Social and Cultural Learning in the Evolution of Human Communication

Abstract

In order to understand how human languages could have emerged and continuetoevolve, weneedaboveallexplanationsfortheenormousincreaseincomplexitycompared to animal communication systems. This increase has taken place forall aspects of language:1. Form: The repertoire of speech sounds used in human language is ex-traordinarily complex. It relies on an articulatory apparatus which needsto be controlled very fast and at a very fine-grained level. It requiresthe real-time processing of structured sounds despite noise and individualvariation.2. Meaning: An intricate system of conceptualisation underlies language(Langacker,1987). This system consists of a way to organise the worldinto different objects and events, a way to categorise them, and a way tointroduce structure from the viewpoint of the speaker and listener. Forexample, the phrase ”The car is behind the tree”, implies that the speakerand listener view themselves as positioned on a line which goes from them-selves to the tree and then to the car. Human conceptualisation is notfixed but expands and adapts to the need of the community. It is partlygrounded in the real world through a sensori-motor apparatus and partlyabstract based on purely symbolic relations between abstract concepts.3. Lexicon: The lexicons of human languages are very large (an educatedperson uses on average 60,000 words and understands 100,000 of them).1

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