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A biological infrastructure for communication underlies the cultural evolution of languages [Commentary on Christiansen & Chater: Language as shaped by the brain]

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De Ruiter,  Jan Peter
Language and Cognition Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Multimodal Interaction, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

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Levinson,  Stephen C.
Language and Cognition Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Multimodal Interaction, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

De Ruiter, J. P., & Levinson, S. C. (2008). A biological infrastructure for communication underlies the cultural evolution of languages [Commentary on Christiansen & Chater: Language as shaped by the brain]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 518-518. doi:10.1017/S0140525X08005086.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-1FE2-5
Abstract
Universal Grammar (UG) is indeed evolutionarily implausible. But if languages are just “adapted” to a large primate brain, it is hard to see why other primates do not have complex languages. The answer is that humans have evolved a specialized and uniquely human cognitive architecture, whose main function is to compute mappings between arbitrary signals and communicative intentions. This underlies the development of language in the human species.