language origins

[Larry Trask]

Stanley Friesen writes:

[PCR]

>> If you believe that a scenario of 'language' developing in separated human
>> groups (hence unrelated except indirectly by the biological potential to
>> develop it) is preferable,  then tell me, if the original stock (presuming
>> you buy the genetic argument) was capable potentially of language, what
>> prevented that potential from being realized?

> The basic answer would be: they had not yet invented it.
> Consider: the original modern humans were also potentially capable of doing
> calculus, so one could ask why they didn't.  In this case the answer is
> obvious.  But is language really any less complex than calculus?

> Now, I, *personally* find this situation unlikely, but it is at least
> coherent, and thus cannot be ruled out a priori.

Well, maybe it can.

Language, I'd say, is a lot *more* complex than calculus.  But I don't think
degree of complexity is the issue.

The point is that our language faculty appears to be part of our biological
inheritance in a way that the ability to construct or use calculus is not.

All physically normal human infants in passably normal surroundings learn a
language.  Even in highly abnormal surroundings, they will do their best to
learn a language, and they will succeed if there's any significant
reinforcement at all.  They do this at an age when they can hardly do anything
else, and they go about it in a highly orderly and consistent way.

Inventing (or using) calculus is an achievement, comparable to inventing (or
using) ice skates, or boomerangs, or cars, or oboes.  Zillions of perfectly
healthy people go through their lives without ever achieving any of these
things.  I myself can drive a car, but I can't ice skate, throw a boomerang,
or play the oboe.  I learned to do calculus at university, but have since
forgotten how to do it.  And I doubt that I would have been capable of
inventing any of these things.  But I learned English normally in my infancy.

I think we learn a first language because our ancestors, at some point,
evolved a very specific biological proclivity to learn and use language.
I don't believe we have a specific and dedicated calculus faculty, or
ice-skating faculty, but I do believe we possess a dedicated language faculty.
And I believe language is a biological part of us in a way that calculus and
ice skating are not.  We didn't "invent"language in the way that we invented
my other examples: we evolved it.  It's just something that happened to us.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk