In "Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche", Steven Pinker [pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/](http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/) argues that language is "a trait whose genetic basis was shaped by natural selection."
He first argues from “some very general properties of the natural history of language”:
Language is universal, unlike culturally transmitted skills like farming techniques or playing chess. “There may be technologically primitive peoples, but there are no primitive languages …” Also “the language of uneducated, working-class, and rural speakers has been found to be systematic and rule-governed …”
“Languages conform to a universal design.” “The [same] design specification … can be found in all human languages…”
“Children the world over pass through a universal series of stages in acquiring a language …”
“If children are thrown together without a pre-existing language that can be ‘culturally transmitted’ to them, they will develop one of their own.” “Another example comes from deaf communities, where complex sign languages emerge quickly and spontaneously.”
One may have language without “general intelligence”. For example, in “Williams syndrome and the sequelae of hydrocephalus, substantially retarded children may speak fluently and grammatically…” Conversely, one may have “general intelligence” without language. For example, in aphasias and in Specific Language Impairment “intelligent people can have extreme difficulties speaking and understanding …”
Pinker also gives arguments from evolutionary game theory and molecular evolution.
Further, he theorizes that intelligence, sociality, and language co-evolved sometime before fifty-thousand years ago. Each constituted a “selection pressure for the others.”
First, does everyone agree with Pinker?
If language is an evolved characteristic, does that mean it is something disgusting like sex, hunger, and fear? Or might it be that the disgusting things evloved over millions of years, but intelligence, sociality, and language, coming much later, are a step up from disgusting?
Another question. Sometimes after I have been engrossed in writing something, I repeatedly reread it. It’s as if I’m trying to figure out where all those words and sentences came from. Might it be because they come from something as deep as my genetic make-up?
"Conversely, one may have “general intelligence” without language. For example, in aphasias and in Specific Language Impairment “intelligent people can have extreme difficulties speaking and understanding …”
I disagree with this statement. I don’t think you may have general intelligence without language. to master the language also means, in general sense, you master the signs and symbols, and metaphors. it is true that in those mentioned impariments intelligent people can have difficulties speaking and understanding, but doesn’t this make them less intelligent? what is the measure of their intelligence if not language?(I mean by common standards). to an extent you are right they may be intellingent, but the mere fact they have lost ability to communicate affects their intelligence.
Intellignce is something unstable, you may have it and then lose it if you don’t cultivate it. this is how I see it. it is known that e.g.women on a maternity leave who have little stimulus to communicate with other than their babies who can’t speak, after a longer period report to become “duller”. even the general intelligence, as you term it, can droop, I believe. I’m speaking from my experience. the years school keeps up your intelligence by straining your memory are the ones your intelligence is at best. with the exceptions, of course.
with the impariment, their intelligence can linger for a certain time, but after that, it starts to decrease.
I agree that one may have language without general intelligence, though.
BTW, hunger, sex and fear have never been disgusting to me, I don;t know how you meant it. disgust, to me, is something that makes me want to vomit.
alot of conjecture goes into it, we suppose and suspect on the matter alot more than we know and can prove. but the theory is interesting for sure, and not easily disproven, based on what we know now.
language may well be something alot older than civilisation, if somewhat newer than our mandibulae configuration or feet design.
the bit about what happens when you write stuff is entirely unrelated. another case of the irrelevant collation. for sure what you write is not encoded in your genes per se, if thats what you are trying to hint at. the entire approach based on themes of determinism/freedom seems a case of everything seems a nail to the man sporting a hammer.
mysticus, the term “language” was intended to describe the conveying of meaning, and the structuring of symbols to convey meaning, not as a sort of useless gargle exercise.