THE ROLE OF RITUAL IN THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE AND THE EMERGENCE OF RECURSION

Emily Davis

Abstract: Human language presents a unique conjunction of referential and structural properties, the combined evolution of which is hard to account for. Here we synthesize older linguistic theories on the ritual origins of language with newer experimental results to present an exaptive account of both referential and structural aspects of language (particularly center- embedding) in ritual contexts. We discuss our current ongoing work using iterated learning tasks to elucidate the conditions under which novel center-embedded structures emerge, and conclude with a more general proposal for closer coordination of the language evolution research interests of anthropologists, ethologists, biologists and linguists in the study of ritual.