August 29, 2015

August 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my twelfth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). In the section of the paper titled “Bio-phonetics”, the authors give a perfect example of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). However, they only mention it as a possibility, not as a necessity, which, of course, it is. “It is also possible that some of the relatively rich semantics of adult language is scaffolded on simpler sound–meaning relationships. For example, the first natural sound–meaning relationships for infants are those marking the caregiver’s identity. Young infants of most species, including humans, show an early preference for mothers ’ voice whose unique features they quickly associate with the comfort, support and accompanying positive affect that she represents.” Without a safe and reliable “sound-meaning relationship”, which is based on the mother’s voice, the infant cannot grow up to be able to produce the “relatively rich semantics of adult language.” If the infant didn’t and couldn’t experience “comfort, support, and accompanying affect” of the mother’s voice, he or she grows up with a narrowed basis for language. Moreover, if there was no SVB, there must have been Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which, because of its negative affect, impairs our relationships. The foundation for what later becomes SVB or NVB is laid in our childhood.

“Over time, infants learn additional social discriminations that have other functional behavioral consequences. These include discriminating the age, sex and body size of social companions, because these basic distinctions herald important differences in the social status, behavioral dominance and implicit threat or challenge that others represent.” If the mother’s identity is recognized, the infant will learn to associate her voice with giving “comfort, support, and accompanying affect” and begin to realize how different the mother sounds compared to others. In other words, the mother’s SVB forms the foundation for the infant’s ability to recognize NVB. If the father and the other children share the mother’s SVB, then the family interactions are going to be happy and harmonious, but if their communication, like it was in my family, is NVB, then NVB sets the stage for discriminating “the age, sex, and body size of social companions, because these basic distinctions herald important differences in the social status, behavioral dominance and implicit threat or challenge that others represent.” This exactly describes  NVB, because in NVB the speaker dominates the listener.

At age 57, I finally have become capable of recognizing that only in SVB we can discriminate NVB and that NVB simply cannot discriminate SVB. My mother’s influence was such that I was able to discover SVB. Now that I have discovered it, I don’t go back anymore to the NVB represented by my father and siblings. NVB is meaningless to me as the “implicit threat or challenge that others represent” could never result in SVB. I consider SVB to be a science which can only be learned if it is taught. Social, hierarchical distinctions are based on pre-scientific NVB. We have maintained NVB because of our social distinctions, which have prevented us from becoming truly verbal and fully human. Such distinctions don’t matter during SVB. 

Coercive interaction simply sounds horrible, that is why I didn't listen to my father. “Many of these social distinctions are also signaled by salient differences in the acoustic features of the vocalizations these individuals produce, such as in voice pitch (fundamental frequency) and voice resonances (or formants) that vary predictably among age – sex classes and among individuals of varying body size.” Discrimination of NVB makes higher rates of SVB possible.  It is true for primates “many of the earliest sound – meaning relationships that young infants acquire are those that represent meaningful social distinctions among group members, and the affective and behavioral consequences they predict.” It was my mother’s, not my father’s voice that taught me the difference between SVB and NVB. 

Another way of saying the aforementioned is that my father’s dominating NVB have inadvertently led me to work very hard on trying to understand how spoken communication actually works. His way of talking was such a big contrast to my mother that I was unable to deal with this difference as a child. The authors are correct when they write “It is, therefore, possible that the semantics of human languages exploit some of these biologically, preprepared sound – meaning relationships which would then offer infants a natural aid in semantic learning.” My father’s forceful voice impaired my language development and learning initially, but my mother’s voice made me wonder what would happen if her way of talking could continue.