Grounding the Mirror System Hypothesis for the Evolution of the Language-ready Brain

Abstract

What was the evolutionary path whereby humans came to have brains so well-suited for language? There has been much debate as to whether language evolved by the modification of systems present in non-human primates, or by some more radical, discontinuous evolutionary change. Noam Chomsky, perhaps the most influential linguist of the 20^th century, has often suggested that there is nothing remotely resembling human language anywhere in the animal repertoire but that our genetic constitution includes a Universal Grammar — the basic ground plan for the grammar of all possible human languages. Certainly, the human brain and body evolved in such a way that we have hands, larynx, facial mobility and the brain mechanisms needed to produce and rapidly perceive and generate sequences of gestures that can be used in language. However, rather than accept Chomsky’s hypothesis, Arbib (2001) offers the counter-hypothesis that the human brain and body are language-ready in the sense that the first Homo sapiens used a form of vocal communication which was but a pale approximation of the richness of current languages, and that these languages evolved culturally as a more or less cumulative set of “inventions”.