* From: Carrol Cox I would reject any theory of the origins of language -- or the interpretation of language as it is used today -- which gave central place to communication or practicality. The core usage of language is _phatic_, a means of recognizing each other's humanity.
Practical uses for communication, storage of knowledge, etc. flow from this fundamental use.* This is what gives interest to Ian Tattersall's speculation that language was (a) invented by children, not adults, and (b) probably was invented/reinvented a number of times in various localities before it "caught on" among the adult population and its more focused possibilities began to be explored. Speculations on the origins of language are highly interesting, and can lead to greater understanding (even if wrong) of current questions about human thought, but I just can't take seriously (a) any argument that claims to _prove_ a theory of origins or (b) uses such a premise as evidence for general statements about humans today. Carrol *Clearly e-mail lists appeal primarily to phatic uses of language. CB; An aspect of the truth is in this in that the contribution to sociality is critical. The original language is likely the language of kinship, names, names of relatives, ancestors. However, it is probably fundamentally incorrect to fail to recognize the unity of _phatic_ and practical in this. Such naming of kin is inherently transgenerational. The communications between living and future, or living and dead generations, would give enormous practical and materially adaptational advantage to its inventors. And I'd hypothesize that the inventors were not children ( pace Tattersall), but _mothers teaching their children_. This contains in a nutshell, transgenerational communication, teaching passing on one's experiences and kinship. Mothers probably invented names, the critical first symbols. A name is use of something that is not a person to represent that person. In this it is a symbol. Only symbols can represent dead ancestors, because the ancestors themselves are "no longer with us". So only symbols can get the ancestors' experiences across the death barrier. It is critical to see language and kinship as invented in a complex, not isolated from each other. My focus on kinship is not just my whim. It is based a major empirical conclusion of anthropology that kinship is central in organizing primary cultures ( See, Sahlins _ Culture and Practical Reason_ for example), and the extrapolation that kinship was central in original human culture. Similarly with the concept of "symbolling". That it is definitive of humanity is _not_ at all my idea, but that of major anthropologists. All I do is combine these to major anthropological theses, and analyze what it is about symbolling that would go with kinship to give humans a big difference from other species: it's getting the experience of dead generations over to future generations, "Experience" as tradition, custom, culture.
