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How Did Language Evolve? Some Reflections on the Language Parasite Debate

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Abstract

The language parasite approach (LPA) refers to the view that language, like a parasite, is an adaptive system that evolves to fit its human hosts. Supported by recent computer simulations, LPA proponents claim that the reason that humans can use languages with ease is not because we have evolved with genetically specified linguistic instincts but because languages have adapted to the preexisting brain structures of humans. This article examines the LPA. It argues that, while the LPA has advantages over its rival, Chomskyan nativism, there are additional factors that may limit linguistic variety that have yet to be identified by its insightful proponents. This article suggests abandoning the search for a decisive cause of language capacity and argues that language evolution is more likely to arise from balancing multiple engineering constraints.

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Notes

  1. The notion of memes, i.e., ideas or behaviors that are learned through cultural transmission, was first proposed by Dawkins (1976).

  2. However, in his recent article, Chomsky (2014a) seems to retreat to the view that minimal recursion is the only content of the UG. Although this view is sometimes called the Chomskyan view, whether Chomsky currently remains a proponent of this original Chomskyan view is questionable. Chomsky and colleagues (Berwick et al. 2011) still defend the validity of the poverty of the stimulus argument, but Chomsky (2014a, p. 1) only holds that “minimal recursion” can lead to the “elimination of many unwanted stipulations and also grounding some fundamental properties of universal grammar.” Chomsky (2013, 2014b) also suggests abandoning the endocentricity stipulation of X-bar theory and its descendants. Adger (2015) thus interprets that Chomsky no longer insists on humans’ linguistic-specific instinct to acquire language and that it is unclear whether Chomsky maintains that humans must have a set of genetically encoded principles of language.

  3. UG is simply an example of a language faculty. The proponents of the latter need not commit to the former. However, for the sake of simplicity, I use them interchangeably.

  4. However, the language-parasite analogy has been less emphasized in their recent work. Instead, they highlight the role of culture in the biological evolution that shapes language (known as the cultural approach of language evolution), which has also been increasingly advocated (Chater et al. 2009; Deacon 2012; Dediu and Levinson 2014; Christiansen and Chater 2015, 2016a, b; de Boer 2015, 2016; Kirby et al. 2015; Thompson et al. 2016).

  5. Representing the world is a key function of language. Ancient pictogram languages (e.g., Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Chinese Hanzi) involve the direct depiction of world objects. However, languages also compete and are selected by their representational capacities. For example, Edo period scholar Kamo no Mabuchi ([1769]1980) argued that the alphabetical writing system is better than the logographic system at representing things and should thus be adopted in Japanese reform.

  6. The reason no other animals have language, given the existence of high-order constraints, is that these constraints are only one among many factors that may shape our languages. These constraints are neither necessary nor sufficient. There are other factors (e.g., human cognitive architecture) jointly facilitating humans, but not other animals, having full-fledged language.

  7. Cultural transmission plays a role as well. Nishiyama (2010) argues that Mongolian can be both vertical and horizontal, being influenced by Middle Eastern Islamic culture and Chinese vertical writing.

  8. In the 1970s, Lakoff (1970) and McCawley (1971) developed the approach of generative semantics as an alternative to Chomsky’s generative syntax. Lakoff (1970) also proposed the concept of “natural logic” to indicate the logic of natural language, which governs linguistic patterns such as syntax and phonology. However, Wilks (1972) criticized that the notion of natural logic is not clear and that generative semantics is likely to be false.

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Hung, Tw. How Did Language Evolve? Some Reflections on the Language Parasite Debate. Biol Theory 14, 214–223 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-019-00321-x

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