The Language Evolution

The next chapter of Language Instinct is about how the language evolved. It sets forth questions answered in detail, through this part of the book. Pinker believes that language evolved gradually in what he calls "a sequence of intermediate forms" which were useful for its possessor's survival.

Who the first "grammar mutants" interacted with, What an intermediate form of language looks like, and how these intermediate language's evolution provided the survival means for the human being; are the three questions asked and answered by Pinker.

There are two possibilities for the answer to the first question:

1) The first men could have used their language instinct to communicate with the family members who inherited the same gene and instinct.

2) They could have talked with their neighbors who despite the lack of the "new fangled circuitry" understood them using the "overall intelligence". An example of the use of the mental ability and background knowledge to appreciate a language is when native speakers of English intuitively grasp the gist of the news on an Italian newspaper with the additional mercy of common words in both the languages.

The effort these neighbors took to decode the language of their cohabitants led to such ability being wired in their brains by the "natural selection".

The answer to the second question-the possible structure of an intermediate grammar-would be some kind of "grammar with intermediate complexity" in which for example"symbols would have a narrower range, rules would be less reliably applied or modules would have fewer rules". This language would look something like the"protolanguage of the chimps signing, pidgings, child language in the two-word stage, the language of immigrants and the unsuccessful partial language of Genie and other wolf-children learned after puberty".

Here, I came up with a question myself: If the intermediate language looks like the language of the immigrants and if the language evolves; does this mean that the spread of immigrants in a country and the use of their language is going to change or deteriorate the use of the native language of the country in which they live now? Or on another level is it possible that the desperate need to learn a second language for survival after the puberty change the "critical period" by "natural selection"? Later Pinker hints that living in the modern times and having everything needed for survival at hand, the humans have ceased to evolve by natural selection.

The author has found the way out of the third question by providing us with four reasons why the evolution of the human language is not as absurd as one might think:

1) We need to know that the small advantages will do for the natural selection to take place. For example a natural selection rule in a mouse that changes its size by one percent each generation will result in a mouse the size of an elephant by a few thousand generations. The author apparently fails to explain clearly how this works in the language evolution. Though, one might guess that a coined word or a change in a word order at a time would lead to what we see as language today.

2) Using the language to trade hard-won knowledge (biology, crafts, tools, ecology, animal and plants' behavior with kin and friends makes a big difference in conveying the "exact message" through more complex grammar. This conveyance of knowledge of the environment, tools, animals and so on serves as a fitness enhancer and therefor leads to better survival of the human race.

3) Using the language for "cooperative efforts for survival" like forming alliances and exchanging information and commitments could have led to its evolution. In Pinker words:"A cognitive arms race could propel a linguistic one." In other more clear words he explains: " There could easily have been a selection for any edge in the ability to frame an offer so that it appears to present maximal benefit and minimal cost to the negotiating partner and in the ability to see through such endeavors and to formulate attractive counter proposals."

4) According to the anthropologists the tribal chiefs were both "gifted orators" and "highly polygynous". They would have easily and effectively woven the language into the politics, economics, tech, family, sex and friendship which were the key roles in the "individual reproductive success.