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...thoughts the present and the nonpresent. Many nonhuman animals have signaling systems to attract mates, locate food, and warn each other about predators, but they cannot combine these signals hierarchically to create new, meaningful communications in any other context.
Not only are nonhuman groups unable to invent a communication system like human language spontaneously, but, despite arduous attempts, they cannot be taught one either (even a potentially accessible one, like a system produced with the hands). Chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest primate relatives, are able to learn the words of the system but not the underlying or surface structures that organize those words. Moreover, they use those words only to make requests (of humans), and not to make comments about the world around them. In contrast, when exposed to a language, human children acquire that language without any explicit instruction at all. Indeed, human children are arguably the best language learners around, arriving at more complex and complete linguistic systems than do older learners.
But can human children invent language? Language was clearly invented at some point in the past and then transmitted from generation to generation. Was it a one-time invention, requiring just the right assembly of factors, or is language so central to being human that it can be invented anew by each generation? This is a question that seems impossible to answer--today's children do not typically have the opportunity to invent a language, as they are all exposed from birth to the language of their community. The only way to address the question is to find children who have not been exposed to a...
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