Abstract
This essay deals with the question of what a theory of embodied cognition can contribute to the origin of language. In the first part of the paper, I will delineate specific challenges that are involved in the attempt to explain the emergence of symbolic language and competence. To accomplish this, the focus will be on Grice’s theory of non-natural linguistic meaning whose evolutionary realization needs a thoroughgoing explanation. In the second part, the theory of direct perception and bodily forms of expression are introduced as significant elements of an embodied theory of language origination.The last part of the paper explicates forms of imitation and their phylo- and ontogenetic self-differentiation. I argue that mimetic capacities have a central function in explaining how the „language Rubicon“ could have been crossed. However, the explanatory power of this approach depends on its integration into a theory of direct perception and an expressivist theory of bodily actions.
