The Siege of Paris

Robert Berwick & Noam Chomsky

Linguistics / Critical Essay / Vol. 4, No. 3

In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris issued a stern injunction: “The Society does not accept any communication concerning either the origin o
linguistics.2 William Jones, a British judge in India, and Jacob Grimm, the author of a collection of morbid German fairy tales, were among the p
external features of individual languages, rather than on the origin of language as a cognitive faculty; and it was conducted, as Sylvain Auroux ha
notes, are not hypotheses, a term that should be “reserved for assertions that can be tested.”4

The human language faculty is a species-specific property, with no known group differences and little variation. There are no significant analogue
multicellular animals requiring reproductive isolation, and species specificity is both widespread and expected according to conventional evolutio

Why only us? Why indeed.

That the language faculty comprises a distinctive human phenotype was not recognized in nineteenth-century historical and philological research
Tinbergen’s The Study of Instinct and Konrad Lorenz’s articles from the previous decade.6 Tinbergen and Lorenz thought in terms of complex inn
geese to maternal geese models. Each species comes equipped with a sophisticated, distinctive, developmental and behavioral repertoire, which is

It was in 1967 that Lenneberg published his important treatise, Biological Foundations of Language. He focused a biological lens on nearly the w
developmental biology.”9 He was careful to observe that while “[t]he endowment [for language] has a genetic foundation,” it does not follow that

Contemporary species are discontinuous groups (except for those in the process of branching) with discontinuous communication behavior

Lenneberg anticipated the difficulties inherent in any evolutionary explanation of human language:

Another recent practice is to give speculative accounts of just how, why, and when human language developed … Most speculations on the
selection pressures were or in what order they came, because we know too little that is securely established by hard evidence about the ecol
some of which must be quite incidental to the selective process.12

Lenneberg’s scruples were catholic. He observed that current generative grammars were not yet sophisticated enough to serve as the foundation f
adequately … A totally adequate calculus has not yet been discovered.”13

For these reasons, no sensible evolutionary analysis of the origin of language could be carried out until the 1990s. By then, the minimalist program
hierarchically structured expressions. This is the basic property (BP) of language. Every structured expression has a definite semantic interpretatio
to which Tinbergen, Lorenz, and Lenneberg called attention. The advent of sophisticated machine learning techniques has only served to justify th

As of 2016, a rough rule of thumb is that a supervised deep learning algorithm will generally achieve acceptable performance with around

Whatever else children may be doing when acquiring their native language, they are not consulting ten million labeled examples.

Discoveries in genomics and cognitive biology have served to refine and buttress our conclusions. Much of the speculation about the timing and b
evidence for its evolution by natural selection.16 In Why Only Us, we argued against the thesis that FOXP2 is the gene for language. FOXP2 funct
demonstrated that many of the systems for vocal learning and production must have been in place before the emergence of language.17 This follow
specific DNA and amino acid variations matched those of Neanderthals or Denisovans but not other non-human primates. They found no evidenc
“appear to be related to language.”20 Atkinson et al. accept “the extensive functional evidence supporting FOXP2’s important role in the neurolog

Language production is a matter of externalization.

How far back does language go? There is no evidence of significant symbolic activity before the appearance of anatomically modern humans 200
the earliest known drawings, were executed by anatomically modern humans. In 2018, Dirk Hoffman et al. claimed to have found cave art in Spa
Ludovic Slimak et al., this is a date “much more consistent with the archaeological background in hand.”25

Recent genomic work has refined our claims about symbolic activity. The emergence of language occurred earlier than we thought, and certainly
genomically separated from other human populations.26 The San are alive today; their ancestors presumably shared the human language faculty. T
languages have a unique feature, a rich repertoire of clicks.27 He concludes that the language faculty emerged with Homo sapiens, or shortly there
Not everyone has welcomed these conclusions. Yet in his review of Why Only Us, Cedric Boeckx, one of our critics, sometimes finds himself on
and W. Tecumseh Fitch termed recursion.29 Boeckx is mistaken. We described the BP as a basic property, one among others. Quite in addition, Bo
to bridge the gap between mind and brain, and, in particular, [from] ongoing work with animal models.” Birdsong has also escaped our notice, alo
within a given cell. His concerns are misplaced. Why Only Us discussed the idea of an interactome extensively.31 At the first Evolution of Langua
Merge; it was a hypothesis linked to details about avian neurobiology and FOXP2.

Recent work continues to point to the role played by FOXP2 in the sequential ordering of motor gestures, but without identifying its adaptive role
humans. This is the suggestion made by Christopher Petkov’s research group, among several others.32 From this standpoint, the involvement of F

For all that, the chasm between phenotype, algorithm, and neural implementation remains just that—a chasm. We do not yet understand the space
in neural terms is needed,” Boeckx observes, and this description “must then be related to genes.”33 This is unassailable. Such a description is nee
scientific challenges, one more thing that we cannot yet puzzle out.34

Birds sing and humans speak; it is irresistibly tempting to see a connection. “This is an area,” Boeckx remarks, “where work linking genetics and

Thanks in part to comparative and neurophysiological and genomic studies of songbirds, the biological basis for vocal learning is well on th
bootstrapped from perhaps 100–200 genes (Pfenning et al. 2014).36

Why Only Us cites a long list of recent research results, including well-regarded surveys and analyses written by Berwick and various birdsong ex
toolkit for building vocal learners, one aligned with neurological wiring. To have understood this is surely progress. With the externalization appa

On this, Boeckx agrees with us.

In their survey article, Hayley Mountford and Dianne Newbury conclude that

The theory that the presence of [the] ‘humanised’ FOXP2 gene in Neanderthals drove language ability is naive and overly simplistic. FOXP
[in] language development in modern humans.38

Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall concur:

Both the neural capacity for language, and the anatomical apparatus needed to express it, result from some profound changes in major deve

In his own contribution, Boeckx, along with Pedro Tiago Martins and Maties Marí, observes that SRGAP2C is involved in axon guidance and is f

On this, we agree with Boeckx.

Gene duplication of this sort, according to Boeckx and his colleagues, “may have contributed to the establishment of a critical aspect of the vocal

It remains true that we do not have a soup-to-nuts, or gene-to-neural-circuit-to-phenotype account for any trait of interest, let alone the BP.42 Even
human and nonhuman primates. This makes sense. Known protein differences between humans and nonhuman primates are small. A few years ag
their basic goal of demonstrating that humanized mice did, indeed, display increased neocortical size when compared to chimpanzeed mice, “[w]
“a long and twisted road.”45

We would be the first to welcome progress on this front. Absent a more complete, concrete understanding of the space of genomic, developmenta
rewiring can sometimes result in a large transition. This is a point that Boeckx dismisses, although there is considerable evidence for major transi

The ability to process sequential information is shared across many vertebrate species—perhaps all. A slight alteration in the wiring of a simple s
structures. In our example, which is entirely notional, we assume that sequential processing is realized via a shift register, where information flow

Figure 1.
As data are input on the left, data that were in FF0 are transferred to the immediately succeeding register, FF1, and so forth for further registers.47
move the data to the left as well as to the right, popping the data off as well as pushing them down. We add wiring above this new diagram that sy

Figure 2.
The resulting circuit operates as a push-down stack. The moral of this example is evident: it does not take much to rewire a sequential processor.
produce such changes in neuronal structure.

There is no evidence that great apes, however sophisticated, have any of the crucial distinguishing features of language and ample evidence that t
systems.49 As for pragmatics, there are of course numerous similarities between us and other primates, for example, regarding turn taking and com
crucial distinguishing properties of human language.

One more word before we go. The basic computational operation of Merge, Boeckx argues, “is more complex than it sounds,” because it can be a
no better. “[Charles] Darwin’s explanatory logic,” Boeckx asserts, “conflicts with assertions that some species are unique.”51 It does nothing of th
to other insects. The conventional definition of animal species since Theodosius Dobzhansky and Hermann Muller requires the uniqueness of spe
Ronald Fisher. For Fisher, this led to a micromutational view. But this is only an empirical hypothesis.53 There is no necessary condition that evol
step in the adaptive walk of a single gene changing over time might actually have the largest phenotypic effect of all.54 Jordi Bascompte’s review

The book’s contents will strike many readers as novel. That is because in the past few years we have largely changed our views about the te
very rapidly.55
He then backs this viewpoint with a story: Thompson’s effort to describe Peter and Rosemary Grant’s pioneering work on Darwin’s Galapagos fin

Thompson notes that when he contacted the Grants for permission to use a modified version of a graph they had published a few years earli
timely account of our current understanding of adaptive evolution. Is there still anyone who thinks that evolution always proceeds slowly?5

Why only us? Why only us? Why only us? One question has three parts. They are precisely the appropriate ones to ask regarding the evolutionary

We were not, of course, the first to ask them. We echo in modern terms the Cartesian philosophers Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot, sevente
to express all that we can conceive, down to the innermost and “diverse movements of our souls.”

It remains for us to consider what is, in fact, one of the great spiritual advantages of human beings compared to other animals, and which is
which having nothing themselves in common with what is passing in our minds nonetheless permit us to express all our secrets, and which

Letters to the Editors

Biology and Culture in Language

by José-Luis Mendívil-Giró, reply by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky

A Slight Alteration

by Philip Pilkington, reply by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky

Unbounded Merge

by Anna Maria Di Sciullo, reply by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky

Tough Luck

by Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall, reply by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky

Progress Overlooked

by Pedro Tiago Martins, reply by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky

1. In the original French: “La Société n’admet aucune communication concernant, soit l’origine du langage, soit la création d’une langue universelle.”

2. Giorgio Graffi, “,” Linguie et Languaggio 1 (2005): 1–22.

3. Cited in Giorgio Graffi, “,” Linguie et Languaggio 1 (2005): 2. Sylvain Auroux, “La Question de l’origine des langues: ordres et raison du rejet inst

4. Richard Lewontin, “The Evolution of Cognition: Questions We Will Never Answer,” in An Invitation to Cognitive Science: Methods, Models, and C

5. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016). See, in particular, chapter 1, note
as discussed by Riny Huybregts and the references he cites. Note that the analogues or homologues in other species that do seem to exist, e.g., comm
what we called the Basic Property. Riny Huybregts, “,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 81, part B (2017): 279–94, doi:10.1016/j.neubiore

6. Niko Tinbergen, The Study of Instinct (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951).

7. Eric Lenneberg, ed., New Directions in the Study of Language (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964); Eric Lenneberg, “Language in the Light of Evol

8. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 5.

9. Eric Lenneberg, “,” Science, New Series 164, no. 3,880 (1969): 635.

10. Eric Lenneberg, “,” Science, New Series 164, no. 3,880 (1969): 638.

11. Eric Lenneberg, “,” Science, New Series 164, no. 3,880 (1969): 642.
12. Eric Lenneberg, “,” Science, New Series 164, no. 3,880 (1969): 642.

13. Eric Lenneberg, “,” Science, New Series 164, no. 3,880 (1969): 643.

14. Elisabetta Versace et al., “” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22, no. 11 (2018), doi:10.1016/j.tics.2018.07.005.

15. Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville, Deep Learning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 20.

16. Wolfgang Enard et al., “,” Nature 418, no. 6,900 (2002), doi:10.1038/nature01025.

17. Andreas Pfenning et al., “Convergent Transcriptional Specializations in the Brains of Humans and Song-Learning Birds,” Science 346, no. 6,215 (20

18. Elizabeth Atkinson et al., “No Evidence for Recent Selection at FOXP2 among Diverse Human Populations,” Cell 174, no. 6 (2018): 1,424–35, doi:

19. Atkinson et al. conclude that “there is no evidence that the original two amino-acid substitutions were targeted by a recent sweep limited to modern
is contrary to a suggestion in Wolfgang Enard et al., “,” Nature 418, no. 6,900 (2002), doi:10.1038/nature01025. In our own survey of the FOXP2 co
Opera in Three Acts,” Biolinguistics Conference, Venice, Italy (2007); Robert Berwick, “All You Need Is Merge,” The Biolinguistic Enterprise: New

20. Elizabeth Atkinson et al., “No Evidence for Recent Selection at FOXP2 among Diverse Human Populations,” Cell 174, no. 6 (2018): 1,424–35, doi:

21. Elizabeth Atkinson et al., “No Evidence for Recent Selection at FOXP2 among Diverse Human Populations,” Cell 174, no. 6 (2018): 1,424–35, doi:

22. In the endnotes that accompany his review (see Cedric Boeckx, “,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (2017), notes 32–36), Boeckx
than Homo sapiens. Zilhão is a particular enthusiast. As the main text notes, this field is remains open to conflicting views and its findings open to su
earlier date for the emergence of symbolic artifacts, up to five hundred thousand years ago.” While the title of the Joordens article states an apparent
speculation continues, and until unambiguously convincing evidence of symbolic activity antedating Blombos emerges, it would seem that to use sk

23. Christopher Henshilwood et al., “An Abstract Drawing from the 73,000-Year-Old Level at Blombos Cave, South Africa,” Nature 562, no. 7,725 (20

24. Dirk Hoffmann et al., “,” Science Advances 4, no. 2 (February 2, 2018), doi:10.1126/sciadv.aar5255.

25. Ludovic Slimak et al., “,’” Science 361, no. 1,371 (2018), doi:10.1126/science.aau1371. The bottom line for us is that unambiguous symbolic activit
populations by Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas et al., for example, supports a single out-of-Africa event at 60–104 kya, mean 72 kya, slightly earlier than is

26. See David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 201
doi:10.1038/ng.937. Stephan Schiffels and Richard Durbin, “,” Nature Genetics 46, no. 8 (2014): 919–25, doi:10.1038/ng.3015.

27. M. A. C. (Riny) Huybregts, “,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 81, part B (October 2017): 279–94, doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.041.

28. Cedric Boeckx, “,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (2017).

29. Marc Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, “” Science 298, no. 5,598 (2002): 1,569–79, doi:10.1126/science.298.5598.1569.

There has been much ado about an alleged demonstration that recursion is not a universal property of language, as has been assumed explicitly for si
language, lacks recursion. See Daniel Everett, “,” Current Anthropology 46, no. 4 (2005): 621–46, doi:10.1086/431525. If the claim were accurate, i
The speakers of Pirahã share the human language faculty, they speak Portuguese fluently, and the sources that Everett cites, and claims to refute, clea
number names beyond one, two, and many, yet readily show that they can handle Western currency quickly and fluently. This confusion between lan

30. Cedric Boeckx, “,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (2017).

31. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 42–45.

32. Benjamin Wilson et al., “,” Nature Communications 6, no. 8,901 (2015), doi:10.1038/ncomms9901.

33. Cedric Boeckx, “,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (2017).

34. This is emphasized in the fourth chapter of our book: Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA

35. Cedric Boeckx, “,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (2017).

36. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 12.

37. For another evolutionary and formal perspective on the linear, “non-recursive” nature of birdsong as distinct from hierarchically structured human la

38. Hayley Mountford and Dianne Newbury, “,” Journal of Language Evolution 3, no. 1 (2018): 58, doi:10.1093/jole/lzx019.

39. Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall, “,” Journal of Language Evolution 3, no. 1 (2018): 66, doi:10.1093/jole/lzx018.

40. Pedro Tiago Martins, Maties Marí, and Cedric Boeckx, “,” Journal of Language Evolution 3, no. 1 (2018), doi:10.1101/143248.

41. As Martins, Marí, and Boeckx note, this was first suggested in Mukta Chakraborty et al., “,” PLOS ONE 10, no. 6 (2015): e0118496, doi:10.1371/jo
 42. This is a point also made by Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall, along with Hayley Mountford, and Dianne Newbury, among others. Rob DeSalle and Ia

43. J. Lomax Boyd et al., “,” Current Biology 25, no. 6 (2015): 772–9, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.041.

44. Lucía Franchini and Katherine Pollard, “” Bioessays 37, no. 10 (2015): 1,059, doi:10.1002/bies.201500049.

45. Lucía Franchini and Katherine Pollard, “” Bioessays 37, no. 10 (October 2015): 1,059, doi:10.1002/bies.201500049.

46. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 159–64.

47. Note the two lines also running from left to right. One is a clock timer, absent in a continuous system like connected neurons that operate on very dif

48. See, for example, Charles Yang, “,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, no. 16 (2013): 6324–7, d
combinations, rather than acquiring a rule that could generate them. No humanlike combinatorial ability of this sort has been unambiguously demon

49. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 84–87.

50. Cedric Boeckx, “,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (2017).

51. Cedric Boeckx, “,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (2017).

52. Eric Lenneberg, “On Explaining Language,” Science 164, no. 3,880 (1969): 635–43.

53. For a discussion, see the first chapter of Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

54. John Thompson, Relentless Evolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

55. Jordi Bascompte, “Adaptation, Fast and Endless,” Science 341, no. 6,142 (2013): 130, doi:10.1126/science.1239702.

56. Jordi Bascompte, “Adaptation, Fast and Endless,” Science 341, no. 6,142 (July 12, 2013): 130, doi:10.1126/science.1239702.

57. In the original French:

Il nous reste à examiner ce qu’elle a de spirituel, qui fait l’un des plus grands avantages de l’homme au-dessus de tous les autres animaux, et
semblable en eux-mêmes à ce qui se passe dans notre esprit, ne laissent pas d’en découvrir aux autres tout le secret, et de faire entendre à ceu

Antoine Arnault and Claude Lancelot, Grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port-Royal (Paris: Munier, 1803), 270. First published in 1660. Translat

Published on March 1, 2019 in Volume 4, Issue 3.

More From This Author

The Galilean Challenge

On the human capacity for language.

( Linguistics / Critical Essay / Vol. 3, No. 1 )