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.