title: Origin of symbol-using systems: speech, but not sign, without the semantic urge.
abstract: Natural language--spoken and signed--is a multichannel phenomenon, involving facial and body expression, and voice and visual intonation that is often used in the service of a social urge to communicate meaning. Given that iconicity seems easier and less abstract than making arbitrary connections between sound and meaning, iconicity and gesture have often been invoked in the origin of language alongside the urge to convey meaning. To get a fresh perspective, we critically distinguish the origin of a system capable of evolution from the subsequent evolution that system becomes capable of. Human language arose on a substrate of a system already capable of Darwinian evolution; the genetically supported uniquely human ability to learn a language reflects a key contact point between Darwinian evolution and language. Though implemented in brains generated by DNA symbols coding for protein meaning, the second higher-level symbol-using system of language now operates in a world mostly decoupled from Darwinian evolutionary constraints. Examination of Darwinian evolution of vocal learning in other animals suggests that the initial fixation of a key prerequisite to language into the human genome may actually have required initially side-stepping not only iconicity, but the urge to mean itself. If sign languages came later, they would not have faced this constraint.
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, WC1H 0AP, UK Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, WC1E 7HX, UK Birkbeck/UCL Neuroimaging Centre, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP, UK Cognitive Science Department, University of California, 9500 Gilman Drive, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 sereno@cogsci.ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: Martin I
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7598-7829
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Sereno
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001717:Birds / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension; D003468:Cultural Evolution; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D052586:Mating Preference, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D013045:Species Specificity; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013561:Symbolism; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
keywords: RNA world; code-use; origin of language; protein folding; scene comprehension; sexual selection
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