Book: Origin and Evolution of Languages
Chapter: Conceptualization, communication, and the origins of grammar
Blurb:
The purpose of this paper is to defend the position that the evolutionary roots of grammar lie in conceptual structure. Pre-humans possessed a rich conceptual structure representing predicates and their accompanying arguments. I postulate that the evolutionary ‘event’ that underlies human language was
the forging of a link between conceptual structures and the vocal output channel — in other words, the beginnings of grammar per se.