A Social-Technological Model for the Evolution of Language [and Comments and Reply]

This paper develops a model for the evolution of language that is consistent with semanticist and pragmaticist interpretations of the forms and functions of language and the processes of language acquisition and language change. The proximate aspect of the model emphasizes the social contexts of language acquisition and language change; its adaptive aspect emphasizes the sociobiological concept of communication as social manipulation. Both aspects emphasize the relationship between subsistence technology and social behavior. Specifically, the model suggests that the stages of evolution of the lexical and syntactical systems roughly parallel the stages of their acquisition; that primitive lexical forms of reference and request first arose among the earliest hominids for food location and food sharing in relation to extractive foraging on embedded foods; that simple syntax first arose among Homo erectus for encoding regulatory rules and procedures concerning recruitment, aggregation, and coordination of workers at resource sites in relation to big-game hunting; and that complex syntax arose among H. sapiens for encoding procedures for predicting resource distributions and constitutive rules for classifying relationships and performing ritual transformations of statuses and relationships, e.g., kinship terminological systems and rules of exogamy in relation to subsistence specialization.

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