Abstract
A Darwinian theory of the evolution of language must be incremental: to explain the transition from a hominin baseline with great ape grade communicative capacities to language-equipped hominins as a series of small steps. This paper takes up that project for the special case of words, giving an incremental model of the call to word transition. The model is embedded in a general conception of human social evolution with independent empirical support, but it also depends on some more specific assumptions about language and about the earlier forms of hominin communication. Given these assumptions, the paper can be no more than a working draft of a more complete theory.
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Notes
Our capacity to speak depends obviously depends on genetically-supported structural features of the mouth, tongue and larynx, together with very elaborate mechanisms of control (Fitch 2010). But it is not obvious that adaptations for vocal control evolved for language. Music is another possibility (Mithen 2009); so too are much simpler precursors to language.
There is a well-known phenomenon in sociolinguistics known as low middle class hyper-correction; failed lower middle class attempts to identify and adopt high prestige speech patterns (as in Barry Humphries’ “Excuse I”).
Such gestures are not innate, and show some variation from group to group (Whiten et al. 1999), though the “play face” signal of playful intent is innate.
Many animal calls are probably best interpreted as expressions of motivational and emotional states (Maynard Smith and Harper 2003).
This stimulus bound character of signalling is not intrinsic to Lewis-Skyrms models. In principle, the sender’s signal could specify some distant or future event. The response, likewise, could delayed in time and displaced in space from the signalling context. But in such cases, it is hard to see how a Lewis-Skyrms signalling equilibrium could emerge by associative learning. Association depends on immediacy.
As in models of cultural transmission which assume agents copy the most successful of the practices to which they are exposed.
Though once an innovation has become part of a local group’s repertoire, its use can become automatic and unreflective.
For example, if ambush hunting was an important technique, they would need to decide in advice not just the targets and the location of an ambush, but some agents would have to wait concealed while others drove the game towards the trap. Roles would need to be decided in advance too. However, much of this might be done through default patterns, so the communicative load might be quite light.
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Sterelny, K. Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words. Topoi 35, 271–282 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9284-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9284-1