Open AccessFunctional and structural pre‐adaptations to language: Insight from comparative cognitive science into the study of language origin 1
Author(s) -
OKANOYA KAZUO
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
japanese psychological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.392
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5884
pISSN - 0021-5368
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5584.2004.00252.x
Subject(s) - adaptation (eye) , cognition , human language , cognitive science , psychology , cognitive linguistics , linguistics , cognitive psychology , computer science , philosophy , neuroscience
In this paper I propose hypotheses and strategies that can help integrating the comparative cognitive science and linguistics. First, I assume that language emerged by integrating several sub‐faculties and each of these sub‐faculties evolved gradually. These sub‐faculties probably evolved by reasons other than language, and thus they are pre‐adaptations to language. Second, I assume that language specific faculty does not exist but such a faculty is an emergent property from the integration of other sub‐faculties. For the partial verification of the correspondence between the assumed pre‐adaptation of a particular sub‐faculty in animals and the involvement of the sub‐faculty in the human language, I propose to utilize an external criterion such as the site of the brain activity. After explaining the research strategy, I attempted to provide accounts on several sub‐faculties and possible course of evolution by hypothesizing pre‐adaptations of each faculty. In conclusion, I argue that the comparative cognitive science is an important branch of the inquiry into the evolution of language.