Kim Sterelny (ANU), “From Calls to Words: The Evolution of Language”

Abstract: This paper is on the evolution of language, focusing on the specific issue of building an incremental picture of the transition from holistic, call-like signals (typified by the famous vervet alarm calls) to referential terms; so the main focus is on the emergence of “protolanguage”, on many views, the immediate predecessor of the emergence of full human language. The model of the incremental evolution of referential terms is developed in the context of a more general model of the evolution of human social and cognitive complexity, and it assumes a gesture-first view of the initial expansion of hominin communicative capacities.