LANGUAGE AND SPEECH ARE OLD: A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE AND CONSEQUENCES FOR MODERN LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY

摘要

It is usually assumed that recognizably modern language and speech are recent phenomena linked to the emergence of our species, Homo sapiens, 50- 100kya (e.g., Mithen, 2005; Chomsky, 2010; Berwick et al., 2013), the result of evolutionary saltation, perhaps resulting from a single mutation of major effect (e.g., Chomsky 2010: "a rewiring of the brain took place in some individual, call him Prometheus, yielding the operation of unbounded Merge, applying to concepts with intricate (and little understood) properties").