The precedence of syntax in the rapid emergence of human language in evolution as defined by the integration hypothesis
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Miyagawa_The precedence.pdf
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Author(s)
Nóbrega, Vitor A.
Miyagawa, Shigeru
Date Issued
March 2015
Journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Publisher
Frontiers Research Foundation
Citation
Nóbrega, Vitor A., and Shigeru Miyagawa. “The Precedence of Syntax in the Rapid Emergence of Human Language in Evolution as Defined by the Integration Hypothesis.” Front. Psychol. 6 (March 18, 2015).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Our core hypothesis is that the emergence of human language arose very rapidly from the linking of two pre-adapted systems found elsewhere in the animal world—an expression system, found, for example, in birdsong, and a lexical system, suggestively found in non-human primate calls (Miyagawa et al., 2013, 2014). We challenge the view that language has undergone a series of gradual changes—or a single preliminary protolinguistic stage—before achieving its full character. We argue that a full-fledged combinatorial operation Merge triggered the integration of these two pre-adapted systems, giving rise to a fully developed language. This goes against the gradualist view that there existed a structureless, protolinguistic stage, in which a rudimentary proto-Merge operation generated internally flat words. It is argued that compounds in present-day language are a fossilized form of this prior stage, a point which we will question.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Global Languages
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00271
