Language may not be the purpose-made communication tool we thought it was
Ask Google why humans possess language, and you’ll see article after article that reinforce what we learned in school: as social animals, humans needed to develop language to communicate and collaborate. Ask ChatGPT the same question and you get the same answer, obviously, because ChatGPT regurgitates data from the internet.
So it may come as a surprise to learn that this may not be true.
Because it turns out that language may be even more important than we thought.
Have you heard of Noam Chomsky? He’s called the Father of Modern Linguistics and is probably the world’s most famous living philosopher. He is also a left leaning political activist, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, don’t let it dissuade you from looking into his unmatched impact on linguistics from his long career at MIT (Massachusets Institute of Technology). He introduced his theory in the 1950’s and 1960’s and has been defending it ever since. 60 years later, it is still a minority view, so you or your kids are probably still being taught that the function of language is for people to communicate. But I think time is on Noam Chomsky’s side.
According to him, language is primarily designed to allow us to create and interpret thought. That is, the system of language turns on a cognitive wakening that is pre-programmed in our brains. Language activates abstract and complex thoughts.
As a person who has built my career around language and communicating, this theory that language is an imperfect tool for communication astounded me. But it also felt intrinsically right. Language is so irritatingly imprecise and easy to misunderstand. Who can’t think of a recent conflict that was rooted in miscommunication?
And now we know why.
At the risk of oversimplifying, the theory is that the ability to develop language could have been brought about by a genetic mutation about 100,000 years ago, which is around the time of mass migration out of Africa. This is also when people began to create art, like cave paintings.
The mutation hardwired our brains to be able to acquire language. We are born pre-programmed to understand nouns, verbs and adjectives, and have a natural propensity to organize the spoken language that we hear. Without that, we couldn’t get started as language learners.
If you find this interesting, search for Noam Chomsky on YouTube. He’s a great explainer. But some of his reasoning is as follows:
In all languages, the basic grammar structure of noun, verb and adjective categories are the same.
Children are born understanding basic grammar rules
The computational system of language is optimal with regard to linking interfaces (ideas) but is non-optimal with linking communication. When there is a conflict, communicative efficiency is always sacrificed.
The majority of the entities that we construct in our discourse, expression, interpretation are partially mental objects and not natural phenomena like “river,” “predator,” or “food.” That is, they don't represent actual things -- a natural scientist could not identify them without looking into our minds.
If Noam Chomsky’s theory is correct, the ability to make language is a simple and rigid function. The gene mutation responsible would have been very favourable, as it quickly managed to become dominant as humans were leaving Africa.
Characteristic use support Chomsky's theory
Scientists often look at the characteristic use of something to determine its purpose. Close to 100% of our language is internal, used for things like planning the day, agonizing over criticism you received 10 years ago, or playing out various scenarios of an upcoming or regrettable past event.
The remaining couple percent is used verbally, but the majority of our verbal language is phatic communication (otherwise known as small talk) with no real purpose other than to be social. Only the minority of that couple percent is used to actually communicate.
(Here goes my wandering mind...Denmark may be an exception. Here people are comfortable being in an elevator without greeting each other and can stand at a bus stop without making eye contact, let alone verbal contact. So a larger portion of Dane’s verbal language must be for the purpose of communicating. I wonder if this means Danes are more evolved humans…)
This must be why the greatest writers and poets are those that make abstract thought feel tangible. That's the perfect use of language.
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