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Darwin's last word: How words changed cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2008

Derek Bickerton
Derek Bickerton
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822. derbick@hawaii.rr.comwww.derekbickerton.com
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Abstract

Although Penn et al. make a good case for the existence of deep cognitive discontinuity between humans and animals, they fail to explain how such a discontinuity could have evolved. It is proposed that until the advent of words, no species had mental representations over which higher-order relations could be computed.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 132
Copyright
Copyright ©Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

Herrnstein, R. J. (1985) Riddles of natural categorization. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 308:129–44.Google Scholar