Although there are some misconceptions about language here, they don’t concern me nearly as much as the misconceptions about evolutionary biology.
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Originally Posted by HydrogenBond
I am of the belief that language developed due to necessity.
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I believe this is the product of teleological thinking, which is often and easily, but nontheless falaciously, applied to biology. Teleology was Lamark’s guide to evolution, and he was smarter than us, so we should be very cautious of it. The process of evolution does not design systems according to any kind of necessity. It can only work with the variation in the way things are working in the here and now - cannot plan for the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HydrogenBond
The other possible cause, which may be more fundamental, is the evolution of human consciousness on top of animal consciousness. The animal consciousness is able to survive quite nicely without needing many sounds. Body language is often enough. The extra layer of consciousness within humans allows humans to see more detail, generating more words by adding more unknowns.
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This is an excerpt from the 19th century. Human consciousness as some kind of high-tech, bolt-on accessory to animal consciousness. Human consciousness evolved in the same way that human liver evolved: any variation in the system that conferred a benefit in the given environment is selected for. As a result the liver, and the consciousness, evolved to maximize gene frequency for this variation.
The annunciations of linguistics are temporal, open to critisizm and open to new ideas. My advice is to make sure our ideas check out with Natural Selection, the strongest theory in science.
