On emergent pre-language and language evolution and transcendent feedback from language production on cognition and emotion in early man

Arne Friemuth Petersen

pp. 449-464

in: Jan Wind, Brunetto Chiarelli, Bernard Bichakjian, Alberto Nocentini, Abraham Jonker (eds), Language origin, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

Rousseau is known for saying that words are necessary in order to establish the use of words. Condillac, it seems,was the first to see that language origin involves a similar paradox. Faced with this situation, I have expounded and elucidated Popper's hypothesis of a two-step origin of human language — which appears to meet this paradox very well — using evidence from ethological and psychological research. A situational analysis suggests that, on the one hand, spoken language originally resulted from playful improvisation or invention, based upon certain pre-adaptations for communication (proto-language codes) which early man shared in part with other higher primates. Human language, on the other hand, probably evolved further under the influence of a combined selection pressure deriving from certain interacting exosomatic (external) factors. This evolution may have been a consequence of the way in which Homo sapiens" use of language changed the impact of these factors.

Cited authors

Popper Karl

Rousseau Jean-Jacques