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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 18, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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How can we detect when language emerged?

Ian Tattersall1

  • 1American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, 10024, USA. iant@amnh.org.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|July 3, 2016
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The origins of human language are traced to symbolic cognition, emerging with Homo sapiens around 200,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence suggests language invention later spurred symbolic behaviors, distinguishing modern humans.

Keywords:
Language evolutionOrigin of Homo sapiensSpeech evolutionSymbolic cognition

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Anthropology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Archaeology

Background:

  • The evolutionary origins of human language remain debated due to reliance on indirect archaeological evidence.
  • Prior to writing, language evolution must be inferred from material culture proxies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To argue that archaeological proxies best reflect the symbolic cognitive system from which language emerges.
  • To propose a timeline for the biological and behavioral development of language in human phylogeny.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of archaeological records for symbolic objects and behaviors.
  • Inference of cognitive and linguistic capacities from material culture.
  • Reconstruction of hominid evolutionary and developmental pathways.

Main Results:

  • Symbolic objects and behaviors appear late in the archaeological record, within Homo sapiens.
  • The biological basis for modern cognition and language likely arose around 200,000 years ago in Africa.
  • The material record suggests a ~100,000-year gap between biological potential and its release via language invention.

Conclusions:

  • Modern human symbolic cognition and language represent a qualitative leap, distinct from earlier hominid communication.
  • The spontaneous invention of language likely acted as a behavioral stimulus, driving symbolic thought.
  • Archaeological evidence supports language emerging from, and subsequently enhancing, symbolic cognitive systems.