The Threshold of Language: An Epistemological Reconstruction of the First Human Group

AbstractThis article proposes that human symbolic language did not arise as an innate module nor asan individual invention, but rather as a "relational and ethical achievemen" emerging within theearliest cooperative groups of Homo sapiens. I argue that the "symbolic threshold"-themoment when signs transcend immediate reaction to become acts of reference, recognition,and commitment- was reached within a "minimal triadic interaction": two adults and adependent infant, situated in a context of cooperative breeding. This hypothesis rests on sixpillars: (1) displaced reference, (2) intentional gesturing as cognitive scaffolding, (3) the propername as an act of ethical singularization, (4) a critique of linguistic nativism, (5) the centralrole of women and cooperative breeding, and (6) the promise as the normative dimension oflanguage. Through an epistemological-not historical- reconstruction, I illustrate how theseelements could have converged within the very fabric of human relationality. The modelintegrates findings from evolutionary anthropology, affective neuroscience, philosophy oflanguage, and comparative psychology, offering a coherent alternative both to Chomskyanismand to behaviorism. It concludes that the symbolic is, above all, the ethical.