The ability to use especially complex and nuanced language to communicate sets humans apart from other animal species. But how did it evolve? It’s a staggeringly difficult question to answer (spoken words don’t leave fossils, after all). “There are influential persons among us … who claim to believe that language is a totally evolutionary process. That it has somehow appeared in the brain in a primitive form and then grown to usefulness,” Cormac McCarthy once wrote in Nautilus.
Now, a new framework published in Science is eschewing the tunnel-vision of any single perspective to chart a new, more comprehensive course for future researchers to take.
Written by a team of 10 experts from a variety of different disciplines, this new approach reflects the diverse backgrounds of its authors, taking an angle that combines linguistics, psychology, molecular genetics, and more.
The researchers argue that the evolution of language occurred as a result of a number of converging developments in human evolutionary history—including vocal learning, linguistic structure, and sociality. While none of the developments on their own were sufficient for the evolution of language, taken together, they seem to have provided the fertile ground that allowed language to take root.
Read more: “The Kekulé Problem”
For example, the ability to learn new vocalizations from experience is crucial for speech and, while present in other animals such as songbirds and bats, it’s obviously not sufficient on its own for language development. Additionally the emergence of grammar, allowing words to be recombined in a systematic way, is a key component of language, but one that requires certain cognitive conditions. Finally, the authors point to sociality as an important driver of language development. Language is fundamentally a social tool, and humans seem particularly keen, among animals, in our desire to share information with one another.
The new framework doesn’t advocate for any single theory of the evolution of language, the authors emphasize; it shows a path forward for future research to take.
“Crucially, our goal was not to come up with our own particular explanation of language evolution,” study author Inbal Arnon said in a statement. “Instead, we wanted to show how multifaceted and biocultural perspectives, combined with newly emerging sources of data, can shed new light on old questions.”
Language surely evolved from a complex and cooperative process, and unraveling its secrets similarly demands a complex, cooperative approach. 
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Lead image: Marijus Auruskevicius / Shutterstock
