CLONEBEAR COOL-IDIOTKA,VD PC  wrote:

> How did we get language?
> 
> Why can't adults pick up a language with no effort?

There are two competing hypotheses - one is that we have an innate
"language acquisition device" that is a kind of cognitive module from
when we first evolved language. This enables infants to infer the
structure of an underdetermined syntax and grammar from adult examples,
but which once trained does not allow the later acquisition of another
language easily or as fully as those learned early. This is the
Chomsky-Pinker approach.

Another, and to my mind more satisfying, version is that we are
generally unspecialised at learning *anything*, and that our *languages*
are so structured as to be learnable by a "naive" brain; they have
become so because they evolved by a cultural selection process - those
that became too baroque for naive brains to learn either simplified or
became extinct. This case rests on neurological evidence, and the
difference to artificial languages (like maths) that are learned at the
ages after the natural languages are learned. This is the view put
forward by Terence Deacon.

The question why language evolved is answered by Deacon thus: apes and
primates in general have a symbolic capacity roughly equivalent to the
encephalisation quotient of their brain:body ratio. Primates have this
in a greater ratio than most mammals. But the human ratio is off the
primate scale. Deacon argues that we coevolved with languages; in effect
we evolved to adapt to communicating with each other. The book is _The
symbolic species_ and I recommend it.
-- 
John Wilkins
DARK IN HERE, ISN'T IT?
wilkins.id.au
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