Reflections on Protolanguage: Evidence from Studies on Animal Communication

Abstract

The paper is a critique of the existence of protolanguage based on some personal reasoning given the findings of previous research. This paper focuses on the nature of semantic compositionality and its existence (and therefore manifestations) in animal communication systems as evidence of the existence of protolanguage. This compositional state that started to color human language has paved the way to hierarchical syntax and thus has helped in the emergence of a recursive, fully complex language. On the other hand, non-human animal communication systems, including those examined in this paper, have not managed to progress beyond the holophrastic state, and thus remained highly confined and unproductive. This is explicated by the observation that these systems do not employ discrete meaningful units that can be used recursively in different linguistic contexts, a necessary condition for a system of communication to be compositional. This is interesting in the study of language evolution as it could suggest that human language could not have evolved from a rudimentary, intermediate stage called protolanguage. Speculating about the existence of protolanguage subsumes convergent evolution (e.g. songbirds). The lack of semantic compositionality in non-human communication system suggests that convergent evolution is hard to prove, which puts the existence of protolanguage on the line. This thesis is, however, far from being established and requires a lot of further research to prove its validity.

Received: 21 September 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 / Published: 17 January 2021