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But it is important to keep in mind that the trigger for natural selection would have been the cultural invention of language forms, arguably initially simple and sparse, and later more and more complex, and the response of the communities to such innovations. As pointed out above, the cultural aspects of language (evolution) are not in doubt: the perpetual change of language features; the competition among a variety of language constructions; and the cultural transmission of language.We understand those aspects of language very well, due to the extensive work of historical linguists, sociolinguists, typologists, linguists working on grammaticalization, psycholinguists, etc. But the question that we do not have (m)any answers to so far is the question of the genetic basis for language, how it came to be, and how natural selection would have contributed to establishing such a genetic basis. We cannot avoid this question if we want to get answers about the ultimate origins of language and its genetic basis.
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