Cory M Stade
My research interests lie in how Palaeolithic material culture can inform our understanding of the origin and evolution of language. I am especially interested in the role of experimental lithics studies, the Lower Palaeolithic record of Europe, the relationship between theory of mind and language, and the evolutionary development of syntactic structure.
I am currently a third-year doctoral researcher at the University of Southampton at the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO). My thesis concerns discriminating between different modes of culturally transmitted lithic material made experimentally by novice modern knappers.
I am also a founding member and current committee member of the Oxford Palaeotechnology Society (OxPalTechSoc).
My university education began in linguistics, where I received a BA from Simon Fraser University in Canada, where I minored in archaeology. I then completed a Masters degree in Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology at University College London, before beginning the PhD at Southampton in 2013.
Supervisors: Professor Clive Gamble
I am currently a third-year doctoral researcher at the University of Southampton at the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO). My thesis concerns discriminating between different modes of culturally transmitted lithic material made experimentally by novice modern knappers.
I am also a founding member and current committee member of the Oxford Palaeotechnology Society (OxPalTechSoc).
My university education began in linguistics, where I received a BA from Simon Fraser University in Canada, where I minored in archaeology. I then completed a Masters degree in Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology at University College London, before beginning the PhD at Southampton in 2013.
Supervisors: Professor Clive Gamble
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Papers by Cory M Stade
Posters by Cory M Stade
Four groups of novices (n=12) will have learned to knap handaxes using moulded porcelain blanks as raw material to aid a more scientific methodology. They will learn under different imposed social learning conditions: emulation (viewing only the end products of the manufacture sequence), imitation (watching videos of knapping), teaching (conventional pedagogy), and non-verbal teaching (silent pedagogy). The groups’ assemblages are analysed for morphological characteristics that might identify by which method the group learned. My hypothesis is that tool standardization will increase in groups where technology is transmitted using more complex levels of theory of mind. This will be the first study to empirically support specific syntactic and semantic abilities identified from lithic morphology.
Four groups of novices (n=16) will have learned to knap handaxes using moulded porcelain blanks as raw material to aid a more scientific methodology. They will learn under different imposed social learning conditions: emulation (viewing only the end products of the manufacture sequence), imitation (watching videos of knapping), teaching (conventional pedagogy), and non-verbal teaching (silent pedagogy). The groups’ assemblages are analysed for morphological characteristics that might identify by which method the group learned. My hypothesis is that tool standardization will increase in groups where technology is transmitted using more complex levels of theory of mind. This will be the first study to empirically support specific syntactic and semantic abilities identified from lithic morphology.
In the literature, it has been suggested that certain syntactic categories were the first to emerge, mainly nouns ([Smith 1767] Land 1977, Li and Hombert 2002, Luuk 2009). However, theories positing a first grammatical category are problematic; in isolation, an utterance cannot be attributed a syntactic category such as noun or verb unless one uses a semantic definition of what a syntactic category is. A semantic definition of syntactic category is awkward because of language variation, and therefore in modern linguistics it is common practise to attribute a syntactic category based on morphological and distributional properties (Evans and Green 2006, Gil 2000). An isolated word without any morphology or distribution is category-less.
Luuk’s (2009) paper argues that nouns were the first category to emerge, and he offers eleven reasons why this must be so. While Luuk’s paper argues successfully why verbs are unlikely to have emerged before nouns, he has not considered that these categories could have emerged together.
It is argued here that the first utterances would have been category-less, and it was only in relation to another utterance that syntactic categories could truly exist; hence, two or more categories must have emerged at the same time. This hypothesis is supported by grammaticalization theory, which describes nouns and verbs as being the most primitive categories as they are the least grammaticalized and cannot be derived historically from other syntactic categories (Heine and Kuteva 2007).
Keywords: language evolution, syntax, grammaticalization
Evans, V. and Green, M., 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: an introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Gil, D., 2000. Syntactic categories, cross-linguistic variation, and universal grammar. In: Vogel,
P. M., and Comrie, B. Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Heine, B. and Kuteva, T., 2007. The Genesis of Grammar: a reconstruction (Studies in the
Evolution of Language). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R., 2002. Foundations of Language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Land, S. K., 1977. Adam Smith’s “Considerations considering the first formation of languages”.
Journal of the History of Ideas 38, 677-690.
Li, C. N. and Hombert, J. M., 2002. On the evolutionary origin of language. In: Stamenov, M.
and Gallese, V. (eds). Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Luuk, E., 2009. The noun/verb and predicate/argument structures. Lingua 119, 1707-1727.
Pinker, S. and Bloom, P., 1990. Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 13, 707-784.
Stade, C. 2009. Abrupt versus Gradual Evolution of Language and the Case for Semilanguage.
Unpublished MSc thesis, University College London.
Presentations by Cory M Stade
This presentation will share the results of an experimental knapping study that set out to distinguish between different methods of social learning (emulation, imitation, and intentional teaching) by looking at its effect on the morphological variability of stone tools. The hypothesis is that stone tool variability (in shape, weight, number of flakes produced, and flake scar density) would be high in low fidelity social learning environments and low in high fidelity social learning environments. This study supports that Palaeolithic assemblages which show low variability in tool morphology can only be attained with high fidelity cultural transmission, allowed by complex cognitive requirements like theory of mind, developed alongside specific linguistic abilities.
Theory of Mind is the ability to think about thoughts, or to conceptualise other agents as having their own mental states (such as desires, beliefs, and knowledge). It is essential for many complex, ‘higher’ cognitive processes such as social learning, language, and social emotions. It has been the subject of over 40 years of well-funded interdisciplinary research in education, psychology, and medicine. Special attention has focused on the cognitive and social deficits that emerge when Theory of Mind is impaired or delayed (such as in autism, schizophrenia, and language delay).
This research can be particularly relevant for archaeologists seeking to build models of emerging cognitive complexity, as behaviours underpinned by Theory of Mind can manifest themselves materially (for example, in tool standardization). Identification of hominin behaviours that required Theory of Mind provides information about other abilities that must also have been present (such as joint attention, imitation, and features of language). Using a series of case studies we will sketch a preliminary picture of emerging Theory of Mind in hominins, and the implications of this for understanding cumulative culture and style, art and religion, social organisation, landscape use, and the creation of referential objects.
This presentation aims to establish Theory of Mind as an interdisciplinary tool for generating testable predictions about ancient human minds. We aim to demonstrate to Palaeolithic archaeologists the potential this approach has to aid research in uncovering the cognitive evidence that lies in the material record.
Four groups of novices (n=12) will have learned to knap handaxes using moulded porcelain blanks as raw material to aid a more scientific methodology. They will learn under different imposed social learning conditions: emulation (viewing only the end products of the manufacture sequence), imitation (watching videos of knapping), teaching (conventional pedagogy), and non-verbal teaching (silent pedagogy). The groups’ assemblages are analysed for morphological characteristics that might identify by which method the group learned. My hypothesis is that tool standardization will increase in groups where technology is transmitted using more complex levels of theory of mind. This will be the first study to empirically support specific syntactic and semantic abilities identified from lithic morphology.
Four groups of novices (n=16) will have learned to knap handaxes using moulded porcelain blanks as raw material to aid a more scientific methodology. They will learn under different imposed social learning conditions: emulation (viewing only the end products of the manufacture sequence), imitation (watching videos of knapping), teaching (conventional pedagogy), and non-verbal teaching (silent pedagogy). The groups’ assemblages are analysed for morphological characteristics that might identify by which method the group learned. My hypothesis is that tool standardization will increase in groups where technology is transmitted using more complex levels of theory of mind. This will be the first study to empirically support specific syntactic and semantic abilities identified from lithic morphology.
In the literature, it has been suggested that certain syntactic categories were the first to emerge, mainly nouns ([Smith 1767] Land 1977, Li and Hombert 2002, Luuk 2009). However, theories positing a first grammatical category are problematic; in isolation, an utterance cannot be attributed a syntactic category such as noun or verb unless one uses a semantic definition of what a syntactic category is. A semantic definition of syntactic category is awkward because of language variation, and therefore in modern linguistics it is common practise to attribute a syntactic category based on morphological and distributional properties (Evans and Green 2006, Gil 2000). An isolated word without any morphology or distribution is category-less.
Luuk’s (2009) paper argues that nouns were the first category to emerge, and he offers eleven reasons why this must be so. While Luuk’s paper argues successfully why verbs are unlikely to have emerged before nouns, he has not considered that these categories could have emerged together.
It is argued here that the first utterances would have been category-less, and it was only in relation to another utterance that syntactic categories could truly exist; hence, two or more categories must have emerged at the same time. This hypothesis is supported by grammaticalization theory, which describes nouns and verbs as being the most primitive categories as they are the least grammaticalized and cannot be derived historically from other syntactic categories (Heine and Kuteva 2007).
Keywords: language evolution, syntax, grammaticalization
Evans, V. and Green, M., 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: an introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Gil, D., 2000. Syntactic categories, cross-linguistic variation, and universal grammar. In: Vogel,
P. M., and Comrie, B. Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Heine, B. and Kuteva, T., 2007. The Genesis of Grammar: a reconstruction (Studies in the
Evolution of Language). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R., 2002. Foundations of Language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Land, S. K., 1977. Adam Smith’s “Considerations considering the first formation of languages”.
Journal of the History of Ideas 38, 677-690.
Li, C. N. and Hombert, J. M., 2002. On the evolutionary origin of language. In: Stamenov, M.
and Gallese, V. (eds). Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Luuk, E., 2009. The noun/verb and predicate/argument structures. Lingua 119, 1707-1727.
Pinker, S. and Bloom, P., 1990. Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 13, 707-784.
Stade, C. 2009. Abrupt versus Gradual Evolution of Language and the Case for Semilanguage.
Unpublished MSc thesis, University College London.
This presentation will share the results of an experimental knapping study that set out to distinguish between different methods of social learning (emulation, imitation, and intentional teaching) by looking at its effect on the morphological variability of stone tools. The hypothesis is that stone tool variability (in shape, weight, number of flakes produced, and flake scar density) would be high in low fidelity social learning environments and low in high fidelity social learning environments. This study supports that Palaeolithic assemblages which show low variability in tool morphology can only be attained with high fidelity cultural transmission, allowed by complex cognitive requirements like theory of mind, developed alongside specific linguistic abilities.
Theory of Mind is the ability to think about thoughts, or to conceptualise other agents as having their own mental states (such as desires, beliefs, and knowledge). It is essential for many complex, ‘higher’ cognitive processes such as social learning, language, and social emotions. It has been the subject of over 40 years of well-funded interdisciplinary research in education, psychology, and medicine. Special attention has focused on the cognitive and social deficits that emerge when Theory of Mind is impaired or delayed (such as in autism, schizophrenia, and language delay).
This research can be particularly relevant for archaeologists seeking to build models of emerging cognitive complexity, as behaviours underpinned by Theory of Mind can manifest themselves materially (for example, in tool standardization). Identification of hominin behaviours that required Theory of Mind provides information about other abilities that must also have been present (such as joint attention, imitation, and features of language). Using a series of case studies we will sketch a preliminary picture of emerging Theory of Mind in hominins, and the implications of this for understanding cumulative culture and style, art and religion, social organisation, landscape use, and the creation of referential objects.
This presentation aims to establish Theory of Mind as an interdisciplinary tool for generating testable predictions about ancient human minds. We aim to demonstrate to Palaeolithic archaeologists the potential this approach has to aid research in uncovering the cognitive evidence that lies in the material record.