Language as a SPANDREL

Humans are the only species that has evolved an advanced system of communication between individuals. Whereas other species communicate through ritualized and repetitious songs, calls, or gestures, humans have developed linguistic systems that can express a literally infinite variety of separate and distinct thoughts. This incredible evolutionary leap is what distinguished humans from all other organisms on earth.

The origin of language in the human species has been the topic of scholarly discussions for several centuries. In spite of this, there is no consensus on its ultimate origin or age. One problem that makes the topic difficult to study is the lack of direct evidence. Consequently, scholars wishing to study the origins of language must draw inferences from other kinds of evidence such as the fossil record or from archaeological evidence, from contemporary language diversity, from studies of language acquisition, and from comparisons between human language and systems of communication existing among other animals, particularly other primates. It is generally agreed that the origins of language are closely tied to the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement about the implications and directionality of this connection.

This shortage of empirical evidence has led many scholars to regard the entire topic as unsuitable for serious study. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject, a prohibition which remained influential across much of the western world until late in the twentieth century. Today, there are numerous hypotheses about how, why, when, and where language might first have emerged. It might seem that there is hardly more agreement today than there was a hundred years ago, when Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection provoked a rash of armchair speculations on the topic. Since the early 1990s, however, a growing number of professional linguists, archaeologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and others have attempted to address with new methods what they are beginning to consider "the hardest problem in science".

But how did language evolve? Currently, there are two rival answers to this question: the first and more common explanation is that language was an adaptation of some sort. This approach is also known as “continuity theories” (representatives: Steven Pinker, Paul Bloom, Robin Dunbar, Merlin Donald) which are based on the idea that language is so complex that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form: it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among our primate ancestors. The second approach, known as a theory of a spandrelor “discontinuity theory” (representartives: Stephan Gould, Noam Chomsky, Derek Bickerton), presupposes that language is a spandrel – a non-adaptive element arising as a byproduct of other processes. Language is a unique trait so it cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans and must therefore have appeared fairly suddenly during the course of human evolution.

Language as a SPANDREL

Some scholars, Stephen Jay Gould most prominent among them, believe language to be the byproduct of other evolutionary processes, not a special adaptation that arose by ordinary natural selection acting on mutations. As Gould puts it, "Natural selection made the human brain big, but most of our mental properties and potentials may be spandrels - that is, nonadaptive side consequences of building a device with such structural complexity" In other words, our ancestors encountered environments which required the type of advanced reasoning only provided by a larger brain; however, language capability was not one of those functions for which the brain was selected. Instead, language is a result of exapting neural structures formerly used for other functions: "Many, if not most, universal behaviors [including language] are probably spandrels, often co-opted later in human history for important secondary functions”.

This view has been reinforced by the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, who argues that the brain's language capability cannot be explained in terms of natural selection. He attempts to explain the brain not through biology or engineering principles, but instead through the effects of physical laws. According to Chomsky, there may be unexpected emergent physical properties associated with the specific structure of the brain that explain language.

The central goal of Chomsky's work has been to formalise, with mathematical rigour and precision, the properties of a successful grammar, that is, of a device for producing all possible sentences, and no impossible sentences, of a particular language. Such a grammar, or syntax, is autonomous with respect to both the meaning of a sentence and the physical structures (sounds, script, manual signs) that convey it; it is a purely formal system for arranging words (or morphemes) into a pattern that a native speaker would judge to be grammatically correct, or at least acceptable. Chomsky has demonstrated that the logical structure of such a grammar is very much more complex and difficult to formulate than we might suppose, and that its descriptive predicates (syntactic categories, phonological classes) are not commensurate with those of any other known system in the world, or in the mind. Moreover, the underlying principle, or logic, of a syntactic rule system is not immediately given on the surface of the utterances that it determines, but must somehow be inferred from that surface – a task that may defeat even professional linguists and logicians. Yet every normal child learns its native language, without special guidance or reinforcement from adult companions, over the first few years of life, when other seemingly simpler analytic tasks are well beyond its reach. To account for this remarkable feat, Chomsky (1965, 1972) proposed an innate 'language acquisition device', including a schema of the 'universal grammar' (UG) to which, by hypothesis, every language must conform. The schema, a small set of principles, and of parameters that take different values in different languages, is highly restrictive, so that the child's search for the grammar of the language it is learning will not be impossibly long. Specifying the parameters of UG, and their values in different languages, both spoken and signed, remains an ongoing task for the generative enterprise. By placing language in the individual mind / brain rather than in the social group to which the individual belongs, Chomsky broke with the Saussurean and behaviouristic approaches that had prevailed in anglophone linguistics and psychology during the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, by regarding language as a property of mind (or reason) and a defining property of human nature (Chomsky 1966), Chomsky reopened language to psychological and evolutionary study. We have no reason to suppose that Chomsky actually intended to revive such studies. For although he views linguistics as a branch of psychology, and psychology as a branch of biology, he sees their goals as quite distinct. The task of the linguist is to describe the structure of language much as an anatomist might describe that of a biological organ such as the heart; indeed, Chomsky has conceptualised language as in essence the output of a unitary organ or 'module', hard-wired in the human brain. The complementary role of the psychologist is to elucidate language function and its development in the individual, while physiologists, neurologists and psychoneurologists chart its underlying structures and mechanisms. As for the evolutionary debate, Chomsky expressed his doubts concerning the likely role of natural selection in shaping the structure of language. This scepticism evidently stems, in part, from the belief (shared with many other linguists, eg Bickerton 1990 and Jackendoff 1994) that language is not so much a system of communication as it is a system for mental representation and thought. In any event, Chomsky has conspicuously left to others the social, psychological and biological issues that his work has raised. The first to take up the challenge was Eric Lenneberg (1967). His book (to which Chomsky contributed an appendix on 'The formal nature of language') is still among the most biologically sophisticated, thoughtful and stimulating introductions to the biology of language. Lenneberg saw language as a self-contained biological system, with characteristic perceptual, motoric and cognitive modes of action; for its evolution he proposed a discontinuity theory, intended to be compatible both with developmental biology and with the newly recognised unique structure of language.

Derek Bickerton’s view goes in accord with the assumption that language is not so much a system of communication as it is a system for mental representation and thought. It is a means for sorting and manipulating the information we gather throughout our waking life. Bickerton also challenged the question as to how and when this new representational system arose. Thus, according to Bickerton, the first step was taken by Homo erectus somewhere between 1.5 million and five hundred thousand years ago. This was the step from primate style vocalizing into 'protolanguage', a system of arbitrary vocal reference – vocal labels attached to a small number of preexisting concepts' (Bickerton 1990: 128).

Similarly, researches have demonstrated that chimpanzees (in captivity) use different "words" in reference to different foods. They recorded vocalizations that chimps made in reference, for example, to grapes, and then other chimps pointed at pictures of grapes when they heard the recorded sound. There is also an interesting research on the so-called “communication” between monkeys observed in the wild. They are known to make up to ten different vocalizations. Many of these are used to warn other members of the group about approaching predators. They include a "leopard call", a "snake call", and an "eagle call".Each call triggers a different defensive strategy in the monkeys that hear the call and scientists were able to elicit predictable responses from the monkeys using loudspeakers and prerecorded sounds. Other vocalizations may be used for identification. If an infant monkey calls, its mother turns toward it, but other vervet monkeys mothers turn instead toward that infant's mother to see what she will do.

The term “proto-language” according to Bickerton, is a primitive form of communication lacking:

· a fully developed syntax

· tense, aspect, auxiliary verbs, etc.

· a closed-class (i.e. non-lexical) vocabulary

That is, a stage in the evolution of language somewhere between great ape language and fully developed modern human language. Bickerton (2009) places the first emergence of such a proto-language with the earliest appearance of Homo.

Anatomical features such as the L-shaped vocal tract have been continuously evolving, as opposed to appearing suddenly. Hence it is most likely that Homo habilis and Homo erectus had some form of communication intermediate between that of modern humans and that of other primates.

Earlier human ancestors, such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus, would likely have possessed less developed forms of language, forms intermediate between the rudimentary communicative systems of, say, chimpanzees and modern human languages.

Other researchers were less willing to accept a gap in the evolutionary record. Indeed, it was apparently concern with the discontinuity implicit in the new Linguistics that prompted the New York Academy of Sciences in 1976 to sponsor a multidisciplinary, international conference entitled 'Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech'.

Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom broke the barrier between generative linguistics and language evolution with a widely discussed article entitled 'Natural language and natural selection' (Pinker and Bloom 1990). In this article, they portrayed the human language as a biological adaptation that could be explained in standard neo-Darwinian terms. The article situated language evolution for the first time as a legitimate topic within the natural science mainstream, prompting a debate that has continued to this day.

The two authors therefore by their own admission said 'virtually nothing' (Pinker and Bloom 1990: 765) about language origins. They were satisfied with having established language as a biological adaptation, its evolution falling within the remit of standard Darwinian theory. Pinker and Bloom dated language to some two to four million years ago, arguing that it allowed hominids to share memories, agree on joint plans and pool knowledge concerning, say, the whereabouts of food. Primatologist Robin Dunbar (1993, 1996) intervened with a substantially novel methodology and explanatory framework. In work conducted jointly with palaeontologist Leslie Aiello (Aiello and Dunbar 1993), he correlated language evolution with the fossil record for rapid neocortical expansion in Homo sapiens, dating key developments to between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. For the first time, this work specified concrete Darwinian selection pressures driving language evolution. The outcome was a model consistent with primatological theory and testable in the light of palaeontological and archaeological data.

Dunbar (1993) set out from the observation that primates maintain social bonds by manual grooming. Besides being energetically costly, this allows only one individual to be addressed at a time; it also occupies both hands, precluding other activities such as foraging or feeding. As group size in humans increased, multiplying the number of relationships each individual had to monitor, this method of servicing relationships became increasingly difficult to afford. According to Dunbar (1993), the cheaper method of 'vocal grooming' was the solution. Reliance on vocalisation not only freed the hands, allowing simultaneous foraging and other activities, but also enabled multiple partners to be 'groomed' at once.

For Dunbar, the switch from manual to vocal grooming began with the appearance of Homo erectus , around two million years ago. At this early stage, vocalisations were not meaningful in any linguistic sense but were experienced as intrinsically rewarding. Then from around four hundred thousand years ago, with the emergence of archaic Homo sapiens in Africa, 'vocalisations began to acquire meaning' (Dunbar 1996: 115). Once meaning had arrived, the human species possessed language. But it was not yet 'symbolic language'. It could enable gossip, but still fell short of allowing reference to 'abstract concepts' (Dunbar 1996: 116). Language in its modern sense – as a system for communicating abstract thought – emerged only later, in association with anatomically modern humans. According to Dunbar, this late refinement served novel functions connected with complex symbolic culture including ritual and religion.

For psychologist Merlin Donald (1991,1998) and for neuroscientist Terrence

Deacon (1997), by contrast, the question of how humans, given their nonsymbolic primate heritage, came to represent their knowledge in symbolic form is the central issue in the evolution of language. The emergence of words as carriers of symbolic reference – without which syntax would be neither possible nor necessary – is the threshold of language. Establishment of this basic speech system, with its high-speed phonetic machinery, specialised memory system and capacity for vocal imitation – all unique to humans – then becomes 'a necessary step in the evolution of human linguistic capacity' (Donald 1991:236; cf. Deacon 1997: ch. 8). What selective pressures drove the evolution of the speech system? Donald (1991) starts from the assumption that the modern human mind is a hybrid of its past embodiments. Donald finds evidence for a prelinguistic mode of communication in the gestures, facial expressions, pantomimes and inarticulate vocalisations to which modern humans may have recourse when deprived of speech. 'Mimesis' is Donald's term for this analog, largely iconic, mode of communication and thought. The mode requires a conscious, intentional control of emotionally expressive behaviours, including vocalisation, that is beyond the capacity of other primates. We are justified in regarding mimesis, like Bickerton's protolanguage, as a unitary mode of representation, peculiar to our species, not only because it emerges naturally, independent of and dissociable from language, in deaf and aphasic humans unable to speak, but also because it still forms the basis for expressive arts such as dance, theatre, pantomime and ritual display. The dissociability of mimesis from language also justifies the assumption that it evolved as an independent mode before language came into existence.

The mainstream view is that language is an adaptation, evolved in response to some selection pressure toward improved communication between humans. This explanation is associated with many speculative possibilities and proposals for the adaptive function of language, and some (such as Steven Pinker) postulate "mental modules" that compartmentalize linguistic functions.

There are many different possible "adaptationist" explanations for the evolution of language. For instance, perhaps there was a need for improved communication between hunters at some point in the history of Homo sapiens, and oral expressions were simply the optimal way to solve the problem. More plausibly (or at least more importantly), sharing information between individuals probably conferred an extremely major advantage: groups of humans with language, or even "proto-language", could share a wealth of information about local hunting conditions, food supplies, poisonous plants, or the weather. It would be extremely beneficial to the survival of all members of the tribe if only one had to encounter a poisonous plant, rather than each member having to rediscover the fact for himself!

It is also simple to imagine a series of "oral gestures", perhaps indicating the presence of an animal to another person by imitating the animal's cries. Steven Pinker suggests in his book The Language Instinct, "Perhaps a set of quasi-referential calls . . . came under the voluntary control of the cerebral cortex [which controls language], and came to be produced in combination for complicated events; the ability to analyze combinations of calls was then applied to the parts of each call" (p. 352).

Another possible source of selection pressure towards better linguistic abilities is the social group. Social interactions between people with widely divergent or conflicting interests "make formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition" (Ibid, p.368). Increasing cognitive ability could easily have focused on the improvement of language as well, since so many social interactions depend on effective persuasion.

There are numerous controversial discussions among scientists as to the language capabilities of early Homo (2.5 to 8 million years ago). Anatomically, some scholars believe features of bipedalism, which developed around 3.5. million years ago, would have brought changes to the skull allowing for a more L-shaped vocal tract. L-shape – the shape of the tract and a larynx positioned relatively low in the neck. There are necessary prerequisites for many of the sounds humans make, particularly vowels.^{[citation needed]} Other scholars believe that, based on the position of the larynx, not even Neanderthals had the anatomy necessary to produce the full range of sounds modern humans make. However, the archeological findings of the year 1989 dispelled this myth. The excavation of Neanderthal Kebara proved that Neanderthals may have been anatomically capable of producing sounds similar to modern humans. However, although Neanderthals may have been anatomically able to speak, Richard G. Klein in 2004 doubted that they possessed a fully modern language. He largely bases his doubts on the fossil record of archaic humans and their stone tool kit. Klein, who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the crude stone tool kit of archaic humans as impossible to break down into categories based on their function, and reports that Neanderthals seem to have had little concern for the final form of their tools. Klein argues that the Neanderthal brain may have not reached the level of complexity required for modern speech, even if the physical apparatus for speech production was well-developed. The issue of the Neanderthal's level of cultural and technological sophistication remains a controversial one.

Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record 195,000 years ago in Ethiopia. But while they were modern anatomically, the archaeological evidence available leaves little indication that they behaved any differently from the earlier Homo heidelbergensis. They retained the same Acheulean stone tools and hunted less efficiently than did modern humans of the Late Pleistocene. The transition to the more sophisticated Mousterian takes place only about 120,000 years ago, and is shared by both H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis.

The development of fully modern behavior in H. sapiens, not shared by H. neanderthalensis or any other variety of Homo, is dated to some 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.

The development of more sophisticated tools, for the first time constructed out of more than one material (e.g. bone or antler) and sortable into different categories of function (such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools), is often taken as proof for the presence of fully developed language, assumed to be necessary for the teaching of the processes of manufacture to offspring.

The greatest stepin language evolution would have been the progression from primitive, pidgin-like communication to a creole-like language with all the grammar and syntax of modern languages. Some scholars believe that this step could only have been accomplished with some biological change to the brain, such as a mutation. It has been suggested that a gene such as FOXP2 may have undergone a mutation allowing humans to communicate. However, recent genetic studies have shown that Neanderthals shared the same FOXP2 allele with H. sapiens. It hence does not have a mutation unique to H. sapiens. Instead, it indicates this genetic change predates the Neanderthal - H. sapiens split.

There is still considerable debate as to whether language developed gradually over thousands of years or whether it appeared suddenly.

The Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the primate brain also appear in the human brain, the first area being involved in many cognitive and perceptual tasks, the latter lending to language skills. The same circuits discussed in the primates' brain stem and limbic system control non-verbal sounds in humans (laughing, crying, etc.), which suggests that the human language center is a modification of neural circuits common to all primates. This modification and its skill for linguistic communication seem to be unique to humans, which implies that the language organ derived after the human lineage split from the primate lineage.

According to the Out of Africa hypothesis, around 50,000 years ago a group of humans left Africa and proceeded to inhabit the rest of the world, including Australia and the Americas, which had never been populated by archaic hominids. Some scientists, believe that Homo sapiens did not leave Africa before that, because they had not yet attained modern cognition and language, and consequently lacked the skills or the numbers required to migrate. However, given the fact that Homo erectus managed to leave the continent much earlier (without extensive use of language, sophisticated tools, nor anatomical modernity), the reasons why anatomically modern humans remained in Africa for such a long period remain unclear.

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