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Contra Wilkins & Wakefield, we argue that an evolutionarily inspired approach to language must consider different facets of language (i.e., more than syntax and semantics), and must explore the possibility of nonhuman precursors. Several examples are discussed, illustrating the power of the comparative approach in illuminating our understanding of language evolution. |
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Contra Wilkins & Wakefield, we argue that an evolutionarily inspired approach to language must consider different facets of language (i.e., more than syntax and semantics), and must explore the possibility of nonhuman precursors. Several examples are discussed, illustrating the power of the comparative approach in illuminating our understanding of language evolution. |
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Wilkins & Wakefield's intriguing model of language evolution is deficient in evidence of human uniqueness in metaphorical matching, amodal representation, reference, conceptual structure, hierarchical organization, linguistic comprehension, sign use, laterality, and handedness. Primates show communicative reference, laterality, and handedness, and apes in particular show hierarchical organization, conceptual structure, cross-modal abilities, sign use, and displaced reference. |
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Representation must be prior to communication in evolution. Wilkins & Wakefield's target article gives the impression that communicative pressures play a secondary role. We suggest that their evolutionary precursor is compatible with protolanguage rather than language itself. The difference between these two communicative systems should not be underestimated: only the former can be trivially reappropriated from a representational system. |
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ProbablyHomo habilisis two species not one; similarly for Pan troglodytes. Although amenable to training, in naturePan paniscusmay be a “specialized insular dwarf.” Language is uniquely human, but symbolic behavior and intelligence are widespread among animals with little respect for phylogenetic closeness toHomo sapiens. |
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The belief that syntax is an innate, autonomous, species-specific module is highly questionable. Syntax demonstrates the mosaic nature of evolutionary change, in that it made use of (and led to the enhancement of) numerous preexisting neurocognitive features. It is best understood as an emergent characteristic of the explosion of semantic complexity that occurred during hominid evolution. |
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Müller misconstrues autonomy to mean strict locality of brain function, something quite different from the functional autonomy that linguists claim. Similarly, he misperceives the interaction of learned and innate components hypothesized in current generative models. Evidence from sign languages, Creole languages, and neurological studies of rare forms of aphasia also argues against his conclusions. |
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This commentary confronts one of the central tenets advanced in Wilkins & Wakefield's target article: By adopting a very narrow perspective on language, the authors have effectively limited discussion of earlier linguistic capabilities thought to be at least facilitative of, if not prerequisite to language defined as a An alternative conceptualization for describing semiogenesis is offered. |
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This target article presents a plausible evolutionary scenario for the emergence of the neural preconditions for language in the hominid lineage. In pleistocene primate lineages there was a paired evolutionary expansion of frontal and parietal neocortex (through certain well-documented adaptive changes associated with manipulative behaviors) resulting, in ancestral hominids, in an incipient Broca's region and in a configurationally unique junction of the parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes of the brain (the POT). On our view, the development of the POT in (...) |
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In this thesis I present a new paradigm in human evolutionary theory: the relevance of track-ways reading (TWR) to the evolution of human cognition, culture and communication. Evidence is presented that strongly indicates hominins were exploiting conspecific track-ways 4 million years ago. For a non-olfactory ape that was a specialized forager in open, featureless wetland environments, they were the only viable natural signs to exploit for safety, orienteering, and recognizable social markers. Due to the unique cognitive demands of reading track-ways, (...) |
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Our target article argued that a genetically specified Universal Grammar (UG), capturing arbitrary properties of languages, is not tenable on evolutionary grounds, and that the close fit between language and language learners arises because language is shaped by the brain, rather than the reverse. Few commentaries defend a genetically specified UG. Some commentators argue that we underestimate the importance of processes of cultural transmission; some propose additional cognitive and brain mechanisms that may constrain language and perhaps differentiate humans from nonhuman (...) |
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It is widely assumed that human learning and the structure of human languages are intimately related. This relationship is frequently suggested to derive from a language-specific biological endowment, which encodes universal, but communicatively arbitrary, principles of language structure (a Universal Grammar or UG). How might such a UG have evolved? We argue that UG could not have arisen either by biological adaptation or non-adaptationist genetic processes, resulting in a logical problem of language evolution. Specifically, as the processes of language change (...) |
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Descartes argued that productivity, namely our ability to generate an unlimited number of new thoughts or ideas from previous ones, derives from a single undividable source in the human soul. Cognitive scientists, in contrast, have viewed productivity as a modular phenomenon. According to this latter view, syntactic, semantic, musical or visual productivity emerges each from their own generative engines in the human brain. Recent evidence has, however, led some authors to revitalize the Cartesian theory. According to this view, a single (...) |
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The species-specific organizational property of speech is a continual mouth open-close alternation, the two phases of which are subject to continual articulatory modulation. The cycle constitutes the syllable, and the open and closed phases are segments framescontent displays that are prominent in many nonhuman primates. The new role of Broca's area and its surround in human vocal communication may have derived from its evolutionary history as the main cortical center for the control of ingestive processes. The frame and content components (...) |
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Schizophrenia is a worldwide, prevalent disorder with a multifactorial but highly genetic aetiology. A constant prevalence rate in the face of reduced fecundity has caused some to argue that an evolutionary advantage exists in unaffected relatives. Here, I critique this adaptationist approach, and review – and find wanting – Crow's “speciation” hypothesis. In keeping with available biological and psychological evidence, I propose an alternative theory of the origins of this disorder. Schizophrenia is a disorder of the social brain, and it (...) |
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Contrary to Müller's claims, and in support of modular theories, genetic factors play a substantial and significant role in language. The finding that some children with specific language impairment (SLI) have nonlinguistic impairments may reflect improper diagnosis of SLI or impairments that are secondary to linguistic impairments. Thus, such findings do not argue against the modularity thesis. The lexical/functional distinction appears to be innate and specifically linguistic and could be instantiated in either symbolic or connectionist systems. |
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Müller's goal of bringing neuroscience to bear on controversies in linguistics is laudable. However, some of his specific proposals about innateness and autonomy are misguided. Recent studies on the neurobiology of regular and irregular inflectional morphology indicate that these two linguistic processes are subserved by anatomically and physiologically distinct neural subsystems, whose functional organization is likely to be under direct genetic control rather than assembled by strictly epigenetic factors. |
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Group size is a function of relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. Extrapolation from this regression equation yields a predicted group size for modern humans very similar to that of certain hunter-gatherer and traditional horticulturalist societies. Groups of similar size are also found in other large-scale forms of contemporary and historical society. Among primates, the cohesion of groups is maintained by social grooming; the time devoted to social grooming is linearly related to group size among the Old World monkeys and (...) |
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In the generative tradition, the language faculty has been shrinking—perhaps to include only the mechanism of recursion. This paper argues that even this view of the language faculty is too expansive. We first argue that a language faculty is difficult to reconcile with evolutionary considerations. We then focus on recursion as a detailed case study, arguing that our ability to process recursive structure does not rely on recursion as a property of the grammar, but instead emerges gradually by piggybacking on (...) |
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Wilkins & Wakefield fall short of solving the language origin puzzle because they underestimate the cognitive and linguistic capacities of great apes. A focus on ape capacities leads to the recognition of varied levels of cognition and language and to a gradualistic model of language emergence in which early hominid language skills exceed those of the apes but fall far short of those of modern humans or later fossil hominid groups. |
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Understanding how conceptual structures inform stone tool production and use would help us resolve the issue of a pongid-hominid dichotomy in brain organisation and cognitive ability. Evidence from ideational apraxia suggests that the planning of linguistic and manipulative behaviours is not colocalized in homologous circuits. An alternative account in terms of the evolutionary expansion of the whole prefrontal-premotor area may be more plausible. |
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We agree with Müller's epigenetic view of evolution and ontogeny and applaud his multilevel perspective. With him, we stress the importance in ontogeny of progressive specialisation rather than prewired structures. However, we argue that he slips from “speech” to “language” and that, in seeking homologies, these two levels need to be kept separate in the analysis of evolution and ontogeny. |
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Evidence is presented from a polyglot savant to suggest that double dissociations between linguistic and nonverbal abilities are more important than Müller's target article implies. It is also argued that the special nature of syntax makes its assimilation to other aspects of language or to nonhuman communication systems radically implausible. |
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The synthetic position adopted by Müller is weakened by a large number of overinterpretations and misrepresentations, together with a caricatured view of innateness and modularity. |
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Because Müiller fails to distinguish between two senses of the term “autonomy,” there is a danger that his results will be misinterpreted by both linguists and neuroscientists. Although he may very well have been successful in refuting one sense of autonomy, he may actually have helped to provide an explanation for the correctness of autonomy in its other sense. |
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I enlarge on the theme that the brain mechanisms required for languageand other aspects of the human mind evolved through selective changes in the regulatory genes governing growth. Extension of the period of postnatal growth increases the role of the environment in structuring the brain, and spatiotemporal programming (heterochrony) ofgrowth might explain hierarchical representation, hemispheric specialization, and perhaps sex differences. |
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This response clarifies the nature of reappropriation and the definition of language. It explicates the relationship between neural systems and language and between homology and evolutionary gradualism. Through a review of ape capacities in the realms of language and tool use, it distinguishes human language acquisition from nonhuman learning. Finally, it suggests the appropriate sorts of evidence on which to base further evolutionary arguments relevant to the origins of language. |
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Fundamental to spatial knowledge in all species are the representations underlying object recognition, object search, and navigation through space. But what sets humans apart from other species is our ability to express spatial experience through language. This target article explores the language ofobjectsandplaces, asking what geometric properties are preserved in the representations underlying object nouns and spatial prepositions in English. Evidence from these two aspects of language suggests there are significant differences in the geometric richness with which objects and places (...) |
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Müller's review of the neuroscientific evidence undermines nativist claims for autonomous syntax and the argument from the poverty of the stimulus. Generativists will appeal to data from language acquisition, but here too there is growing evidence against the nativist position. Epigenetic naturalism, the developmental alternative to nativism, can be extended to epigenetic socionaturalism, acknowledging the importance of sociocultural processes in language and cognitive development. |
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Müller attempts to downplay cases of dissociation between language and cognition as evidence against the modularity of language. We review cases of associations between verbal and nonverbal abilities as further evidence against the notion of language as an autonomous subsystem. We also point out a discrepancy between his proposal of homologies between nonhuman primates' communication and human language and recent proposals on the evolution of language. |
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This commentary criticizes Wilkins & Wakefield's thesis that the neurological precursors of language provide a cognitive Rubicon to linguistically divide human from nonhuman primates. A causal model of their theory is presented, followed by a discussion of the relationship between brain expansion and tool use, Broca's area and the parietaloccipital-temporal junction (POT). |
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