Derek Bickerton

Abstract

The study of the evolution of music may have something to learn from the study

of the evolution of language,although most of the lessons may be of a negative

kind.A variety of factors have impeded the study of language evolution:lack of

interest among linguists,the consequent predominance in the field of researchers

largely ignorant of linguistics,excessive concentration on selection pressures

rather than on the genetic variation that alone permits those pressures to yield

results,the mistaken belief that evolution requires dogmatic faith in gradualness,

and the belief that evolutionary continuity between humans and other creatures

entails direct linkage between human and antecedent nonhuman traits.The

extent to which biomusicologists can learn from these mistakes will depend in

part on the extent to which language and music truly resemble one another,and

the search for genuine universals of music that are not shared with other species

should play a significant part in such comparisons.

Interest in the origins of language goes back a good deal farther than

interest in the origins of music.The latter is not new,but did not really

begin until after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Interest in language origins,however,goes back at least as far as the

Pharaoh Psamtik (Psammetichus to the Greeks) who,3,000 years ago,

isolated two neonates with a deaf shepherd in the hope that the language

they eventually acquired would represent the earliest form of human

language

Given this very considerable time depth,it would be nice to be able

to say that the topic was by now fairly well understood and that the

framework of theory and evidence constructed over the years should

prove of considerable assistance to those investigating the origins of

music.But,regrettably,this is not the case.On the contrary,the history

of the field consists of a series of false starts and blind alleys;if it has

anything to offer,biomusicology may be able to learn from language

origins studies some of the things that,if possible,it should try notto do.

One common problem that tends to loom large in negative evalua-

tions is the absence of fossil evidence.Neither words nor notes fossilize,

and nor,save in vanishingly rare cases,do the brains that produce them.

This,at least in the case of language,led more than one commentator

to conclude that the origins of language can never be known.Even

the author of a work entitled Biological Foundations of Language

(Lenneberg 1967) concluded that it was impossible to find out how

those foundations came into existence,no matter how impressive the

evidence that such foundations did indeed exist.In 1866 the Linguistic

Society of Paris passed a resolution excluding from its meetings any

papers that dealt with language origins,and even in the last decade at

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Can Biomusicology Learn from Language Evolution Studies?