How children pick up a language: denying Chomsky (Humans)

by dhw, Sunday, August 28, 2016, 16:21 (3007 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: Speech, language, was something that existed quite apart from Evolution. It had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Man, man unaided, created language.”
 - If you want to define language as the use of human speech, then humans created language (unless you think your God taught them). If you want to define language as means of communication, then bees unaided, chimps unaided, ants unaided, whales unaided, sparrows unaided, bacteria unaided created bee, chimp, ant, whale, sparrow, bacterial language. What does that prove? It is hard to imagine evolution having taken place without cooperation, and it is equally hard to imagine cooperation taking place without communication. I would therefore suggest that language as communication is not only part of evolution, but is essential to it.