abstract

Currently there is wide agreement that the origins of language are to be sought in primate social intelligence, rather than in foraging, tool-making and the like. This is probably correct for the syntactic structure that gave us true language (Calvin and Bickerton 1999) but unlikely for the protolanguage that preceded it. Several independent lines of argument support this conclusion:

1. Selective uniqueness: Only humans among primates developed language. This suggests that the original impetus towards language came from a selective pressure unique to the hominid line, rather than from the highly developed social intelligence that characterizes all advanced primates.

2. Absence of complexity: In response to (1) it is sometimes claimed that growing complexity in hominid social life selected for language. But (a) primate social life is already complex (b) there is no independent evidence that early hominid social life was more complex than that of chimps or bonobos (c) any higher degree of complexity in contemporary social life results from the addition of language to typical primate relations.

3. Hominid ecology: With few if any serious predators and locally-concentrated, readily-available, year-round food supplies, primates and modern humans have abundant time for developing social life. Early hominids did not: they faced formidable predation and utilized sparse, diverse, scattered and seasonal food sources.

4. Initial functionality: For any trait to fix, it has to be functionally effective from the outset. Before language can be used socially, it must have reached a certain level of complexity.

5. Cheapness of tokens: Words are cheap, therefore intrinsically unreliable if first used in social contexts where deception and manipulation are the norm.

Initially at least they would require validation through (a) trust (use in contexts where co-operation rather than competition was called for) (b) validation (use in contexts where their veracity–or otherwise–could be readily determined),

If protolanguage emerged in co-ordinating group foraging over large day-ranges and/or coping with predation, no problems arise. The selective pressure would be unique to hominids. No growing social complexity would be required. Strategies of survival would have bulked larger in hominid life than among other primates. Single-word tokens of warning or indications of food-source nature/location would have paid off from the start. The co-operative contexts of finding food and escaping predators would have generated trust, and practical proofs (finding food, escaping predators) would have quickly distinguished genuine from fake messages.

 Conference site: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/