A special issue of Human Biology on language evolution is now online. However, you may need special access.
Tag: Human Biology
The Parental Antagonism Theory of Language Evolution
Human Biology are publishing a special issue on “Integrating genetic and Cultural Evolutionary Approaches to Language” this month! Abstracts for all of the papers can be found here.
William Brown‘s paper has been published on his blog ahead of the boat today. The Abstract is below and there is a link to the paper at the bottom.
Language—as with most communication systems—likely evolved by means of natural selection. Accounts for the natural selection of language can usually be divided into two scenarios, either of which used in isolation of the other are insufficient to explain the phenomena: (1) there are group benefits from communicating, and (2) there are individual benefits from being a better communicator. In contrast, this paper argues that language emerged during a coevolutionary struggle between parental genomes via genomic imprinting, which is differential gene expression depending on parental origin of the genetic element. It is hypothesized that relatedness asymmetries differentially selected for patrigene-caused language phenotypes (e.g., signals of need) to extract resources from mother early in child development and matrigene-caused language phenotypes (e.g., socially transmitted norms) to influence degree of cooperativeness among kin later in development. Unlike previous theories for language evolution, parental antagonism theory generates testable predictions at the proximate (e.g., neurocognitive areas important for social transmission and language capacities), ontogenetic (e.g., the function of language at different points of development), ultimate (e.g., inclusive fitness), and phylogenetic levels (e.g., the spread of maternally derived brain components in mammals, particularly in the hominin lineage), thus making human capacities for culture more tractable than previously thought.