Symbol and Structure: A Comprehensive Framework for Language Evolution

While an interdisciplinary approach is essential for the study of language evolution, linguistics must be assigned a key role. Many hypotheses plausible in terms of other disciplines are not consistent with basic facts about language. An overall framework is proposed that would dissociate the symbolic element of language (words) from the structural element (syntax), since the two probably have distinct sources. Syntax, though poorly understood by many nonlinguists, is the likeliest Rubicon between ourselves and other species, but may not require quite so complex a neurological substrate as many have feared.

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