Many have criticized Noam Chomsky’s theory of language (e.g., Pinker as described in Sihombing 2022), but the most effective criticisms have come from Daniel Everett, given that Chomsky (according to Everett) has never addressed the criticisms. Everett has two issues with Chomsky’s theory: the evolutionary timeline of language for Homo sapiens and the lack of universality of language structure for all languages. On the evolution of language, Chomsky has proposed that language began some 60,000 years ago (Chomsky 2012). Everett’s contrary explanation is that rudimentary language started 2.5 million years ago in the South Pacific amongst Homo erectus [who are estimated to have had 62 billion neurons/24 billion short of Homo sapiens, Herculano-Houzel 2012] for which there is evidence that they were skilled sailors expanding throughout the Pacific Ocean, the navigation of which (using the stars and currents) is believed to depend on having communication between group members (Everett 2017). Also, at this time there is evidence of an asteroid strike in the South Pacific, which could have accelerated the evolutionary process, as it did 64 million years ago, bringing about the large, big-brained mammals.
On the generalizability of Chomsky’s theory to all languages (including primitive languages), Everett (2006, 2016) spent many years in the Amazon basin of Brazil studying the Pirahã people, who have no written language or number system. To transmit their history across generations (two at most) it is all done by word-of-mouth. The language has eight consonants, three vowels, and two tones. The sentences are very simplistic, with no embedded clauses such as, “John, who is a hunter, is an active individual.” Instead, the utterance would be: “John is a hunter. John is an active individual.” This language structure is apparent when children or adults begin to learn a language (thereby having no recursive structure). Also, the language has no pronouns. Furthermore, it has a proximate tense (e.g., for the present) and a remote tense (e.g., for the past) but no perfect tense, a tense with no time stamp, e.g., “I have prepared some food.” The language does not permit the establishment of a creation myth. The sense of time, e.g., historic time, is not well developed. Much is set in the present. Hunting and foraging are a daily affair for the Pirahã people. The children are taught the names of all the plants and animals in the jungle, which can number in the thousands.
Accordingly, Chomsky’s theory fails to account for the evolutionary history of language. And his theories can only explain complex (recursive languages) with little to say about the more primitive languages such as the one spoken by the Pirahã people of Brazil. However, if a Pirahã child is raised in Sao Paulo in the Portuguese language, the child will master all the complexities of Portuguese, which has way more verb tenses than English and a similar number system, as well as a written script.
I haven't read what Everett had to say about Chomsky's contribution to linguistics, but I think that, from the account given here, Everett's criticism of Chomsky is reductionist. While not a Chomskyan by persuasion, I believe that Chomsky's contribution is more than the evolution of language and the generalizing of his theory to all languages. If the account about Everett is not reductionist, I think Everett may have missed an important point that actually gave impetus to the theories of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, which is Chomsky's deliberate avoidance of the intricacies of meaning and context in his formalist program. This takes me to the generalization problem referred to in this post. This is not a defense of Chomsky, but about the essence of theory. We all know that for a theory to be one, it should be able to be falsifiable. If the data of the Pirahã language contradict Chomsky's generalization, it simply means that his theory is not to be taken as an unfalsifiable theorem but as a scaffolding in the evolution of linguistic theory at large.
The question of which theory best describes the evolution/birth of language is hard to establish, given that each viewpoint is exactly that, a viewpoint. Unlike artefacts in other sciences, language doesn’t fossilise. Furthermore, linguistic descriptions are oftentimes less precise/more subjective than in other sciences as the research on language uses the very same tool,i.e., linguistic signs or rather their assembly, as the subject of the scrutiny (language). As far as I know, Chomsky’s theory of language has been severely criticised by many others, no less prominent and inquisitive researchers. Bickerton (2008), for instance strongly objects to Chomsky’s idea whereby language production post-dates creation of concepts and basically results from a simple rewiring in the brain (Chomsky doesn’t believe in language evolution), giving us a monotonous operation ‘merge’. In other words, there is no language evolution, proto-language and language in and of itself is simply a means of expressing complex thought (rather than a means of communication) that emerged as ready-made and full-fledged. In this respect, Everett’s idea whereby language originated for navigation-like purposes is, however, also hard to follow (why would language only start to be used for such a complex procedure as navigation and not for, say, gathering a few fellow companions back there in the African savanna to hunt/gather meat at the very beginning of human evolution?) This is especially if considering the so-called niche construction theory (Odling-Smee, Laland, Feldman 1996), according to which a given species plays crucial role in its own evolutionary process, modifying the environment, which then affects-back the species, thus selecting for new genetic variation in its genome. This would explain why human language is so different qualitatively from other animal communication systems (contrary to other scholars’ desperate attempts to see both of them as two sides of the same coin) in connection to the human way of evolution (first tree-life, then low-end foraging/scavenging due to deforestation, then high-end scavenging - which basically means that human ancestors managed to outsmart other predators and get to the carcass first) which is species-unique and, hence, results in creating a niche. As for language-specific traits in Piraha, I am not an expert in this particular language and haven’t really followed it to greater extent. Nevertheless, the fact that Piraha children learn all the intricacies of languages that have different tense, nominal system and/or the very syntactic structure, points to what Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar basically says - that languages are ultimately similar in terms of the way they function/operate as a faculty that all humans possess, the fact that does not, at the same time, excludes certain 'isolated' or highly language-specific properties. Languages like Piraha do not, in my opinion, go against Chomsky’s theory on language structure, but it’s just my opinion, based on the research I’ve seen and done on different languages.
I think it would be worthwhile to look at Bickerton’s language bioprogram hypothesis (also with respect to pidgin and creole languages which he studied extensively) here. It would certainly add to a more comprehensive and broader picture of what language actually is and what its ultimate role was/is. I hope my comments will be of some (however small) value for you.
Sorry for the stream of thought, I only reiterate what I remember for reading on language evolution a couple of years back, plus my own intuitions on that matter. Best regards,
Thanks for your wonderful response. I will certainly check out Bickerton.
Cheers,
Ed Tehovnik.
The question raised by Ed Tehovnik is one that comes up quite regularly among linguists and linguistically oriented philosophers. Not much new has come to light lately and there seems to be no obvious solutions to the theoretical predicament(s). The issue seems to be: what is ‘language’ (do we have a theory about that?), and how dit it (language) evolve? In my view the question is, the way it is normally formulated, too equivocal to elicit a meaningful answer. The notion of ‘language’ (as such, ei. in its generic meaning) is used in quite many contetxs today and about quite many thing: programmning languages, animal languages, mathematical language (strings of symbols), in e.g. ‘mind your language’, and even linguists will not agree on a clear-cut definition. It is something different for, on the one hand, Chomsky and, on the other hand, Everett; which means that they talk about different things. The way I see linguistic phenomena they are integrated actions processed by a number of cognitive systems, and run by the neural systems of the brain in ways we still do not know well. I am not at home with Everett’s ideas about languages, but from the posting by Edward it looks as if he is looking for how specific languages appear and evolve, and in that context he may call Pirahá a language; but if a Pirahá child is able to learn Portuguese in a modern society there seems to be not many cognitve barriers in that child’s brain. That actually supports Chomsky’s ideas. I met Chomsky at MIT 24 years ago – and I can tell you that he is a very kind and gently person – and when ‘my’ PhD student asked him a question (about adverbials) he answered that “I change my mind all the time”. The way he perceives a theoretical notion of ‘language’ – I think, I’ve read much of Chomsky but I’m not quite sure – is the specific cognitive system (facilitated by the brain) that make the different cognitive systems processing the linguistic bits and pieces integrate smoothly in order to make spoken (and later written) language work; at the surprisingly high speed it does. That may well be the outcome of a ‘sudden’ (whatever that means) genetic development. I do not agree with Chomsky on all counts; but after having read Syntactic Structures and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in the beginning of the 1970s I had a frame of reference that was workable. So, a piece of advise: when you encounter the word language in a certain context try to find the, maybe implicit, contextual limits of the semantics of that word.
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