Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Minds & Traditions Research Group, Jena, Germany
Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, ENS, PSL University 29, Paris, France.
Behav Brain Sci. 2023 Oct 2;46:e260. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X23002418.
This response takes advantage of the diverse and wide-ranging series of commentaries to clarify some aspects of the target article, and flesh out other aspects. My central point is a plea to take graphic codes seriously as codes, rather than as a kind of visual art or as a byproduct of spoken language; only in this way can the puzzle of ideography be identified and solved. In this perspective, I argue that graphic codes do not derive their expressive power from iconicity alone (unlike visual arts), and I clarify the peculiar relationship that ties writing to spoken language. I then discuss three possible solutions to the puzzle of ideography. I argue that a learning account still cannot explain why ideographies fail to evolve, even if we emancipate the learning account from the version that Liberman put forward; I develop my preferred solution, the "standardization account," and contrast it with a third solution suggested by some commentaries, which says that ideographies do not evolve because they would make communication too costly. I consider, by way of conclusion, the consequences of these views for the future evolution of ideography.
这一回应利用了多样化和广泛的评论系列来澄清目标文章的某些方面，并进一步阐述了其他方面。我的中心观点是恳请大家认真对待图形代码，将其视为一种代码，而不是视觉艺术或口语的副产品；只有这样，表意文字的谜题才能被识别并解决。从这个角度来看，我认为图形代码的表现力不仅仅来自于图像性（与视觉艺术不同），我还澄清了将书写与口语联系起来的特殊关系。然后，我讨论了表意文字的谜题的三种可能的解决方案。我认为，即使我们从利伯曼提出的版本中解放出学习理论，学习理论仍然不能解释为什么表意文字不能进化；我发展了我更喜欢的解决方案，即“标准化理论”，并将其与一些评论中提出的第三种解决方案进行对比，后者认为表意文字不会进化，因为它们会使交流成本过高。最后，我考虑了这些观点对表意文字未来进化的影响。
