Prof. Stephen Levinson - Huxley Lecture 2020 (2020-12-14) - The Evolution of the Infrastructure for Language

Royal Anthropological Institute Jan 5, 2022 Huxley Lecture 2020 Prof Stephen Levinson The ‘interaction engine’: the evolution of the infrastructure for language Thomas Henry Huxley, ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, believed in the underlying unity of the human species but on the voyage of HMS Rattlesnake was struck by the cultural and linguistic diversity of Melanesia. Indeed, the deep structural diversity of languages suggests that our language capacities are not based on any single template but rather on an underlying ability and motivation for infants to acquire a culturally transmitted system (Darwin’s ‘instinctive tendency to acquire an art’). The hypothesis presented here is that this ability has an interactional base that has discernable precursors in other primates – a behavioural parallel to the anatomical similarities that Huxley was the first to point out in detail. This interactional base is more or less invariant across cultures, constitutes the context for language use and learning, and acts like a machine tool for producing languages. In this lecture I explore two specific evolutionary routes that may have allowed humans to develop this interactional foundation for an elite communication system. Tuesday 14 December in the BP Lecture Theatre, Clore Education Centre, the British Museum Note from Quad Romb: audio boost 5db Original from here: