00:00:00.000 First and foremost, the philosopher Carl Popper explores the uncertain truth of language.
00:00:07.000 Today we have really important discussion about the evolution of human language and what is
00:00:19.080 the main point of our discussion I think is to bring out what is specifically human and
00:00:28.900 different from animal languages because of course the evolution of the human language
00:01:15.720 The point which I am going to stress particularly is that in human language like our
00:01:25.720 discussion now we are usually in a situation which is not particularly dangerous and we
00:01:37.720 don't refer usually to immediate dangerous situations we speak for example as we do now about
00:01:48.900 abstract things like the human language or like the brain or whatever it may be I mean
00:01:57.840 or we straighten over or we go to the theater and see the dramatic performance which
00:02:13.440 may give us the idea of danger but which is nothing to do really with the danger.
00:02:21.840 I want to immediately to go to the chimpanzee who is our nearest living relative and it's
00:02:40.960 been studied in the combat stream by Jane Goodall in a wonderful 20 or 30 year long dedicated
00:02:49.840 work so when she looks at chimpanzee behavior how they talk or signal to each other it's
00:02:59.640 very simple in a way they have facial many facial signals and signs they get angry and
00:03:09.640 they shout and wave their arms around without damaging them other much they wave sticks
00:03:21.880 The communication though is expression of emotions and in signaling in some way or
00:03:30.120 either of what the other one should do but they do work together you know as a group with
00:03:37.000 a boss's on top but it's all organized by a complex system of signaling with sounds
00:03:44.040 and gestures and that is the kind of animal language that we came from as humans.
00:03:59.640 He pointed out that in all language there is something like self expression but you also
00:04:09.360 stressed at once that this is really the lowest of the function which language has to
00:04:20.520 Self expression is unavoidable when I talk to you I move my hand and there is of course
00:04:27.120 self expression but I also talk to you and wish to make a certain impression on you and
00:04:40.800 This is about polar chords the signal function of the language the second function and
00:04:47.440 then the next function which really is indicated is what he called the descriptive function.
00:04:57.280 It is in the main to convey to you a definite information, information which you may use next
00:05:06.320 year or next day or in the next moment but where it is usually not very relevant at what
00:05:22.120 That is characteristic situation of the descriptive function then in addition to that there
00:05:30.960 is a quite different function again of language and you may see argumentative function
00:05:39.160 the fourth function which is completely only human, only present in human discussion and
00:05:51.160 where we really can see this is what one called human reason that is behind it, the reasoning
00:06:01.920 and the these four functions show very clearly the immense step which we have made beyond
00:06:13.800 the level of all animal predecessors anymore for others.
00:06:21.320 Most of the descriptions you know that we give are often in response to a question, a child
00:06:28.280 will ask about what happened there or what was going on at the railway station or whatever
00:06:34.760 and so he gets a description of it so this is human interaction but you do not get this
00:06:51.960 It seems perhaps you should consider what has come out of all of that, that is to see
00:07:03.760 a really powerful importance which language has for our lives and especially for our
00:07:16.400 cultural life, for human culture in the power case of course since we are both writers
00:07:26.440 and that books, languages, actually almost identical, almost identical with our life,
00:07:36.600 with whose language or the time in our work but that is a very special situation.
00:07:46.480 I think language is at the basis of all culture, all human culture because without language
00:07:57.640 we know the cases which are deprived of language say have a terrible struggle to become
00:08:05.000 human and you will tell us about Helen Keller, Helen was deaf and blind and therefore since
00:08:19.760 she was creative she couldn't speak and since she was blind she had actually very little
00:08:30.360 knowledge of the outside world or the she couldn't could sheen it with her hands and
00:08:37.880 was more we could walk and or by feeling and most cares for her parents and so on but
00:08:47.360 she was really hardly human, a teacher came to look after her and this teacher did succeed
00:09:00.080 in teaching her a sign language writing right upon the heart on the palm and the astonishing
00:09:12.720 stories that Helen who became a great writer and actually even speak later that Helen
00:09:26.400 remembers very clearly or remembered very clearly when she wrote her story the incredible
00:09:37.000 experience of suddenly realizing the word which was written in her hand the first word
00:09:44.080 was water when a stream of water fell on her hand and the realization this is water this
00:09:56.840 is something I can now myself express also by writing water on the hand of the teacher
00:10:10.240 it was a change in her life and it was a change which made her human a really rescued
00:10:20.520 her from an animal stage and made her human and she became later capable of writing she
00:10:31.240 wrote quite a lot among other things the story of her life makes you my opinion really everybody
00:10:39.120 should read it's called the story of my life and this need for language was probably
00:10:49.400 in her greater than perhaps in other children never the less it shows what it really
00:10:58.520 means what language really means to us and what the language can really be for us well
00:11:05.760 that's extraordinary story but of course we've all done each of us was a baby without
00:11:13.280 language and we learnt it and this is what any of you will know anybody will know how
00:11:20.880 the young children babies the children how do they talk so much and ask so much and practice
00:11:27.480 so much they even practice on their own as papa shikis shown so we have is in an incessant
00:11:35.680 urge to develop language because we were born human with a human brain.
