Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche

Friday, February 15, 2013
Room 304 (Hynes Convention Center)
Steven Pinker , Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
I present the hypothesis that human language is an adaptations that evolved by natural selection for communication in a knowledge-using, socially interdependent lifestyle, the “cognitive niche.” This lifestyle is a specialization for overcoming the evolutionary fixed defences of plants and animals (poisons, coverings, stealth, speed, and so on) by cause-and-effect reasoning.

Language fits into the picture as follows. It is no coincidence that humans are special in their ability to outsmart other animals and plants by cause-and-effect reasoning, and that language is a way of converting information about cause and-effect and action into perceptible signals. A distinctive and important feature of information is that it can be duplicated without loss. A species that has evolved to rely on information should thus also evolve a means to exchange that information. Language multiplies the benefit of knowledge, because a bit of know-how is useful not only for its practical benefits to oneself but as a trade good with others. Using language, a person can exchange knowledge with somebody else at a low cost to himself and hope to get something in return. It can also lower the original acquisition cost—people can learn survival strategies from someone else’s trial and error, without having to go through it themselves. 

On this view, then, three key features of the distinctively human lifestyle— know-how, sociality, and language—co-evolved, each constituting a selection pressure for the others.

 On this view, then, three key features of the distinctively human lifestyle— know-how, sociality, and language—co-evolved, each constituting a selection pressure for the others.