Abstract
One view of language is that it emerged in a single step in Homo sapiens, and depended on a radical transformation of human thought, involving symbolic representations and computational rules for combining them. I argue instead that language should be viewed as a communication system for the sharing of thoughts, and that thought processes themselves evolved well before the capacity to share them. One property often considered unique to language is generativity—the capacity to generate a potentially infinite variety of sentences. I suggest that generativity is derived from the understanding of space and the capacity to recall or construct spatiotemporal scenarios, and probably goes far back in the evolution of animals that move in spatial habitats. Another property essential to language is theory of mind, the ability to understand what others are thinking, which probably emerged from animal empathy and became more complex in hominin evolution. Language evolved for the sharing of experiences, whether remembered or constructed, perhaps initially through pantomime but gradually conventionalized into standardized forms, including speech. These developments probably took place gradually during the Pleistocene, rather than as a sudden event in the evolution of H. sapiens.
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Notes
Sharing, whether of information or of resources, benefits the group as well the individual, and necessarily operates at the group level. This raises the question whether natural selection itself can operate at this level, rather than at the level of the individual (e.g., Wilson and Sober 1994). Discussion of the controversial issue is beyond the scope of this paper; for a detailed analysis in relation to language evolution, the reader is referred to Hurford (Hurford 2007, especially Chapter 10).
This is not to disparage sign languages, which have advantages in expressivity, and to some extent in transparency. Nevertheless the transfer to speech was sufficiently adaptive to bring about the biological changes necessary for vocal learning and intentional vocal control, and to overcome the risk of choking. And any advantage in terms of energy-saving is partially offset by the fact that people continue to gesture anyway while they speak (Fitch 2010).
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Corballis, M.C. Precursors to Language. Topoi 37, 297–305 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9418-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9418-8