Boeckx Cedric
Section of General Linguistics, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Institute of Complex Systems, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Front Neurosci. 2023 Feb 9;17:1080861. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1080861. eCollection 2023.
This paper makes three interconnected claims: (i) the "human condition" cannot be captured by evolutionary narratives that reduce it to a recent 'cognitive modernity', nor by narratives that eliminates all cognitive differences between us and out closest extinct relatives, (ii) signals from paleogenomics, especially coming from deserts of introgression but also from signatures of positive selection, point to the importance of mutations that impact neurodevelopment, plausibly leading to temperamental differences, which may impact cultural evolutionary trajectories in specific ways, and (iii) these trajectories are expected to affect the language phenotypes, modifying what is being learned and how it is put to use. In particular, I hypothesize that these different trajectories influence the development of symbolic systems, the flexible ways in which symbols combine, and the size and configurations of the communities in which these systems are put to use.
（i）“人类状况”既无法通过将其简化为近期“认知现代性”的进化叙事来捕捉，也无法通过消除我们与已灭绝的近亲之间所有认知差异的叙事来捕捉；（ii）古基因组学的信号，尤其是来自基因渗入空白区域的信号以及正选择的特征，表明影响神经发育的突变很重要，这可能会导致气质差异，而气质差异可能以特定方式影响文化进化轨迹；（iii）这些轨迹预计会影响语言表型，改变所学内容以及使用方式。特别是，我假设这些不同的轨迹会影响符号系统的发展、符号组合的灵活方式，以及使用这些系统的社群的规模和结构。
