The cultural individuation of human language capacity and the morphogenesis of basic argument-schemata
pp. 93-110
in: Alessandro Sarti, Federico Montanari, Francesco Galofaro (eds), Morphogenesis and individuation, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
Language capacity unites all existent human populations. Therefore its morphogenetic field must have originated with the species Homo sapiens (ca. 200,000 y BP). We assume that at the origin this field was only poorly expressed (via some protolanguage), but unfolded with the rise of human cultures (technologies, art, myth and other symbolic media). This development occurred in the last 100,000 y. In this context, Thom's criticism of evolutionary theory in Darwinian terms can be reconsidered. He accepts the Darwinian principles but adds the role of morphogenesis and individuation. This article sketches the morphogenesis of basic sentence (argument) structures applying results of morphodynamics and the individuation of linguistic tools in phonemics, lexicon and grammar.