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The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?

Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch
Science • 22 Nov 2002 • Vol 298, Issue 5598 • pp. 1569-1579 • DOI: 10.1126/science.298.5598.1569
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Abstract

We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations).
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Volume 298 • Issue 5598 • 22 November 2002
Pages: 1569 - 1579

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Marc D. Hauser*
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
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Noam Chomsky
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
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W. Tecumseh Fitch
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
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To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]

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RE: Human Pleistocene littoral past helps explain speech evolution
Marc Verhaegen
  • Medical Doctor
  • Study Center for Anthropology, B-2580 Belgium.

Thanks for this, but recent insights in human evolution - more specifically our Pleistocene littoral evolution (e.g. Peter Rhys-Evans 2020 "The waterside ape" CRC Press) - help understand how human speech evolved: different biological preadaptations to spoken language find their origin in our waterside past, e.g. our large brain (cf DHA & other brain-specific nutrients in seafoods), voluntary breathing (breath-hold diving for shellfish etc.) & suction feeding of soft-slippery sea-foods. Suction feeding explains why humans (vs other hominoids) evolved hyoidal descent (tongue-bone descended in the throat), closed tooth-rows (with incisiform canine teeth) & a globular tongue perfectly fitting in our vaulted & smooth palate (without transverse ridges as in apes): all this allowed the pronunciation of consonants. Other, probably older, preadaptations to human speech are territorial songs & gibbon-like duetting (Darwin 1871) & vocal learning. Vocal learning, the ability to imitate sounds - as in many birds & bats & a number of Cetacea & Pinnipedia - is arguably required for locating or finding back (amid the foliage, on the beach, in the water ...) the offspring or parents. Indeed, independent lines of evidence (comparative, fossil, archeological, paleo-environmental, isotopic, nutritional & physiological) show that early-Pleistocene "archaic" Homo spread intercontinentally along the Indian Ocean shores (they even reached overseas islands such as Flores) where they regularly dived for littoral foods such as shell- and crayfish (e.g. J.Joordens et al.2015 "Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving" 2015 Nature 518:228-231) which are extremely rich in brain-specific nutrients, explaining Homo's brain enlargement (Stephen Cunnane & Kathlyn Stewart eds 2010 "Human Brain Evolution: The Influence of Freshwater and Marine Food Resources" Wiley-Blackwell). Shallow-diving for seafoods requires voluntary airway control, a prerequisite for spoken language. Seafood such as shellfish generally does not require biting & chewing, but stone tools & suction feeding. This finer control of the oral apparatus was arguably another biological preadaptation to human speech, esp. for the production of consonants (M.Verhaegen & S.Munro 2004 "Possible preadaptations to speech, a preliminary comparative approach" Hum.Evol.19:53-70).

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