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Nature 434, 289 (17 March 2005) | doi:10.1038/434289a; Published online 16 March 2005
Language: Syntax for free?
Ricard Solé1
Abstract
Human language is based on syntax, a complex set of rules about how words can be combined. In theory, the emergence of syntactic communication might have been a comparatively straightforward process.
Language does not fossilize — for all that it was one of the great transitions in evolution1, the advent of language has left no obvious equivalent to fossil teeth and bones, and seems inaccessible to enquiry. But it is not hard to imagine the emergence of a set of signals to label objects, the combinatorial nature of which allowed an infinite repertoire of sentences to be constructed from a finite set of words.
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