Cognition and Communication in the Evolution of Language

Abstract

The book offers a new approach to the evolution of language, arguing for a two-step process, syntax first evolving as an auto-organizational process for the human conceptual apparatus (as a Language of Thought), and this language of thought being then externalized for communication, due to social selection pressures. The book first argues that, despite the routine use of language in communication, current use is not a failsafe guide to adaptive history. It points out the many difficulties of accounts that see language as having evolved for communication: its uniqueness among animal communication systems and its structural properties, notably decoupling that makes a tool for deception in contradiction with all views on the evolution of communication, making it unlikely that it specifically evolved for communication. It highlights the specificity of human cognition relative to animal communication and notably the specific richness of the human conceptual apparatus. It proposes that syntax (on a minimalist view, Merge) evolved owing to a self-organizational process of the human conceptual apparatus. The last step, the externalization of language for communication, was due to the political organization of human hunter-gatherer groups, along the lines of the Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. The evolutionary processes involved are heterogeneous in keeping with the contemporary Extended Synthesis.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 68 citations exist upstream.