The paper proposes that the understanding of human language evolution requires the comprehensive understanding of language in terms of language types, formations, and learnings and the comprehensive understanding of h...The paper proposes that the understanding of human language evolution requires the comprehensive understanding of language in terms of language types, formations, and learnings and the comprehensive understanding of human biological evolution in terms of the emergences of various hominin species with various language capacities. This paper proposes language neuromechanics and the human biological-language evolution. Language is derived from bodily movement. Language neuro-mechanics combines neuroscience to study language brain and biomechanics to study language movement. Language neuromechanics consists of language type, language formation, and language learning. Language types for advanced animals include gestural language verse vocal language, instinctive language verse controllable language, and symbolic language verse iconic language. Language formation involves the developments of the different types of languages from different bodily movements phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Language learning involves the learning of controllable language to adapt to communicative environment through language brain regions and language genes. This paper proposes a gradual and step-by-step human language evolution from the language of great apes to the human language through the human biological evolution which chronologically and geographically consists of early hominins, early Homos, middle Homos, and late Homos with different language capacities. For hominins, vocal language and gestural language were evolved together. In conclusion, combining neuroscience and bio-mechanics, language neuromechanics provides the comprehensive understanding of language. The combination of language neuromechanics and the human biological-language evolution provides the clear evolutionary path from great apes’ articulate gestural language without articulate speech to human articulate gestural language and articulate speech.展开更多
After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japanese government identified the lack of proficiency in the Japanese language as one characteristic of foreigners that should be considered in disaster prevention plan...After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japanese government identified the lack of proficiency in the Japanese language as one characteristic of foreigners that should be considered in disaster prevention planning.This article seeks to understand how proficiency in a local language affects disaster information gathering behavior by using the results of a questionnaire survey conducted after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Respondents were categorized based on their Japanese and English language abilities. Their media mode, language preferences, information importance, and information-gathering difficulties also were examined. It was found that foreigners skilled in Japanese demonstrated similar information gathering behavior as Japanese respondents, but foreigners unskilled in Japanese showed little usage of Japanese-language media. This group also encountered difficulties due to a lack of Japanese proficiency, but many members were able to acquire some level of Japanese-language information through Internet-based methods. To address language proficiency in disaster prevention planning, information provision in languages other than Japanese should be increased, and Japanese information should be shared in a way that facilitates translation. Although this survey wassignificant in its scope, the results should be considered within the limitations of the Internet-based response collection and focus only on the less-affected area of Japan.展开更多
文摘The paper proposes that the understanding of human language evolution requires the comprehensive understanding of language in terms of language types, formations, and learnings and the comprehensive understanding of human biological evolution in terms of the emergences of various hominin species with various language capacities. This paper proposes language neuromechanics and the human biological-language evolution. Language is derived from bodily movement. Language neuro-mechanics combines neuroscience to study language brain and biomechanics to study language movement. Language neuromechanics consists of language type, language formation, and language learning. Language types for advanced animals include gestural language verse vocal language, instinctive language verse controllable language, and symbolic language verse iconic language. Language formation involves the developments of the different types of languages from different bodily movements phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Language learning involves the learning of controllable language to adapt to communicative environment through language brain regions and language genes. This paper proposes a gradual and step-by-step human language evolution from the language of great apes to the human language through the human biological evolution which chronologically and geographically consists of early hominins, early Homos, middle Homos, and late Homos with different language capacities. For hominins, vocal language and gestural language were evolved together. In conclusion, combining neuroscience and bio-mechanics, language neuromechanics provides the comprehensive understanding of language. The combination of language neuromechanics and the human biological-language evolution provides the clear evolutionary path from great apes’ articulate gestural language without articulate speech to human articulate gestural language and articulate speech.
基金partially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Challenging Exploratory Research, ‘‘Investigation on disaster information dissemination to foreigners after the great earthquake in the Tokyo metropolitan area,’’ Project No. 25560161)
文摘After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japanese government identified the lack of proficiency in the Japanese language as one characteristic of foreigners that should be considered in disaster prevention planning.This article seeks to understand how proficiency in a local language affects disaster information gathering behavior by using the results of a questionnaire survey conducted after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Respondents were categorized based on their Japanese and English language abilities. Their media mode, language preferences, information importance, and information-gathering difficulties also were examined. It was found that foreigners skilled in Japanese demonstrated similar information gathering behavior as Japanese respondents, but foreigners unskilled in Japanese showed little usage of Japanese-language media. This group also encountered difficulties due to a lack of Japanese proficiency, but many members were able to acquire some level of Japanese-language information through Internet-based methods. To address language proficiency in disaster prevention planning, information provision in languages other than Japanese should be increased, and Japanese information should be shared in a way that facilitates translation. Although this survey wassignificant in its scope, the results should be considered within the limitations of the Internet-based response collection and focus only on the less-affected area of Japan.
