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Abstract

It has long been claimed that Homo sapiens is the only species that has symbolic language, but only recently recognized that humans also have an unusual pattern of growth and development. Social mammals have two stages of pre-adult development: infancy and juvenility. Humans have two additional prolonged and pronounced life history stages: childhood---an interval of four years extending between infancy and the juvenile period that follows---and adolescence---a stage of about eight years that stretches from juvenility to adulthood. We begin by reviewing the primary biological and linguistic changes occurring in each of the four preadult ontogenetic stages in life history. Then we attempt to trace the evolution of childhood and juvenility in our hominid ancestors. We propose that several different forms of selection applied in infancy and childhood; and that in adolescence, elaborated vocal behaviors played a role in courtship and intrasexual competition, enhancing fitness and ultimately integrating performative and pragmatic skills with linguistic knowledge in a broad faculty of language. A theoretical consequence of our proposal is that fossil evidence of the uniquely human stages may be used, with other findings, to date the emergence of language. If important aspects of language cannot appear until sexual maturity, as we propose, then a second consequence is that the development of language requires the whole of modern human ontogeny. Our life history model thus offers new ways of investigating, and thinking about, the evolution, development, and ultimately the nature of human language.

Keywords: adolescence, childhood, development, evolution, infancy, juvenility, language, life history, modularity, speech

@article{locke05lifeHistoryBBS,
  author={John L. Locke and Barry Bogin},
  title={Language and life history: A new perspective on the development and evolution of human language},
  journal={Behavioral and Brain Sciences},
  year={2006},
  volume={29},
  pages={259-280},
  doi={10.1017/S0140525X0600906X},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/locke05lifeHistoryBBS.html},
  keywords={adolescence, childhood, development, evolution, infancy, juvenility, language, life history, modularity, speech}
}

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