Evolution, lineages and human language

Stephen Cowley, Anton Markos

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    In life as in language, living beings act in ways that are multiply constrained as history works through them both directly and as mediated by what we identify as structures (e.g. genes or words). Emphasising direct effects, we replace the ‘language metaphor of life’ with the view that language extends the domain of the living. Just as a living proteome system manages without central control, so does language. Both life and language enable living beings to expand into –and create – new domains or Umwelten. Pursuing the parallel, we link emphasis on fitness with Berthoz’s notion of simplexity and the distributed view of life/language/cognition. The semiosphere evolved, we suggest, as systems found novel ways of tapping into the bio-ecology’s energetics. Accordingly, there are striking parallels between how regulatory genes influence body structures and how, in humans, community histories re-echo during conversation. In both cases, cross-talk prompts living systems to re-enact a lineage/community’s music (or ‘worldviews’). While rejecting Berthoz’s residual neuro-centrism, we find ‘simplexity’ to be a powerful heuristic. Instead of
    proposing a single explanatory principle (e.g. computation, autonomy), lineages and communities build on meaning by altering ways of coordinating/ cooperating. In all cases, life and language co-operate to bring forth new possibilities.coordinating/cooperating. In all cases, life and language co-operate to bring forth new possibilities.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalLanguage Sciences
    Volume71
    Pages (from-to)8-18
    ISSN0388-0001
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2019

    Keywords

    • Biosemiotics
    • Cognitive linguistics
    • Distributed language
    • Enactivism
    • Life
    • Metaphor of language
    • Simplexity

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