Language evolution as a constraint on conceptions of a minimalist language faculty

PhD ThesisLanguage appears to be special. Well-rehearsed arguments that appeal to aspects of language acquisition, psycholinguistic processing and linguistic universals all suggest that language has certain properties that distinguish it from other domain general capacities. The most widely discussed theory of an innate, modular, domain specific language faculty is Chomskyan generative grammar (CGG) in its various guises. However, an examination of the history and development of CGG reveals a constant tension in the relationship of syntax, phonology and semantics that has endured up to, and fatally undermines, the latest manifestation of the theory: the Minimalist Program. Evidence from language evolution can be deployed to arrive at a more coherent understanding of the nature of the human faculty for language. I suggest that all current theories can be classed on the basis of two binary distinctions: firstly, that between nativist and non-nativist accounts, and secondly between hypotheses that rely on a sudden explanation for the origins of language and those that rely on a gradual, incremental picture. All four consequent possibilities have serious flaws. By scrutinising the extant cross-disciplinary data on the evolution of hominins it becomes clear that there were two significant periods of rapid evolutionary change, corresponding to stages of punctuated equilibrium. The first of these occurred approximately two million years ago with the speciation event of Homo, saw a doubling in the size, alongside some reorganisation, of hominin brains, and resulted in the first irrefutable evidence of cognitive behaviour that distinguishes the species from that of our last common ancestor with chimpanzees. The second period began seven to eight hundred thousand years ago, again involving reorganisation and growth of the brain with associated behavioural innovations, and gave rise to modern humans by at least two hundred thousand years ago. ii I suggest that as a consequence of the first of these evolutionary breakthroughs, the species Homo erectus was endowed with a proto-‘language of thought’ (LoT), a development of the cognitive capacity evident in modern chimpanzees, accompanied by a gestural, and then vocal, symbolic protolanguage. The second breakthrough constituted a great leap involving the emergence of advanced theory of mind and a fully recursive, creative LoT. I propose that the theory outlined in the Representational Hypothesis (RH) clarifies an understanding of the nature of language as having evolved to represent externally this wholly internal, universal LoT, and it is the latter which is the sole locus of syntax and semantics. By clearly distinguishing between a phonological system for semiotic representation, and that which it represents, a syntactico-semantic LoT, the RH offers a fully logical and consistent understanding of the human faculty for language. Language may have the appearance of domain specific properties, but this is entirely derived from both the nature of that which it represents, and the natural constraints of symbolic representation

The emergence of language as a function of brain-hemispheric feedback

This text posits the emergence of language as a function of brain-hemispheric feedback, where “emergence” refers to the generation of complex patterns from relatively simple interactions, “language” refers to an abstraction-based and representational-recombinatorial-recursive mapping-signaling system, “function” refers to an input-output relationship described by fractal algorithms, “brain-hemispheric” refers to complementary (approach-abstraction / avoidance-gestalt) cognitive modules, and “feedback” refers to self-regulation driven by neural inhibition and recruitment. The origin of language marks the dawn of human self-awareness and culture, and is thus a matter of fundamental and cross-disciplinary interest. This text is a synthesized research essay that constructs its argument by drawing diverse scholarly voices into a critical, cross-disciplinary intertextual narrative. While it does not report any original empirical findings, it harnesses those made by others to offer a tentative, partial solution—one that can later be altered and expanded—to a problem that has occupied thinkers for centuries. The research contained within this text is preceded by an introductory Section 1 that contextualizes the problem of the origin of language. Section 2 details the potential of evolutionary theory for addressing the problem, and the reasons for the century-long failure of linguistics to take advantage of that potential. Section 3 reviews the history of the discovery of brain lateralization, as well as its behavioral and structural characteristics. Section 4 discusses evolutionary evidence and mechanisms in terms of increasing adaptive complexity and intelligence, in general, and tool use, in particular. Section 5 combines chaos theory, brain science, and semiotics to propose that, after the neotenic acquisition of contingency-based abstraction, language emerged as a feedback interaction between the left-hemisphere abstract word and the right-hemisphere gestalt image. I conclude that the model proposed here might be a valuable tool for understanding, organizing, and relating data and ideas concerning human evolution, language, culture, and psychology. I recommend, of course, that I present this text to the scholarly community for criticism, and that I continue to gather and collate relevant data and ideas, in order to prepare its next iteration

Origins of Human Language

This book proposes a detailed picture of the continuities and ruptures between communication in primates and language in humans. It explores a diversity of perspectives on the origins of language, including a fine description of vocal communication in animals, mainly in monkeys and apes, but also in birds, the study of vocal tract anatomy and cortical control of the vocal productions in monkeys and apes, the description of combinatory structures and their social and communicative value, and the exploration of the cognitive environment in which language may have emerged from nonhuman primate vocal or gestural communication