harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (S. R. Harnad) (02/09/90)
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article to appear in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal that invites Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator on this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send email to: harnad@clarity.princeton.edu or harnad@pucc.bitnet or write to: BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08542 [tel: 609-921-7771] ____________________________________________________________________ Natural Language and Natural Selection Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abstract Many have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the byproduct of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with Darwinian theory: Grammar shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more time and genomic space to evolve than is available. We show that these arguments depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers a clear criterion for attributing a trait to natural selection: complex design for a function with no alternative processes to explain the complexity. Human language meets this criterion: Grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the claim that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, the child's acquisition of language should differ systematically from language evolution in the species; attempts to make analogies between them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process. Keywords: Language, Evolution, Language Acquisition, Natural Selection, Grammatical Theory, Biology of Language, Language Universals, Psycholinguistics, Origin of Language Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. The Role of Natural Selection in Evolutionary Theory 5 2.1. Nonselectionist Mechanisms of Evolutionary Change 6 2.2. Limitations on Nonselectionist Explanations 7 2.3. Two Issues that are Independent of Selectionism 13 2.3.1. Gradualism 13 2.3.2. Exaptation 14 3. Design in Language 16 3.1. An Argument for Design in Language 16 3.2. Is the Argument for Language Design a Just-So Story? 21 3.3. Language Design and Language Diversity 25 3.4. Language Design and Arbitrariness 28 3.4.1. Inherent Tradeoffs 29 3.4.2. Parity in Communications Protocols 31 3.4.3. Arbitrariness and the Relation Between Language Evolution 34 and Language Acquisition 4. Arguments for Language Being a Spandrel 37 4.1. The Mind as a Multipurpose Learning Device 37 4.2. Constraints on Possible Forms 38 5. The Process of Language Evolution 41 5.1. Genetic Variation 41 5.2. Intermediate Steps 43 5.2.1. Nonshared Innovations. 43 5.2.2. Categorical Rules. 45 5.2.3. Perturbations of Formal Grammars. 46 5.3. Reproductive Advantages of Better Grammars 48 5.3.1. Effects of small selective advantages. 49 5.3.2. Grammatical complexity and technology. 50 5.3.3. Grammatical complexity and social interactions. 51 5.3.4. Social use of language and evolutionary acceleration. 52 5.4. Phyletic Continuity 54 6. Conclusion 56 -- Stevan Harnad Department of Psychology Princeton University harnad@clarity.princeton.edu srh@flash.bellcore.com harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu harnad@pucc.bitnet (609)-921-7771