academia | Abstract: For the past two decades, it has widely been assumed by
linguists that there is a single computational operation, Merge, which
is unique to language, distinguishing it from other cognitive domains.
The intention of this paper is to progress the discussion of language
evolution in two ways: (i) survey what the ethological record reveals
about the uniqueness of the human computational system, and (ii)
explore how syntactic theories account for what ethology may determine
to be human-specific. It is shown that the operation Label, not Merge,
constitutes the evolutionary novelty which distinguishes human language
from non-human computational systems; a proposal lending weight to a
Weak Continuity Hypothesis and leading to the formation of what is
termed Computational Ethology. Some directions for future ethological
research are suggested.
Keywords: Minimalism; Labeling effects; cognome; animal cognition; formal language theory; language evolution
