How (and why) languages became more complex as we evolved more prosocial: the human self-domestication view

Abstract

This paper aims to re-examine the problem of the emergence of present-day languages from the specific perspective of the self-domestication account of human evolution. According to this view, our species went through an evolutionary process that parallels the changes experienced by domesticated mammals. Relying on evidence of diverse kind (from paleogenetic to clinical), the paper argues that our self-domestication might have potentiated the cognitive and behavioral features of the human phenotype with an impact on language acquisition and use. Specifically, it might have facilitated the creation of the cultural niche that favors the complexification of languages via a cultural mechanism. The paper further proposes a model of language complexification in the past under the effects of human self-domestication, including the complexification of the structural aspects of language (grammar, prosody, and semantics) and the potentiation of its functional properties (pragmatics). The paper concludes with some suggestions for any future research aimed to test and improve this view.

Keywords: aggression; human self-domestication; language evolution; language structural complexity; language uses; prehistory.

Figure 1

The expected links between human behavior and cognition (including our linguisticality), the languages we speak and the uses we give to them, and the physical and the social environments in which we live (own elaboration).

Figure 2

An outline of the evolution of grammar under the effect of HSD (reproduced from Benítez-Burraco and Progovac, 2020, Figure 1).

Figure 3

An outline of the evolution of prosody under the effect of HSD (reproduced from Benítez-Burraco and Elvira-García, 2023, Figure 2).