Syntax Before Words—The Function-First Approach to the Evolution of Proto-Language

One of the most captivating unsolved problems in cognitive science and evolutionary anthropology is the question of how humans evolved into linguistic beings. Conventionally, it has been assumed that the problem of the origin of language could be formulated as how the gap between animal communication and human language was bridged. I argue, however, that this assumption is misleading. The precursor to language does not lie in animal communication, but rather in a specific form of animal cognition observed in many species. The paper argues that the cognitive architecture informing linguistic syntax is grounded in action-based event perception. This shifts the central research question away from how to bridge the gap between animal signaling and linguistic communication towards understanding the difference between agent-based event cognition and propositional communication that utilizes this cognitive architecture. This perspective allows for the application of standard evolutionary theory in the form of the function-first approach, as the new perspective suggests that language initially evolved for communicating displaced agent-based events. In addition to this methodological proposal, the paper offers an evolutionary rationale for the initial transition towards primitive propositional communication, which eschews the use of arbitrary signs. In this scenario, syntax is represented by the inferred relations of present objects symbolizing thematic roles: the communicator represents the agent, a natural sign (e.g., a displayed hunted animal) symbolizes the patient, and the action is either implied by the status of the patient or additionally co-referentially expressed through a mimetic gesture. The evaluation of the proposal reveals that the evolutionary narrative produced by the function-first approach to language evolution inherently addresses key challenges such as trust and cooperation; since the function-first approach to language evolution posits that language emerged in a scenario closely related to the emergence of human cooperation. Furthermore, the findings suggest compatibility with numerous existing theories on human evolution, bridging the gap between hypotheses that emphasize social interaction—such as the Social Brain Hypothesis and sexual selection—and those emphasizing environmental shifts in East Africa—such as the Savanna Hypothesis, the Variability Selection or Pulse Climate Hypothesis and Dietary Shift or Hunting Hypothesis.