INTRODUCTION

We now come to question (5) (from p. 1), “How did knowledge of language evolve?” Throughout contemporary work on biolinguistics, there has been great interest in questions of evolution of human language. To answer this question we need to come to understand two things: (1) how human language is designed; and (2) how these design features evolved in the brain of our species. The study of language design has been part of the subject of the earlier part of this book, where we have discussed the questions of “what constitutes knowledge of language?” and “how is this knowledge acquired?”

The study of properties of language design goes back to the earliest days of generative linguistics; e.g., the functional explanation for grammatical transformations based on certain assumptions about short- and long-term memory (Miller and Chomsky, 1963) and the functional motivation for syntactic output filters (Chomsky and Lasnik, 1977).With the emergence of more restrictive models of language in recent years as a result of work on the problems of structure (of language) and development, it has now become possible (tentatively) to take up the consideration of the question of language design. For example, the “minimalist program” focuses explicitly on questions of optimality of language design (Chomsky, 1995b, Chomsky, 1997b). Keep in mind that we are assuming that any research program that is investigating the evolution of language, is interested in language design in this sense and hence has a “minimalist program,” even if it may be called something else. Hence our discussion in this chapter applies to the full spectrum of linguistic theories that have been proposed to characterize knowledge of language.