Language Origin: The Role of Animal Cognition

Abstract

Different traditions in research in linguistics and language origin differ in their assessment of language origin in relation to the prior evolved animal communication systems. It is argued in this paper that discontinuity does exist between language and animal communication. This does not make language a biological mystery because the origin of language is shown to be related to animal cognition. Language is cognitive communication based on propositions and concepts. Language differs from animal communication systems in this respect. The psychological competence for language is a two-part system: a language input module to encode the syntactic and semantic aspects of language; the pragmatic part of speech is processed in the central cognitive systems. In the beginning protolanguage was developing from the central cognitive systems which is assumed to have existed in the last common ancestor of hominids and apes. The language module is a special adaptation only developed in the hominids. Because language communication is altruistic it could only come into being in groups of reciprocal altruists. In general this restriction does not exists in relation to cognitive competence; it serves the fitness of the individual. In this way cognitive phenomena is more widespread throughout the living world than language; the latter depends on special social conditions (i.e. reciprocal altruism) to evolve.