How Minds Made Language (1): Series Introduction

Nadine Taylor

26 Apr 2025 — 1 min read

This series explores how language has evolved from socio-cognitive capacities which were already present amongst our non-speaking ancestors.[i] The prerequisites which will be discussed include: Foundational Cognitive Mechanisms: Theory of Mind, and Conceptualisation; Social Interaction Mechanisms: Imitation, Joint Attention, Gaze Tracking; Communication and Behavioural Control: Call Variants, and Voluntary Control; Neuroscience of Language & Social Behaviour: Ventral Premotor Cortex (VPC), Mirror Neurons, and Neocortical Volume.

As non-human primates are our closest living relatives and live in environments similar to our pre-language-speaking ancestors, their cognition and behaviours are likely to be more alike than present-day Homo sapiens. As these primates have not faced the same environmental pressures that have shaped human evolution, we assume their cognitive abilities resemble those of our non-speaking ancestors. [ii] Therefore, this series will use numerous examples from non-human primates to provide evidentiary support.

[i] Worden, R. (1998). The evolution of language from social intelligence. In J. R. Hurford, M. Studdert-Kennedy, C. Knight (Eds.), Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and Cognitive Bases (pp. 148-156). Cambridge, New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

[ii] Burling, R. (2005). The talking ape: How language evolved. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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