Just
a few points. Marko seems to be using "social construction" as something close
to fictitious. I never said language is a social construction, but I also
don't see social constructions as fictitious. IMHO, social constructions are
material and almost never exist without institutions, physical structures,
practices, etc.
As
for language, it's one material practice. To say that language distinguishes
humans from other animals is to ignore all other distinctly human
characteristics. It's also to ignore those animals that have the rudiments of
language.
The
cognitive revolution, if I understand it correctly, is simply based on the
notion that the capacity for language is innate. To make a leap from here to
saying it's the one thing that distinguishes humans from other species is
illogical. Other animals may have similar, if less developed, capacities, and
humans may have other relatively unique capacities. It seems to me that to
maintain that language is what defines humans as humans, one would have to
show that only humans have a capacity for language and that it's the
only thing that is uniquely human.
Human language is historical, at least if we allow for humanity being
more than about 10,000 years old. Writing did not come into being until about
10,000 years ago, and then it took about another 5,000 years for the first
alphabets to appear. My understanding of the literature on prehistoric humans
(i.e., prior to c.10,000 years ago) is that their use of language evolved
over time. If we follow Engels and others (this is not my area, but I believe
there are people working in this field that maintain that) language evolved as
human practices (coordinated hunting, kinship systems, etc.)
evolved.
I would
like to make a few points in conclusion. In this post Marshall see's no
problem in the claim that the language faculty is an innate human endowment,
"the cognitive revolution, if I understand it correctly, is simply based on
the notion that the capacity for language is innate". Note that this directly
contradicts the claim that was made in his previous post
"2. Many distinctly human characteristics,
including language, are geo-historical. They are not invariant human
characteristics".
In this post however he accepts
the claim that the language faculty is innate that is it is a
"invariant human characteristic".
The other claims I think are
equally misguided. To say that the language faculty is an innate human
characterstic, and only a human characterstic, is not to say that the language
faculty is the only think that is uniquely human.
Given this the argument presented
here is fallacious. Also Marshall is confusing "writing" with "talking". I
have met illiterate people with whom I have had in depth and interesting
discussions with on the state of play in world cricket!
Marko.