A Note on Biology & Language

Sign Language Studies 13 A Note on BIOLOGY & LANGUAGE A-lready published in SIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES are two of the papers intended for a book to be edited by S. Ghosh and called "Biology & Language": Kendon's study of the resistance to dissolution and hence possible priority of gestural and vocal utterance output (in 1975 SLS 9, 349-373); and the Bonvillian, Nelson, and Charrow review of language acquired by children under handicapping conditions (in 1976 SLS 12, 211-250). Three more studies from this set of investigations into the fundamental relationships of biology and language appear in this issue. However unfortunate the circumstances that prevented the single volume format intended for these papers, it seems particularly fortunate that they will be brought together in SIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES: Sign language, or the kind of behavior that may become a sign language, forms a major or minor theme in most of these studies; language, communication, interaction--all organized behavior generally considered not only relates directly to biological evolution and to other species than man alone but also requires consideration of action, visual reception, and cognitive interpretation, if only because of the neural nexus of brain and retina. Moreover, the study of sign languages, belonging to several disciplines though exclusively to none, seems to provide a common meeting ground where truly interdisciplinary dialogues, excluded from more strictly bounded preserves can take place. The three studies in this issue establish an extensive scale: Condon's microanalysis of behavior detects occurrences that last but milliseconds; Petrinovich shows that comparative studies of cognition must take in the whole ecological context in which a species normally operates; Pouts and Mellgren report on experiments and interactions among human and anthropoid individuals and view them, as it were, at a range midway between telescopic and microscopic. ...