Comparative evolutionary approaches to language: on theory and methods

Several theoretical proposals for the evolution of language have sparked a renewed search for comparative data on human and nonhuman animal computational capacities. However, conceptual confusions apparently still plague the field, leading to experimental evidence that fails to test for comparable human competencies. We focus on Rey and colleagues’ (2012, Cognition) artificial language study of baboons as a case in point, exhibiting four substantive theoretical and methodological challenges that affect the field more generally: 1) properly characterizing features of the faculty of language in the narrow sense; 2) defining and probing for human language-like computations; 3) distinguishing between linguistic competence as opposed to linguistic performance; and 4) uncovering evidence for evolutionary continuity in linguistic capacity. Our intent is to be critical in the service of clarity, in what we agree is an important approach to understanding how language evolved.