Against linguistic Cartesianism: Toward a naturalistic model of human language origins and functioning

Abstract

In spite of the fact that most models of language in cognitive science are naturalistic, many authors are skeptical of Darwinism, especially the idea that language may be an evolutionary adaptation. There is a conceptual obstacle at the basis of this skepticism: the connection with Cartesian tradition. To propose a genuinely naturalistic perspective, the models of language inspired by Cartesianism must give way to those tied to the Darwinian perspective. Hence, we propose a model of language origins and functioning based on two hypotheses: (a) the origin of human language is interpretable in reference to the grounding of language in context; (b) the capacities that ensure this grounding are connected to the motor foundation of human communication.