Before the word

摘要

If, as Francois Jacob famously argued, evolution is like a tinkerer who builds something new by using whatever is close at hand, then from what is the human capacity for language made? Most accounts of the evolution of language have focused on characterizing changes that are internal to the language system. Were the earliest forms of language spoken or (like sign language) gestured? Did language arise suddenly? Or did it emerge gradually, progressing step by step from a simple one-word 'protolanguage' (limited to brief comments about the 'here and now') into a more complex system that combined individual words into structured meaningful sentences encompassing the future, the past and the possible — as well as the concrete present? Regardless of how these questions are resolved, if we seek the ultimate origins of language, we also need to look further back, beyond the first protolinguistic systems, to whatever prelinguistic systems may have preceded any form of language.