TWO NEGLECTED FACTORS IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

摘要

How language evolved has been a focus of attention for researchers in a dozen different disciplines over the last two decades. The fact that no viable theory of language evolution has yet emerged is unquestionably due in part to the difficulty of the problems involved, but these problems have been exacerbated by neglect of two crucial factors. One is is the precise nature of the differences between language and nonhuman communication systems (henceforth NCSs)and the other, the ecological gap between human ancestors and other apespecies.