Abstract

We examine the question of which aspects of language are uniquely human and uniquely

linguistic in light of recent suggestions by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the only such aspect is

syntactic recursion, the rest of language being either specific to humans but not to language (e.g.

words and concepts) or not specific to humans (e.g. speech perception). We find the hypothesis

problematic. It ignores the many aspects of grammar that are not recursive, such as phonology,

morphology, case, agreement, and many properties of words. It is inconsistent with the anatomy and

neural control of the human vocal tract. And it is weakened by experiments suggesting that speech

perception cannot be reduced to primate audition, that word learning cannot be reduced to fact

learning, and that at least one gene involved in speech and language was evolutionarily selected in

the human lineage but is not specific to recursion. The recursion-only claim, we suggest, is motivated

by Chomsky’s recent approach to syntax, the Minimalist Program, which de-emphasizes the same

aspects of language. The approach, however, is sufficiently problematic that it cannot be used to

support claims about evolution. We contest related arguments that language is not an adaptation,

namely that it is “perfect,” non-redundant, unusable in any partial form, and badly designed for

communication. The hypothesis that language is a complex adaptation for communication which

evolved piecemeal avoids all these problems.

q 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.