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Lexicalisation and the Origin of the Human Mind

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Abstract

This paper will discuss the origin of the human mind, and the qualitative discontinuity between human and animal cognition. We locate the source of this discontinuity within the language faculty, and thus take the origin of the mind to depend on the origin of the language faculty. We will look at one such proposal put forward by Hauser et al. (Science 298:1569-1579, 2002), which takes the evolution of a Merge trait (recursion) to solely explain the differences between human and animal cognition. We argue that the Merge-only hypothesis fails to account for various aspects of the human mind. Instead we propose that the process of lexicalisation is also unique to humans, and that this process is key to explaining the vast qualitative differences. We will argue that lexicalisation is a process through which concepts are reformatted to be able to take on semantic features and to take part in grammatical relations. These are both necessary conditions for a grammatical mind and the increased ability to express conceptual content. We therefore propose a possible explanans for the discontinuity between humans and animals, namely that merge with lexicalisation (and consequently semantic features and grammatical relations) is a minimal requirement for the human mind.

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Notes

  1. See Spelke (2003); Chomsky (2005); Carruthers (2006) and Hinzen (2006) for varying views on this relationship.

  2. Some philosophers have taken the presence of inferential abilities to be the mark of possessing concepts (see Crane 1992 and Burge 2010). Though the precise nature of the inferential abilities of animals is debated (see Beck 2012 for a review of the positions in the literature), we take their limited inferential abilities to indicate a limited form of concept possession.

  3. Note that a continuity theorist can accept the existence of a shared core cognition system without contradicting their position. The continuity theorist can posit entirely new forms of representations as the thesis concerns the source of their development, not their existence.

  4. Following Carey (2009) we take this bootstrapping to be similar to the way in which Quine (1960, 1969) envisaged for a child acquiring ontological commitments. This is a different form of bootstrapping than is discussed in the language acquisition literature, which concerns a mapping problem of lexical items onto syntactic categories.

  5. The pyow-hack noises made by Putty-nosed monkeys that exist to warn of predators have been taken by some authors to constitute semantic combinatorics (see Arnold and Zuberbühler 2008); whilst the calls of Campbell’s monkeys have been taken to exhibit combinatorial organisation akin to a ‘proto-syntax’ (Ouattara et al. 2009). The following paper takes such semantic content to be qualitatively different from that of human semantics, this distinction is born out of having a grammatical mind with lexicalisation that affords new ways of using symbolic representations.

  6. For a discussion on FOXP2, a gene involved in speech production, see Lai et al. 2001; Enard et al. 2002; for other possible genetic mutations see Crow 2008. For a negative perspective on the role of FOXP2 in language evolution see Berwick 2011.

  7. The extent to which these approaches vary can be seen in the edited volumes Language Evolution (Christiansen and Kirby 2003a), The Biolinguistic Enterprise: New Perspectives on the Evolution and Nature of the Human Language Faculty (Di Sciullo and Boeckx 2011), and The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution (Tallerman and Gibson 2012).

  8. Some authors argue that the imperfections in language can be reduced to conflicting interface conditions, and hence the imperfections become epiphenomenal, see Zeijlstra 2009 for discussion.

  9. Sound includes all articulatory modes for language expression, including signing or other non-vocal modes.

  10. This is not to claim that all concepts in adult cognition have their source in core-cognition. Once the system outlined in this paper is in place concepts can be formed independently of core-cognition systems.

  11. Note though that although we have endorsed a discontinuity thesis between core cognitive systems and later adult cognition, we do not wish to rule out the idea that the two cognitive systems are commensurable.

  12. For alternative views on lexicalisation see Pietroski (2005).

  13. Phi features are a subset of the universal feature set and are typically understood to be person, number, and gender features.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Durham University, 50 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HN, UK

    Thomas J. Hughes & J. T. M. Miller

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Hughes, T.J., Miller, J.T.M. Lexicalisation and the Origin of the Human Mind. Biosemiotics 7, 11–27 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-013-9189-1

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