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Part of
How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map
Edited by Michael A. Arbib
[Benjamins Current Topics 112] 2020
► pp. 167–182

Language origins

Fitness consequences, platform of trust, cooperation, and turn-taking

| Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland
| Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland

In this paper, we complement proximate or ‘how’ explanations for the origins of language, broadening our perspective to include fitness-consequences explanations, i.e. ultimate, or ‘why’ explanations. We identify the platform of trust as a fundamental prerequisite for the development of a language-like system of symbolic communication. The platform of trust is a social niche in which cheap but honest communication with non-kin is possible, because messages tend to be trusted as a default. We briefly consider the place of the platform of trust on the road map as laid out in the Mirror System Hypothesis. We then turn to recent research on turn-taking in primates, which has been proposed as a precursor of the cooperative structuring of conversation in humans. We suggest, instead, that human turn-taking, in its full richness that makes it an interesting explanatory target, may only appear in a communicative system that is already founded on a community-wide, cooperative platform of trust.

Keywords: Mirror System Hypothesis, language evolution, language origins, cooperation, turn-taking, conversation, trust, proximate explanations, ultimate explanations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Communication: A fitness-consequences perspective
  • 3.The platform of trust
  • 4.Cooperation
    • 4.1The evolutionary origins of human cooperation
  • 5.The platform of trust and the Mirror System Hypothesis
  • 6.Turn-taking
    • 6.1Alternation
    • 6.2Synchrony (fast-paced temporal coordination)
    • 6.3Conditional relevance
    • 6.4(Egalitarian) role reversibility
  • 7.Towards a new road map
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.112.12wac
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