The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages

• Main Authors: Miyagawa, Shigeru (Contributor), Ojima, Shiro (Author), Berwick, Robert C. (Contributor), Okanoya, Kazuo (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Foreign Languages and Literatures (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Research Foundation, 2014-06-11T15:31:43Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 How human language arose is a mystery in the evolution of Homo sapiens. Miyagawa et al. (2013) put forward a proposal, which we will call the Integration Hypothesis of human language evolution, that holds that human language is composed of two components, E for expressive, and L for lexical. Each component has an antecedent in nature: E as found, for example, in birdsong, and L in, for example, the alarm calls of monkeys. E and L integrated uniquely in humans to give rise to language. A challenge to the Integration Hypothesis is that while these non-human systems are finite-state in nature, human language is known to require characterization by a non-finite state grammar. Our claim is that E and L, taken separately, are in fact finite-state; when a grammatical process crosses the boundary between E and L, it gives rise to the non-finite state character of human language. We provide empirical evidence for the Integration Hypothesis by showing that certain processes found in contemporary languages that have been characterized as non-finite state in nature can in fact be shown to be finite-state. We also speculate on how human language actually arose in evolution through the lens of the Integration Hypothesis.