described as merge or Unification, is a capacity which has yet to be conclusively demonstrated in animals. Tecumseh Fitch (2019) emphasizes how important it would be to discover whether the merge process is present in animal cognition, saying that it is crucial to "...explore in detail animals' abilities to combine concepts. To the extent that they can do so in a flexible, hierarchical manner, I think we can see the germs of the recursive symbolic system that underlies human linguistic concepts" (p. 6). Semantics (i.e. meaningful concepts) are clearly present in animals. The question of whether these concepts can be recombined in a way which resembles recursive syntax is less clear. If the recursive ability which underlies syntax could be found in the cognitive systems of animals, then animals may have something closer to a language of thought than we are currently able to demonstrate. Given the direction that research has previously gone and its current projections, it seems unlikely that the study of animal communication systems alone will provide the breakthrough insights into the origins of human language. The study of animal cognition currently looks more promising.