Origins of language?

Yesterday in class we had a question about what linguists might know about the origins of human language and just this morning this article from Science Daily came to my attention. While the study it references doesn't necessarily answer definitively, it is an interesting addition to the discussion and is very much connected to the questions we'll be asking throughout this course.

Language Driven By Culture, Not Biology, Study Shows

Language in humans has evolved culturally rather than genetically, according to a study by UCL (University College London) and US researchers. By modelling the ways in which genes for language might have evolved alongside language itself, the study showed that genetic adaptation to language would be highly unlikely, as cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes. Thus, the biological machinery upon which human language is built appears to predate the emergence of language.

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