The Evolution of Language Out of Pre-language (review)

Because contemporary formalist linguistics explicitly aligns itself with a scientific approach to the study of language, it is something of a continuing surprise to find contemporary scientists, with some frequency, aligning themselves with what look like functionalist theories of language. In particular, contemporary evolutionary theorists have developed an interesting series of arguments about the development of language that partake more deeply of sociolinguistics and pragmatics than formalist syntax. This volume returns the favor, putting the minds of some of today’s foremost functionalist linguists to work on biological and physical problems in the evolution of language, and offering some methodological and evidentiary support for functionalist theories in general.

As befits the fact that much of this thinking proceeds from his own work, the first paper in the volume is by Talmy Givón himself; and since the volume includes only a brief introduction, it has the effect of a statement of purpose. In ‘The visual information-processing system as an evolutionary precursor of human language’ (3–50), Givón argues that ‘the cognitive representation system that underlies human language has been recruited to language processing without major adjustments’ (39), a position that the author characterizes as resistant to what he calls ‘extreme emergentism’ (3) but which nevertheless strikes a main blow against the hallmark of innatism, namely the modularity of the language organ.

There are several other significant essays in this volume. Joan Bybee’s ‘Sequentiality as the basis of constituent structure’ (109–34) is a focused exploration of what the author has come to call ‘emergent constituency’ in which ‘constituents of the type proposed for generative grammar which are described by phrase structure trees do not exist. Instead, units of language (words or morphemes) are combined into chunks as a result of frequent repetition’ (130). Brian MacWhinney’s ‘The gradual emergence of language’ (233–64) critically examines several key concepts in physiological evolution and, like several other authors here, argues that language involves a wide range of what appear to be prelinguistic phenomena like bipedalism. Charles N. Li’s similarly focused ‘Missing links, issues and hypotheses in the evolutionary origin of language’ (83–108) also examines imitation and issues in neural development. Michael Tomasello’s ‘The emergence of grammar in early child language’ (309–28) is similarly noteworthy.

One persistent strand of research, present as well in some of the articles mentioned above, is the idea that even certain aspects of processing and grammar might be based on what are essentially nonlinguistic capabilities. ‘On the pre-linguistic origins of language processing rates’ (171–214), by Marjorie Barker and Givón, delivers a satisfyingly technical follow-up to the editor’s initial essay, reporting on language-processing experiments that test the ‘incredibly stable temporal rate of word and event-clause processing’ (178), tying it directly to the prelinguistic rate of visual object processing, a connection the authors consider a relatively inexplicable coincidence unless these capabilities are physically related in the brain. Along similar lines, ‘The clausal structure of linguistic and pre-linguistic behavior’ (215–32), by Gertraud Fenk-Oczlon and August Fenk, more generally ties perceptual capabilities to linguistic ones. Like other essays here, it poses significant challenges to many formalist theories of the evolution of language.