The Meaning of Duality of Patterning and its Importance in Language Evolution

Developing ideas discussed in Pulleyblank 1983, I argue that duality of patterning characteristic of all human spoken languages differs crucially in kind and not merely in degree, or differs to such a degree as to amount to a difference in kind, from that which can be found in other sign systems, namely those that are not in some way derivative from spoken language, such as spontaneously developed systems of manual signs or non-phonetically based pictograms. Furthermore, the arbitrariness of the relationship between symbol and referent that is made possible by duality of patterning is what gives human language its unlimited potential as a tool for conceptualizing the world. This is not the whole story in the evolution of human mental capacities but it was probably this new potential more than anything else that was responsible for the exponential cultural growth that began in the Upper Palaeolithic.