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There is the tooling hypothesis, i.e. that the ability to build tools also brought the need to communicate how to build the tools. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

There is the tooling hypothesis, i.e. that the ability to build tools also brought the need to communicate how to build the tools. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5774752/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5774752/ https://www.wired.com/2013/09/tools-and-language/ https://www.wired.com/2013/09/tools-and-language/ The structure of steps in a process necessitated structured grammar and thought. US philosopher Daniel Dennett is a proponent of language-as-debugging. Our rational faculty was an emergent property of evaluating statements. Errors provoke laughter as a debugging response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor#Detection_of_mistaken_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor#Detection_of... Notable comedian George Carlin demonstrated a real genius for debugging language. His piece about the progression from "shell-shock" to PTSD is a good example. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246642/characters/nm0137506 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246642/characters/nm0137506

mickdarling 5y ago
I like the idea proposed by I think Larry Niven the SF author, that speech started as a way to bypass and augment the corpus callosum so the two hemispheres of the brain could get more in sync, and provide a way of organizing, "do this, then do that, then 'be careful here' swing the rock and release." Think about the internal focus you have when doing something carefully and how you talk yourself through it, from carpentry to skiing. Using the same verbalizations, when showing someone else the same thing, evolves to language.