The History of Writing Reflects the Effects of Education on Discourse Structure: Implications for Literacy, Orality, Psychosis and the Axial Age.
Axial Age
Bronze Age
Graph
Indigenous
Language evolution
Literature
Journal
Trends in neuroscience and education
ISSN: 2211-9493
Titre abrégé: Trends Neurosci Educ
Pays: Germany
ID NLM: 101613233
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
12 2020
12 2020
Historique:
received:
30
06
2018
revised:
22
09
2020
accepted:
24
09
2020
entrez:
11
12
2020
pubmed:
12
12
2020
medline:
29
10
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Graph analysis detects psychosis and literacy acquisition. Bronze Age literature has been proposed to contain childish or psychotic features, which would only have matured during the Axial Age (∼800-200 BC), a putative boundary for contemporary mentality. Graph analysis of literary texts spanning ∼4,500 years shows remarkable asymptotic changes over time. While lexical diversity, long-range recurrence and graph length increase away from randomness, short-range recurrence declines towards random levels. Bronze Age texts are structurally similar to oral reports from literate typical children and literate psychotic adults, but distinct from poetry, and from narratives by preliterate preschoolers or Amerindians. Text structure reconstitutes the "arrow-of-time", converging to educated adult levels at the Axial Age onset. The educational pathways of oral and literate traditions are structurally divergent, with a decreasing range of recurrence in the former, and an increasing range of recurrence in the latter. Education is seemingly the driving force underlying discourse maturation.
Sections du résumé
BACKGROUND
Graph analysis detects psychosis and literacy acquisition. Bronze Age literature has been proposed to contain childish or psychotic features, which would only have matured during the Axial Age (∼800-200 BC), a putative boundary for contemporary mentality.
METHOD
Graph analysis of literary texts spanning ∼4,500 years shows remarkable asymptotic changes over time.
RESULTS
While lexical diversity, long-range recurrence and graph length increase away from randomness, short-range recurrence declines towards random levels. Bronze Age texts are structurally similar to oral reports from literate typical children and literate psychotic adults, but distinct from poetry, and from narratives by preliterate preschoolers or Amerindians. Text structure reconstitutes the "arrow-of-time", converging to educated adult levels at the Axial Age onset.
CONCLUSION
The educational pathways of oral and literate traditions are structurally divergent, with a decreasing range of recurrence in the former, and an increasing range of recurrence in the latter. Education is seemingly the driving force underlying discourse maturation.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33303107
pii: S2211-9493(20)30018-1
doi: 10.1016/j.tine.2020.100142
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
100142Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier GmbH.. All rights reserved.