Prosocial Research
Language, Cognitive Capacity
Meanwhile Bickerton’s speculations have taken another turn. He began thinking that if humans have a genetically based program for language, it must have evolved from some prehuman form of communication. Whatever that earlier capacity was, it would have been useful for survival and passed on. So Bickerton proposed that the language bioprogram, with its built-in categories and distinctions, is a logical evolutionary consequence of the way all animals--not just humans--perceive the world: they divide it into categories and relationships important to an animal’s survival. There should be a unifying set of fundamental concepts that all birds and higher mammals understand.
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