The Role of Communication Structure in the Progressive Evolution of Grammar

Martin Edwardes

University of East London

martin.edwardes@btopenworld.com

Grammar is more than just order and hierarchy; it is a way of expressing
complex multidimensional schemas in a one-dimensional medium.  The need
to communicate these complex schemas is the concern of language, but
their structure is the concern of grammar.  While it is impossible to
have a speech-grammar without language, it is possible for the
structural elements of a grammar to be prototyped as aspects of other
mental functions.  These can then be exapted when the needs of language
arise.  So the genesis of language and the genesis of grammar do not
necessarily need to be considered as a single process. 

Language has a similar, but not identical, structure to that of general
communication; in particular, the components that typify language and
general communication form comparable sets, and they link together in
analogous ways.  The components of general communication establish the
structure of communication that surrounds the message, while the
components of language establish the structure within the message. 

The general communication components are sender, receiver, message and
referent.  Grammatically, the sender is always "me", the first person,
the receiver is always "you", the second person, and the referent is
always "it", the third person.  These roles are invariable in all
communication, including language.  Because the sender and the receiver
in any call are always "me" and "you", there is no need for them to be
explicit in the communication signal.  The signal has to express only
the referent -– a single unsegmented call will suffice.  The specific
action to be undertaken by the receiver in the presence of this referent
is also implicit in the signal. 

The components of a language construct are subject, verb and object. 
These have many names to reflect their different productive roles in
language, but they all reflect the same trichotomy: one thing affects,
or is related to, another.  In this paper they will be referred to as
instigator, action and recipient, and together they form the set of
components within the message. 

Non-language communication is almost exclusively characterised by
unsegmented calls.  The sender of the message is also the instigator
within the message, and the receiver of the message is also the
recipient within the message.  In addition, the action in the message
co-identifies with the referent of the message: the referent is both the
cause of the message itself and of the action that the receiver carries
out. 

In the change from general communication to language, the instigator
became dislocated from the sender and the recipient from the receiver. 
Additionally, the action and the referent also became dislocated.  So,
in language, we can produce propositions which: identify two things;
allocate instigator and recipient roles to those things; and demonstrate
the effect one thing has on the other.  Although the sender remains "me"
and the receiver remains "you", the instigator and recipient are no
longer limited, and their roles can be taken by anything that can be
reified.  Speech-grammar also allows language to link the
referent/action relationship to the instigator/action/recipient
relationship without resorting to a two-dimensional model: a single
stream of speech remains sufficient. 

This paper will look in detail at the relationship between the
components of general communication and those of language.  The order of
the dislocations given above will be examined, and an incremental
approach to grammar genesis will be proposed.  The relationship of the
model to protolanguages (Bickerton, Pinker, Wray) will be considered,
and the implications of this model for Universal Grammar will also be
assessed.