28.702, Diss: Language Evolution as a Constraint on Conceptions of a Minimalist Language Faculty

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-702. Mon Feb 06 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.702, Diss: Language Evolution as a Constraint on Conceptions of a Minimalist Language Faculty

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Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2017 16:14:13
From: Andrew Feeney [andrew.feeney at northumbria.ac.uk]
Subject: Language Evolution as a Constraint on Conceptions of a Minimalist Language Faculty

 
Institution: Newcastle University 
Program: School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics (SELLL) 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2014 

Author: Andrew Feeney

Dissertation Title: Language Evolution as a Constraint on Conceptions of a
Minimalist Language Faculty 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                     Linguistic Theories


Dissertation Director(s):
Noel Burton-Roberts
Maggie Tallerman

Dissertation Abstract:

Language appears to be special. Well-rehearsed arguments that appeal to
aspects of language acquisition, psycholinguistic processing and linguistic
universals all suggest that language has certain properties that distinguish
it from other domain general capacities. The most widely discussed theory of
an innate, modular, domain specific language faculty is Chomskyan generative
grammar (CGG) in its various guises. However, an examination of the history
and development of CGG reveals a constant tension in the relationship of
syntax, phonology and semantics that has endured up to, and fatally
undermines, the latest manifestation of the theory: the Minimalist Program.

Evidence from language evolution can be deployed to arrive at a more coherent
understanding of the nature of the human faculty for language. I suggest that
all current theories can be classed on the basis of two binary distinctions:
firstly, that between nativist and non-nativist accounts, and secondly between
hypotheses that rely on a sudden explanation for the origins of language and
those that rely on a gradual, incremental picture. All four consequent
possibilities have serious flaws.

By scrutinising the extant cross-disciplinary data on the evolution of
hominins it becomes clear that there were two significant periods of rapid
evolutionary change, corresponding to stages of punctuated equilibrium. The
first of these occurred approximately two million years ago with the
speciation event of Homo, saw a doubling in the size, alongside some
reorganisation, of hominin brains, and resulted in the first irrefutable
evidence of cognitive behaviour that distinguishes the species from that of
our last common ancestor with chimpanzees. The second period began seven to
eight hundred thousand years ago, again involving reorganisation and growth of
the brain with associated behavioural innovations, and gave rise to modern
humans by at least two hundred thousand years ago.

I suggest that as a consequence of the first of these evolutionary
breakthroughs, the species Homo erectus was endowed with a proto-‘language of
thought’ (LoT), a development of the cognitive capacity evident in modern
chimpanzees, accompanied by a gestural, and then vocal, symbolic
protolanguage. The second breakthrough constituted a great leap involving the
emergence of advanced theory of mind and a fully recursive, creative LoT. I
propose that the theory outlined in the Representational Hypothesis (RH)
clarifies an understanding of the nature of language as having evolved to
represent externally this wholly internal, universal LoT, and it is the latter
which is the sole locus of syntax and semantics. By clearly distinguishing
between a phonological system for semiotic representation, and that which it
represents, a syntactico-semantic LoT, the RH offers a fully logical and
consistent understanding of the human faculty for language. Language may have
the appearance of domain specific properties, but this is entirely derived
from both the nature of that which it represents, and the natural constraints
of symbolic representation.




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