From primate to human in two easy steps

Abstract

Several properties unique to human language arguably derive from 'Duality': two superimposed combinatorial systems, phonology and syntax. flowever, the discreteness in both systems is generally overlooked. Syntax, a human language 'trademark,' is strangely based on exactly those discrete categories plausibly present in primate vision, possibly primate cognition's only discrete categories. A first evolutionary step projected these discrete categories out of the 'here and now' into a computational screen. A second step dissociated the phonology atoms from meaning, leading to large lexicons and referential displacement.