Giulia Palazzolo

Is syntax an evolutionary novelty in the human lineage? This question, along with the question of how human syntax evolved, is highly debated in the field of language evolution. In this paper, I reconstruct two prominent frameworks for studying the evolution of human syntax, which I call “unbounded hierarchy” (Bolhuis et al. 2018 in PLoS Biol 16(6):e2005157, 2018. 10.1371/journal.pbio.2005157) and “compositional semantics” (Townsend et al. 2018 in PLoS Biol 16(8):e2006425, 2018. 10.1371/journal.pbio.2006425). I argue that both frameworks face problems when it comes to explaining the evolution of human syntax. Considering these problems, as well as empirical evidence of hierarchy in nonhuman animals, I provide an alternative framework for studying the evolution of human syntax, which I call “bounded hierarchy”. The bounded hierarchy framework that I propose traces the evolutionary origins of human syntax to simpler forms of bounded hierarchy that may be present in extant nonhuman animals.

Is syntax an evolutionary novelty in the human lineage? This question, along with the question of how human syntax evolved, is highly debated in the field of language evolution. In this paper, I reconstruct two prominent frameworks for studying the evolution of human syntax, which I call “unbounded hierarchy” (Bolhuis et al. 2018) and “compositional semantics” (Townsend et al. 2018). I argue that both frameworks face problems when it comes to explaining the evolution of human syntax. Considering these problems, as well as empirical evidence of hierarchy in nonhuman animals, I provide an alternative framework for studying the evolution of human syntax, which I call “bounded hierarchy”. The bounded hierarchy framework that I propose traces the evolutionary origins of human syntax to simpler forms of bounded hierarchy that may be present in extant nonhuman animals.

It is a common intuition that animals communicate among themselves and even with us humans. But what is animal communication? Our intuition suggests that we can apply the same concept of communication to both animals and humans. But is there a theoretical account of communication that can vindicate this intuition? And if there is, what is the payoff of such an account? These are the questions that I address in this paper. I argue that vindicating the intuition that animals communicate like humans do is more challenging than one might initially think. I show that the dominant accounts of animal and human communication in the literature (i.e. biological, information and Gricean) are neither designed nor able to vindicate this intuition. I then derive two basic constraints on what should count as a plausible Maximally Unified Account of animal and human communication (MUA), i.e. an account that is able to vindicate the intuition, discussing two accounts that meet these conditions: Millikan’s theory of intentional signs (2004; 2017) and Green’s theory of organic meaning (2019). Finally, I assess the utility of an MUA such as Millikan’s and Green’s in the studies of animal and human communication.

Reference is a basic feature of human language. A much debated question in the scholarship on animal communication and language evolution is whether traces of the human capacity for reference can be found in animals too. Do animals refer to things with their signals in the manner that humans do? Or is reference something that is unique to human communication? Answers to these questions have shifted significantly over the years and remain contentious. In this paper, I start by reconstructing and critically analysing three influential discussions of the ways in which animal signals refer: the theory of functional reference (Marler, Evans and Hauser, 1992), Wheeler and Fischer (2012)’s meaning attribution framework, and Scarantino (2013)’s revised definition of functional reference. I show that functional reference, both in its traditional and revised version, as well as the meaning attribution framework, fail to adequately characterise animal reference as an evolutionary precursor of linguistic reference. This is because they all overlook at least some aspects of the psychology of signal production. Nonetheless, drawing on Crockford et al. (2012, 2017), I show that we can plausibly interpret chimpanzees’ alert hoos as a case of intentional, human-like animal reference.