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Darwinian Explanations of the Origin of Language

michelheijdra@gmail.com Since the publication 150 years ago of the Origin of Species, Darwin’s work has invaded many branches of science. However, those invasions remain a field of hefty debate. This is also the case for evolutionary accounts of the origin of language. The problem of the origin of language can and has to be viewed from at least two sides: the origin of language abilities (speech organs, neurological mechanisms behind language use) and the origin of (proto-)linguistic forms (sounds and sound patterns, words, syntactical structure). The former fall more in the realm of biology, the latter in the realm of culture, but any complete explanation of the origin of language will have to consider both and their entanglement. This dissertation tries to encompass both sides by applying the Darwinian dual inheritance theory to this problem.