The evolutionary psychology of syntax

Abstract

Linguists often characterize syntax in terms of combinatorial rules. But there is also a pragmatics to syntax in which communicators choose and tailor syntactic constructions for different communicative contexts. Great apes exposed to “language” combine elements creatively, but they show no skills in the pragmatics of syntax. In contrast, even before language begins, human infants engage with others in unique forms of cooperative communication via deictic and symbolic gestures, which already distinguish pragmatically between a common ground topic and its perspectival focus. Evolutionarily, event-participant conceptual organization and topic-focus pragmatic organization formed the foundation for the conventionalization of syntactically structured human languages.