The recruitment theory of language origins

Abstract

Tremendous progress has been made recently on the fascinating question of the origins and evolution of language (see e.g. (55), (7), (9), (31)). There is no widely accepted complete theory yet, but several proposals are on the table and observations and experiments are proceeding. This chapter focuses on the recruitment theory of language origins which we have been exploring for almost ten years now. This theory argues that language users recruit and try out different strategies for solving the task of communication and retain those that maximise communicative success and cognitive economy. Each strategy requires specific cognitive neural mechanisms, which in themselves serve a wide range of purposes and therefore may have evolved or could be learned independently of language.