The Evolution of Language
The Evolution of Language
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04423.x
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发表时间：
2009-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Corballis, Michael C.
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文献类型：
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作者：
Corballis, Michael C.
语言，无论是口语还是手语，都可以被视为一种手势系统，是从灵长类动物大脑中所谓的镜像系统进化而来的。在非人灵长类动物中，手势系统在产生和感知手动动作方面发展得很好，特别是涉及抓握物体的传递行为。古人类两足行走的出现，解放了双手，使之能够适应镜像系统，以进行交流，最初是通过模仿事件来进行不及物行为。随着大约200万年前人属的出现，更复杂的交流和词汇量增加的压力导致了手势的惯例化，标志性表示的丧失，以及逐渐转向语音手势取代手动手势-尽管符号语言仍然由手动和面部手势组成。与符号的约定化并行的是，语言在语法上变得复杂，这可能是由情景记忆和心理时间旅行的进化所驱动的，这涉及到熟悉元素的组合--谁对谁做了什么，何时，何地，为什么？因此，语言适应了让我们分享情节结构，无论是过去的，计划的，还是虚构的，从而增加了生存适应性。
Language, whether spoken or signed, can be viewed as a gestural system, evolving from the so-called mirror system in the primate brain. In nonhuman primates the gestural system is well developed for the productions and perception of manual action, especially transitive acts involving the grasping of objects. The emergence of bipedalism in the hominins freed the hands for the adaptation of the mirror system for intransitive acts for communication, initially through the miming of events. With the emergence of the genus Homo from some 2 million years ago, pressures for more complex communication and increased vocabulary size led to the conventionalization of gestures, the loss of iconic representation, and a gradual shift to vocal gestures replacing manual ones-although signed languages are still composed of manual and facial gestures. In parallel with the conventionalization of symbols, languages gained grammatical complexity, perhaps driven by the evolution of episodic memory and mental time travel, which involve combinations of familiar elements-Who did what to whom, when, where, and why? Language is thus adapted to allow us to share episodic structures, whether past, planned, or fictional, and so increase survival fitness.