Abstract
The aim of this article is to provide an evolutionarily grounded explanation of central aspects of the structure of language. It begins with an account of the evolution of human causal reasoning. A comparison between humans and non-human primates suggests that human causal cognition is based on reasoning about the underlying forces that are involved in events, while other primates hardly understand external forces. This is illustrated by an analysis of the causal cognition required for early hominin tool use. Second, the thinking concerning forces in causation is used to motivate a model of human event cognition. A mental representation of an event contains two vectors representing a cause as well as a result but also entities such as agents, patients, instruments and locations. The fundamental connection between event representations and language is that declarative sentences express events (or states). The event structure also explains why sentences are constituted of noun phrases and verb phrases. Finally, the components of the event representation show up in language, where causes and effects are expressed by verbs, agents and patients by nouns (modified by adjectives), locations by prepositions, etc. Thus, the evolution of the complexity of mental event representations also provides insight into the evolution of the structure of language.
Highlights
Human languages show a great deal of variation, but there are features that seem to be universal
The analysis presented here dovetails with Smith [128] (p. 241), who argues that linguistic communication has the following benefits for cooperation: (1) Simplifies otherwise difficult coordination problems, especially those involving many agents and planning for future events; (2) Reduces the cost of enforcing adherence to collectively beneficial norms; (3) Enhances the efficiency of signals, including those which provide collective goods; (4) Facilitates the positive assortment of individuals who adhere to similar norms and conventions
I have argued that the evolution of causal cognition and event representations provides clues to the evolution of the complex structure of language
Summary
Human languages show a great deal of variation, but there are features that seem to be universal. As background to the evolution of causal cognition in hominins, I present a summary of some of the findings concerning the abilities of non-human primates to reason with causes This area goes back to Köhler [6], who, in his ground breaking experiments on chimpanzee planning, observed that apes had great difficulties in stacking boxes in order to be able to reach a banana that was hanging from the ceiling. Chimpanzees in other groups and regions cracked different nut types with hammerstones [32,33], but a single group do not use hammerstones to obtain several food sources This example illustrates how humans, in contrast to chimpanzees, reason more abstractly about the causal effects of applying tool-assisted forces. The ability to reason causally about detached forces—and not just actions, the human mind has evolved an extended capacity to reason and to plan that surpasses that of other primate species
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