Adaptationist and nativist positions on language origins
A critique
pp. 39-48
in: Jan Wind, Brunetto Chiarelli, Bernard Bichakjian, Alberto Nocentini, Abraham Jonker (eds), Language origin, Berlin, Springer, 1992Abstract
One cannot argue against some of the mechanisms underlying language being innately structured. The questions remain whether these mechanisms arose from: point mutations directly affecting cortical structure, changes correlated with shifts in developmental timing, and/or natural selection on non linguistic systems of behavior; and if such change(s) resulted in cognitive processes without precedent in other primates.The evolutionary scenarios for the emergence of language capacity suffer two major constraints: (i) natural selection acts upon individual variations already present in the population; and (ii) language capacity enables the expression of a system of behavior which cannot be generated by a single person. The "first speaker" would have no evolutionary advantage if his/her contemporaries were non-speaking — no one would understand. Whatever language capacity consists of, language itself could not emerge unless a whole community not only had the capacity for language but also a reason for using and developing language.As an alternative to the scenario of the evolution of a first speaker, a language "organ" or "apparatus," this author considers language as a system of cultural behavior predicated on a necessary biological underpinning insufficient in itself to generate language and speech. Thus, since the capacity for language does not, in and of itself, do anything, it could not have been subject to selection in the same way as "traditional" biological features (like breathing and locomotion). Nor is it necessary to believe that the many evolutionary changes underlying the human capacity for language emerged simply by genetic accident.