Daniel Everett (Bentley University), Language: the Cultural Tool

 

 

Commentators:

Eva Jablonka (Cohn Institute, TAU)

Daniel Dor (Dept. of Communication, TAU)

 

Chair: Dr. Ehud Lamm (Cohn Institute, TAU)

 

 

Monday, 2.4.2012, 18:00

Gilman Building, room 449

התכנסות לקפה וכיבוד קל בשעה 17:45, ליד חדר 449

 

For the past fifty years a vast literature has emerged to support the idea that language is innate and that the structure of human grammars is determined by the human genome in some way. Some researchers even refer to human language as an "instinct" or refer to the acquisition of human languages as the unfolding of a "bioprogram."

I make the case in this talk that language is not innate. What seems to be innate in humans is what Aristotle referred to as the "social instinct" or what contemporary researchers refer to as the "interactional instinct." Language is a cultural tool that has been invented at least once in the history of our species to solve the problem of communication created by the social instinct.