Abstract
In Chapter 6 of Biological Foundations of Language, Lenneberg argues against continuity theories of language evolution, which claim that language evolved from simpler communication systems. Although Lenneberg was pessimistic about even discontinuity theories explaining how language evolved, discontinuity has become significant in the Minimalist program, which posits that our species’ acquisition of Merge was the key discontinuity that made language possible. On the basis of a unified description of natural communication systems, I show that language is indeed based upon a cognitive discontinuity, which is moreover specific to linguistic ability. However, I argue that even Minimalist theories must recognise this discontinuity as the sensorimotor interface with syntax, rather than syntax itself. This ultimately supports the view that syntactic structures are structures of thought, but taking this claim seriously means reimagining how syntax relates to semantics and morphology, as the traditional ‘lexical item’ is no longer a tenable primitive of generative theory.
Highlights
One thing that makes language so fascinating—and its origins so difficult to pin down—is that it is unprecedented in evolutionary history
As Lenneberg noted, ‘continuity’ has been used opportunistically for every kind of cross-species similarity, no matter whether there is any underlying connection, such as a shared genetics. This lax equivalence of continuity with similarity effectively means that any trait we identify as similar to any other is a continuity, while any trait we identify as unique to one species is a discontinuity
The major claim of continuity theories is that the human capacity to map between utterances and ideas has homologues in other living species, so it has a continuous inheritance extending further back than the first hominins
Summary
One thing that makes language so fascinating—and its origins so difficult to pin down—is that it is unprecedented in evolutionary history. I argue that, this human tapestry was woven, a sensorimotor interface with syntactically structured thought is a core linguistic ability that is unique to humans, so the cognitive basis of language must have originated within our lineage during the past six million years (the time of our last common ancestor with chimpanzees; see Patterson et al 2006) Theories like this one, which claim that there is no evolutionary precedent for language cognition, are often taken by their critics as claiming that language was something that came from nothing (e.g., Deacon 2003, Lieberman 2015): Some uniquely human capacity, whatever that is, must have been bolted onto our biology by sheer good fortune, rather than having developed from it by any ordinary means like adaptive selection.
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