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Given that (i) the first human languages presumably were simple and (ii) existing cognitive biases push language toward simplification and reduction it is perplexing that highly complex languages could evolve. Here I’ll explore a potential solution for seeming paradox, that could also have implications for broader language evolution questions: the advent of writing. I hypothesize that writing allows humans to overcome the constraints of the “here and now bottleneck” and provides the foundation for linguistic innovations that feed back into spoken language. Systematically comparing languages that do and do not have writing systems could provide supporting evidence for this hypothesis. I propose that adopting this theoretical perspective could motivate important empirical work on language evolution.

Can Languages without writing systems provide new insights in language evolution?