Language as communication device

A. Katz amnfn at WELL.COM
Tue Dec 3 09:18:24 UTC 2002


>Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 16:56:04 +0000
>From: Bill Croft <w.croft at MAN.AC.UK>

>      One must distinguish between the evolution of language
>and the evolution of languages. The former is the evolution
>of human cognition and social behavior that permitted the
>rise of modern human language. This is of course an
>instance of biological evolution, of human beings.

A major problem with this analysis is that Language is not
biological. The capacity to acquire and use a language -- any
language -- is entirely separate from the invention of Language.
Language is a communication device, much like a cellphone.

While a better understanding of the evolution of human beings
may tell us when we became biologically capable of exploiting
languages for communication, it tells us nothing about
when Language arose or how.

Our prehistoric ancestors could have used a cellphone, if someone
had given it to them and shown them how. Humans have not
biologically evolved as a species to the point that we are now
capable of "cellphone use". Early man and present day man had
about the same endowments. Most modern humans couldn't personally
produce cellphones or tell you what makes them work. The only
advantage they have over early man is that they happen to live in
a society where cellphones are available.

There is no evidence that Language among humans arose more than
once. (We don't know for sure that it didn't, either.) Just as
modern day cellphones, in all their varieties, were not developed
independently of each other, there's a very good possibility that
neither are human languages independent inventions.

If you grow up where a language is spoken, and you have the
biology of a normal human, you will pick it up.
But this does not imply that humans have a biological language
device. Neither does it imply that one necessarily has to be
human in order to use Language.

        --Aya Katz

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