The origin of language
an anthropological approach
pp. 421-448
in: Jan Wind, Brunetto Chiarelli, Bernard Bichakjian, Alberto Nocentini, Abraham Jonker (eds), Language origin, Berlin, Springer, 1992Abstract
Language is a highly specialized mode of referencing, i.e., of referring to objects, processes and relations in the physical and the social worlds. It is a capacity, however, that is ultimately dependent on the capacity of the human visual system for differentiating certain classes or types of objects, categories, processes and relations. Most studies of language have dealt with the specialized neurology and structures of language perception and production with little regard for the non-linguistic cognitive and perceptual capacities that ultimately make language effective as a cultural, referential mode.The first complex body of human imagery appears with the anatomically modern man in the Ice Age of Europe, c. 35,000 B.P. Analysis of these symbol systems reveal many of the same "cognitive" capacities that are found in language, i.e., a capacity for categorization, abstraction, syntactical structuring, sequencing, and conceptual modelling. These imaging systems required the use of the right and left hemispheres of the brain as well as the limbic system. The neurological complexity in these symbol systems argues for a long slow process of mosaic evolution involving the development and integration, not of a capacity for "art" or a capacity for language, but of the full set of cognitive capacities that would support and mediate both the visual and linguistic referential and productive modes, each of which functions by use of different neurological subsystems. The archaeological record indicates that these sets of capacities were present before the appearance of anatomically modern man and that modes of visual symbolling and probably forms of "language" were already present. This evidence suggests an early, increasing development of social, cultural complexity. The set of neurological capacities involved did not appear 'suddenly."At least two dozen visual symbol systems have been documented for the Ice Age. These systems were probably supported by "language," but they also supplied some of the cultural categories to which language referred. It is highly likely that language was used in different ways and styles during the Ice Age: for practical communication, for ritual and ceremony, for song and chant, and metaphorically and analogically in the attempt to explain or describe the physical and cultural reality. "Language" may have been used in these ways before the appearance of anatomically modem man and before the capacity for modem articulation. It is suggested that language became increasingly adaptive and was selected for because of its potential variability and its relation to other processes of cognition and perception.