ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 discusses some of the controversies regarding the origin and the nature of language.
Human language is the result of a long process of evolution in a Darwinian sense, but it is because of our cultural intelligence that we can conceptualize and organize our world. The ideas developed by Chomsky and Pinker concerning universal grammar and language-as-instinct cannot be taken for granted. Although language and thinking are clearly related, the hypothesis of linguistic determinism must be rejected.
The distinction between natural and artificial languages does not hold, as the examples of Esperanto, sign language, and Basic English reveal. A sign language is a natural language and the Deaf community can be understood as a unique minority linguistic group. Although Esperanto is an artificial language, there are speakers who use it as their natural language. The problem with Basic English is that it is not basic and not English.
We tend to think of language as human language. Yet animals have their own systems of communication, which are very similar to the way humans use language. We do not yet understand the full complexity of communication among animals and we should be more modest in our assumptions about the linguistic uniqueness of our own species.
