| abstract:
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Linguists must deal with the study of language origin from the perspective of the nature of language itself. What is it about language that might inform us about its possible genesis? The most serious problem with most structural approaches to language, particularly those within the structuralist and generative traditions, is that they have tended to view the language capacity as a single monolithic whole. This monolithic view stands in the way of the gradualist perspective of language evolution that is required if we bring the origin of language in line with the genesis of other human capacities, both cognitive and more generally neurological.
A more promising approach takes the modular organization of the language capacity as its starting point. In human language, (at least) four essentially different modules intersect: (a) the structure-building and -processing capacity (syntax), (b) the sign forming and using capacity (semiotics), (c) the capacity to engage in sustained exchange of information (interaction), and (d) the capacity to form complex representations of information (cognition). This claim of four different interacting modules remains empty unless we manage to isolate the formal properties of these modules. These include:
| a. | syntax: | endocentricity, `movement' |
| b. | semiotics: | distinctiveness, transparency, elementarity, analogy |
| c. | interaction: | sequentiality, cohesion |
| d. | cognition: | embeddedness, recursion, opposition, displacement |
Only the first module is specific to language. The other three modules play a role in many different aspects of human behaviour.
- A. Two crucial features of language are part of the module of syntax. These are not found outside of language: endocentricity plays a role in sentence grammar (through X-bar theory), in word formation (headedness), and in phonology (e.g. in syllable structure). The property sometimes confusingly labelled displacement (by Chomsky) I will term `movement' here (without any of the derivational claims often associated with this term): the fact that in language elements do not always appear in the place in the sequence where they are interpreted (where do you live < you live what place).
- B. The module of semiotics contributes a number of properties to language; these principles or properties are however also found in non-linguistic semiotic systems. The first principle is that of distinctiveness: lexical elements must be sufficiently distinctive to contrast with other elements. A second principle is transparency: new lexical elements ideally are transparently derived from existing elements. A third principle, elementarity, refers to the requirement that a lexical element ideally functions as a coherent whole, as an atom which can be combined with other elements. This principle is often referred to as the lexical integrity principle. Fourth, the principle of analogy, which causes new forms to be built parallel to already existing forms. The principle of analogy produces lexical subsystems characterized by paradigmaticity.
- C. The human interaction capacities contribute several crucial properties to language. However, these are also found outside of language. Sequentiality is a central property of interaction, both linguistic and non-linguistic. Through a sequential patterning information is structured and made processable. Furthermore, these sequences are marked by cohesion in the way elements are linked: interaction systems contain a number of cross-referencing devices to maintain the information structure throughout the sequence.
- D. Finally, properties of our general cognition play a central role in language as well: first, there is embeddedness, through which one cognitive unit is part of another one, and structures with internal hierarchy emerge. Specifically the embedded units can be characterized by recursion, through which units of the same time can embedded in one another. Our cognitive systems function in terms of contrasts or opposition between different feature specifications. Finally, there is displacement: cognitive structures exist independently of immediate experience.
What we now consider to be the set of the unique design features of human language actually is the result of the complex interaction between properties of entirely separate cognitive modules: syntax, semiotics, interaction, cognition. In human evolution these modules with their properties developed independently from one another, allowing a gradualist account.
This modular view of the language system has another crucial property: it allows us to account for the fact of language diversity. Why is there diversity at all, and what are its limits? This question is less interesting perhaps in a purely culturalist or semiotic approach to language, in which there is no claim made for a biologically conditioned human language capacity. However, when we view language from a biological perspective, the diversity encountered is a bit of a mystery. Why don't human languages resemble each other much more than they appear to do?
Diversity can emerge because there are different ways the different processing systems involved in language can interact. These differences result from their different formal properties. Differences between languages are due to differential access to features defined in other modules. I will focus here on one subtheory, that of grammaticalization: semiotic, cognitive or interactional properties and oppositions become `visible' to syntactic operations through feature sharing at the interface. The relevant metalanguage involves notions such as visibility of features, compatibility of representations, and optimalization of matching.
I will illustrate this account by briefly discussing phenomena of nominal classification in some Amazonian languages.
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