Evolving meaning: The roles of kin selection, allomothering and paternal care in language evolution

Abstract

Many contemporary scholars agree that future theories of language evolution need to take a componential approach to language that breaks human language into separate mechanistic components such as vocal imitation, syntactic abilities, and propositional semantics. In this chapter, I discuss the evolution of the last component-the abilities and proclivities underlying honest, complex, propositional meanings. This is both a critical component of language, and one whose evolution is the hardest to explain, precisely because of its apparent uniqueness. Nonetheless, I argue, the comparative approach has important insights to offer in this domain. I briefly discuss the hypothesis that kin selection played an important, but neglected, role in driving the evolution of rich semantic communication. I then review several bodies of comparative data not addressed in previous discussions. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London.