How did we "get" language?

Noam Chomsky is one of the clearest proponents of an innate position with respect to the question of how children how able to so easily acquire a first language.

Steven Pinker (1994) provided a best seller that brought these ideas to the general public. Near the end of the book, Pinker devotes a chapter that introduces some ideas about how we came to acquire such an innate disposition.

He points out that this is a complex question, with many contributing factors. A subtle combination of heredity and the environment results in the development of additional innate psychological mechanisms, including the ability to learn, which in turn affects our behavior. This is a never ending feedback loop.

Deacon has addressed the issue of the co-evolution of language and the brain in much greater detail. For Deacon, the issue is not why children can learn language so easily, but why there are no simple languages, suitable for other forms of life.

This parallels a rather recent development, the emergence of a new perspective within psychology, known as evolutionary psychology. The emphasis is on the co-evolution of biology and psychology.

We are indeed unique: we are the only species capable of symbolic processing. And the dominant form of such symbolic processing is language.