This episode explores the biological basis of language, tracing its origins from early hominins to modern Homo sapiens, and examining the role of genetic mutations, brain structures, social interactions, and environmental factors in the evolution of language. The study also considers the comparative analysis of the communication systems of nonhuman primates to highlight the distinctiveness and complexity of human language.
Darwinian perspectives, while insightful in highlighting natural selection, often lack concrete evidence linking specific evolutionary pressures directly to linguistic changes. Nativist theories, particularly Chomsky's Universal Grammar, propose an innate language faculty, yet they can be criticized for insufficiently accounting for the vast linguistic diversity and the complex, gradual nature of language change that historical linguistics documents. Cultural evolution theory emphasizes social learning and cultural transmission, which aligns more closely with observed language changes over time, but it often underestimates the deep structural similarities and divergences traced through rigorous historical comparative methods. In my view, these theories tend to oversimplify the intricate, multifaceted processes underlying language evolution, which historical comparative linguistics reveals through systematic analysis of phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes across languages and time periods. Hence, while they offer valuable perspectives, they do not fully capture the empirical complexities and nuances uncovered by historical comparative linguistics.
