Language origins: Fitness consequences, platform of trust, cooperation, and turn-taking
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Abstract
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.
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This is a post-print version. This article will be published in Interaction Studies, vol 19. Expected July 2018, copyright John Benjamins Publishing Company. The publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use or reprint the material in any form.
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Mirror System Hypothesis, language evolution, language origins, cooperation, turn-taking, conversation, trust, proximate explanations, ultimate explanations
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Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Poland