Drew Rendall: University of Lethbridge

The evolution of language is a longstanding problem that continues to invite study, analysis, and speculation from a variety of perspectives. One perspective has been to adopt a comparative stance and seek the rudiments of key elements of language in the communication systems of closely related nonhuman primates. While sensible enough, in principle, I’ll argue that this search has been focused in the wrong places (like the drunk fumbling in the dark searching the ground for his keys, not where they’re most likely to be but rather simply where the light is brightest) namely on high-level informational properties of language related to its intentionality, semantics and syntax. Several decades of such focused research now points to the conclusion that, in these respects, primate communication is largely irrelevant. So, despite their phylogenetic proximity to us, are other primates in fact not really relevant to the problem of language evolution? I’ll answer, no… and promise to disambiguate that answer. In the process, I’ll hope to make some broader points about the enterprise of theorizing, both in this field but also more generally, considering how the constructs we use, the explanatory metaphors we borrow, and (ironically?) the language we adopt can steer the phenomena we study and aim to explain, as much as the reverse, potentially leading us to mistake purely theoretical entities for real ones.