36.427, Reviews: Reflections on language evolution: Houghton (2025)

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Subject: 36.427, Reviews: Reflections on language evolution: Houghton (2025)

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Date: 01-Feb-2025
From: Conor Houghton [conor.houghton at bristol.ac.uk]
Subject: Cognitive Science: Houghton (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/32-3531

Title: Reflections on language evolution
Subtitle: From minimalism to pluralism
Series Title: Conceptual Foundations of Language Science
Publication Year: 2021

Publisher: Language Science Press
           http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/142

Author(s): Cedric Boeckx

Reviewer: Conor Houghton

SUMMARY
Cedric Boeckx’s monograph Reflections on language evolution: From
minimalism to pluralism can be read as a useful reminder of the need
for more diversity in our approach to linguistic research. However,
its central thesis is more ambitious and controversial: it seeks to
reformulate the field by suggesting that linguistics should be
centered on the problem of how our language ability evolved. It also
suggests that this language ability is best studied as a collection of
individual skills and that the method best suited to this problem is
paleo-genetic evidence.
EVALUATION
Somewhere in our evolutionary history we started to use language.
Reflections on language evolution: From minimalism to pluralism [1]
identifies this as the central problem of linguistics. Moreover, in
Boeckx’s view, this problem is not about a single advance or a
particular skill which evolution stumbled upon, language is an
accumulation of many parts:
“I find it more useful to think of our language capacity as a
collection of (generic) cognitive biases put to the task of acquiring
and using “an art” as Darwin defined our language instinct.”
Each element, each grain in this heap of “cognitive biases”, has an
evolutionary story and each can be studied using its own subfield
while remaining directed towards the central question of language
evolution, referred to in the monograph as the Darwin Problem.
Largely, the subfield considered is paleogenetic-linguistics.
Paleogenetic-linguistics took off with the discovery of FOXP2, once
called the grammar gene though recent research has revealed it is not
specific to grammar. Boeckx describes the discovery as
“arguably one of the most significant achievements in the language
sciences in the past twenty five years”
and suggests that it demonstrates that genetic evidence can play a
significant role in solving the Darwin Problem.
It is interesting to consider the paleogenetic-linguistics of FOXP2 as
it shows both what is fascinating and, ultimately, what is frustrating
about this approach. FOXP2 is highly expressed in brain regions
critical for language [2]. The human version of the gene is shared
with Neanderthals, [3], whereas other primates have different
versions. This is interesting because the Neanderthals might have had
language. However, we are not really sure. Since Boeckx believes in
the heap theory of language, he is able to take an intermediate view
and has suggested that there is evidence for vocal learning in
Neanderthals, but not necessarily evidence for a full language [4].
The problem is that we are left unsure if FOXP2 is evidence for
Neanderthal linguistic ability, or that the evidence for vocal
learning in Neanderthals tells us something about FOXP2.
Generally, the debate about language evolution is a debate about the
nature of language. Chomsky has suggested that the evolution of
language was discrete, sudden, and serendipitous [5]. This arises from
Chomsky’s belief that language is rooted in a human capacity for
recursion emerging from a single, highly-advantageous mutation; what
we might call the monolith theory, in contrast to Boeckx’s heap
theory. The monolith theory leads to odd views on evolution: Chomsky
is skeptical of standard selectionist and gradualist evolutionary
models for language. His opposition to selectionism has been broadly
criticized, most famously in Pinker and Bloom [6]. The debate about
gradualism is more subtle. An adaptation can create its own landscape:
some changes can act like traversing a narrow ridge that leads to a
new set of steep slopes along which the species rapidly ascends. A
seemingly small change can open up new opportunities, including, in
the case of language, opportunities created by increased learning and
cooperation [7, 8]. If this is the case it renders the distinction
between the monolith and heap theories less distinct: language could
be a set of skills that accumulated rapidly following a single key
adaptation. Indeed, my own view is that our language ability
represents the unfurling of a single event: the internalization of
utterance into a tool for thought, as suggested in [9].
The difficulty is that the Darwin Problem is an historical question
and so much of the evidence is historical, relying on artefacts rather
than experimental study. Boeckx suggests that more direct,
experimental evidence can be found if we are willing to imagine a
linguistic equivalent of the recapitulation principle, known by the
slogan ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. We are usually scrupulous in
distinguishing the Darwin Problem from what could be called the
Schleicher Problem, the question of what rules govern the evolution of
the languages we speak. However, in Boeckx’s view, the two problems
are related and the evolution of languages from generation to
generation recapitulates the evolution of our language ability: the
Schleicher Problem restates the Darwin Problem! In practice, the
approach Boeckx has in mind is the pioneering work by the language
evolution group in Edinburgh. In their experiments, languages are
evolved in the laboratory by asking participants to communicate using
made-up words, they then pass on the makeshift languages to a new set
of participants and this is repeated, creating a kind of
generation-to-generation evolution of language [10, 11].
If we accept the heap theory, these laboratory-evolved languages may
exploit the individual elements of evolution in turn, recapitulating
evolution. However, while participant-based iterated-learning
experiments do elegantly tease apart different aspects of language, it
will be difficult to integrate insights from iterated learning with
paleo-genetics because it seems difficult to decide if elements of
language identified through participant studies correspond directly to
specific interpretable genetic changes discovered by comparisons
between our genes and those of other hominins.
There is a broader challenge. When we study an emergent phenomenon it
is common to equate importance with a hierarchy of causality; to
assume that since genetics contains the template for the brain and the
brain creates language, then genetics must be the best level for the
study of language. However, the most accessible and explanatory
structure in an emergent phenomenon can arise at any level and, while
it is tempting to privilege genetics because it is so low in the
hierarchy, it is going to be extremely difficult to answer questions
about language from the perspective of genetics because there are so
many steps in between. Boeckx frames the issue differently. By
centering the Darwin Problem and defining linguistics as the study of
the evolutionary history of language, he suggests that paleo-genetic
evidence is among the only concrete evidence available. In this view,
emphasizing genetics does not reflect a bias toward the lowest scale
of inquiry; it is a way to match the method to the subject. Thus,
first: linguistics is the study of evolution and, second: evolution is
best studied using genetics.
Paleogenetic-linguistics is without doubt a valuable subdiscipline in
linguistics; the question is whether the Darwin Problem and, by
association, paleogenetic-linguistics, should be the core
preoccupation of linguistics. Since the Chomskyan revolution
linguistics has been centered on uncovering the abstract structures of
language. In Chomsky’s original formulation, language is the
expression of an innate, biologically-driven predisposition in the
brain to recognize and generate particular syntactic forms [12, 13].
This innate expectation allows us to learn language as children and
means that language has a universal structure.
We are still, in reality, untangling Chomsky’s radical reformulation
of linguistics. This book is a brave attempt to perform this task in a
radical manner by proposing we move on and reinvent the mission and
methods of linguistics: by proposing the Darwin Problem as the central
concern of linguistics, by asserting that language is an accumulation
of skills, and by promoting paleo-genetics as the pre-eminent tool of
the field. This seems premature. The questions posed by the Chomskyan
revolution remain unresolved, either positively or negatively. The
unanswered questions include the existence of a language acquisition
device, the relationship that this putative device has to universal
properties of language, the arbitrariness of these properties and the
utility of trying to formalize them using a generative grammar. While
some of the original ideas may no longer be as useful as they once
were, the insight that identified language structure, universal
properties, and language acquisition as the key preoccupations of
linguistics remains important.
In fact, Boeckx seems to object to the wrong part of Chomskyan
linguistics. He suggests that the Chomskyan programme has succeeded in
describing language through formal grammars, referring to this as an
“underappreciated consensus”, while rejecting the Chomskyan focus on
language as the subject of linguistics. We are still unsure how to
formulate language to match our internal processing. Transformational
grammars are an elegant way to study formal systems like computer code
where multiple levels of recursion are common and the rules governing
recursion must be strictly enforced. However, they are an inefficient
and unparsimonious approach to human language in the everyday
performance of communication. For example, they require multiple
caveats and a duplication of categories to capture the rules about
agreement that languages seem to carelessly add to their structure.
While it is possible, though fiddly, to write the grammars of real
languages as transformational grammars, this has not revealed a single
universal transformational grammar. Such a universal grammar would
need to specify, through a clear set of principled adjustments, all
the grammars found in human languages while excluding grammars that
are unattested.
The failure to find a universal transformational grammar led to the
minimalist programme. This retains the focus on recursion while being
silent on other aspects of language structure. It is exciting in its
clarity but seems insufficient. Priming a child to use MERGE does not
seem enough to constitute a language acquisition device: a minimal
grammar does not appear a plausible key to the rapid and compulsive
learning of language by children.
Since this monograph was published, there has been a sudden advance in
the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) offering a new
opportunity to explore models of language [14]. Despite significant
differences between brain and machine, LLMs demonstrate the power of
statistical models operating on complex hierarchical representations
of words and meaning, suggesting that this might also form at least a
part of how the brain processes language. LLMs also demonstrate the
need for a language acquisition device. Lacking the relevant biases,
these algorithms require vast corpora of examples, far exceeding the
exposure of infants to language during learning.
In summarizing Reflections on Language Evolution: From Minimalism to
Pluralism, this review has oversimplified Boeckx’s more nuanced
arguments and in an effort to give a clear picture of the book’s
message I have also exaggerated its vehemence. Boeckx advocates for
elevating the Darwin Problem within linguistics but he does not
dismiss other objectives. However, it is useful to take his
proposition at face value and ask how we should respond to the complex
legacy of the Chomskyan revolution, how we should react to the
remarkable advance in paleo-genetics and in machine learning, and how
we should define the goals, methods and meaning of linguistics. While
linguistics seems to be prone to a 70-year itch, a periodic need to
radically reinvent itself, a reformulation away from a preoccupation
with language itself does not seem to be required while the nature,
and not just the origin, of our language ability is still an open
question.
An expanded version of this review is available at
doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5vdbg
REFERENCES
[1] Cedric Boeckx. Reflections on Language Evolution: From Minimalism
to Pluralism. Language Science Press, 2021.
[2] Cedric Boeckx. “The shape of the human language-ready brain”.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2014, 5, 282.
[3] Wolfgang Enard et al. “Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene
involved in speech and language”. Nature, 2002, 418(6900), 869–872.
[4] Pedro Tiago Martins, Maties Mari, and Cedric Boeckx. “SRGAP2 and
the gradual evolution of the modern human language faculty”. Journal
of Language Evolution, 2018, 3(1), 67–78.
[5] Noam Chomsky. Language and Mind. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
[6] Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom. “Natural language and natural
selection”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1990, 13(4), 707–727.
[7] Geoffrey E. Hinton and Steven J. Nowlan. “How learning can guide
evolution”. Complex Systems, 1987, 1(3), 495–502.
[8] Conor Houghton. “Cooperation as well as learning: A commentary on
‘How learning can guide evolution’ by Hinton and Nowlan”. arXiv, 2024,
arXiv:2409.15609.
[9] Jack Bunyan, Seth Bullock, and Conor Houghton. “An iterated
learning model of language change that mixes supervised and
unsupervised learning”. arXiv, 2024, arXiv:2405.20818.
[10] Simon Kirby. “Spontaneous evolution of linguistic structure: An
iterated learning model of the emergence of regularity and
irregularity”. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2001,
5(2), 102–110.
[11] Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith, and Henry Brighton. “Iterated learning:
A framework for the emergence of language”. Artificial Life, 2003,
9(4), 371–386.
[12] Noam Chomsky. Syntactic Structures. Mouton de Gruyter, 1957.
[13] Noam Chomsky. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, 1965.
[14] Conor Houghton, Nina Kazanina, and Priyanka Sukumaran. “Beyond
the limitations of any imaginable mechanism: Large language models and
psycholinguistics”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2023, 46, e395.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Conor Houghton is a computational cognitive scientist with a
particular interest in linguistics, neurolinguistics and artificial
intelligence; he is a member of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory in
Bristol University and has recently been working on simple agent
models of language change.



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