The authors contend that "the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT) ...greatly eases the explanatory burden for evolutionary analysis, since virtually all of the antecedent 'machinery' for language is presumed to have been present long before the human species appeared." Consequently, the "only thing lacking for language would be merge, some specific way to externalize the internal computations [involved in language] and, importantly, the 'atomic conceptual elements' that we have identified with words." In short, "evolutionary analysis can thus be focused on this quite narrowly defined phenotypic property, merge itself, as the chief bridge between the ancestral and modern states for language." In other words, by adopting the SMT, we have a relatively simple explanation for the emergence of human language in evolutionary terms.
My response to this would be--not so fast! What about those "'atomic conceptual elements' that we have identified with words"? Where did they come from? As I have argued in previous postings, when talking about the putative evolution of human language, we need to keep in mind an important insight about the nature of language made by the linguistic theorist Ferdinand de Saussure--namely, that the relationship between ideas and the words used to express them is completely arbitrary (with the exception perhaps of onomatopoetic words that imitate a sound associated with an idea). For example, there is no particular reason why a certain four-legged animal should be called dog in English, chien in French, or gou in Chinese. If the relationship between words and the ideas they express is arbitrary, then there is no reason why anyone should understand what I mean by the word dog or chien--unless there is a common understanding between us as to the meaning of such a word. However, how could we have a common understanding of the word? It seems to me that there are only two possibilities--either we have come to an agreement as to the meaning of a particular word or we already have the same word linked to the same idea in our minds. The first possibility would require communication between individuals in order for them to come to agreement--in other words, language, which consists of words. That is to say, it would require words in order to come to agreement about the meaning of words. So where would those words come from? This scenario seems inevitably circular. The second possibility would avoid the need to come to a consensus about the meaning of words, but it fails to explain how two or more individuals came to have the same word associated with the same concept in their minds.
In short, there is a logical problem with any evolutionary explanation of the origin of human language. Even if we can explain the hierarchical nature of language by invoking a "single repeatable operation"--merge--we still have the problem of explaining where the words on which merge operates came from. On the other hand, if we assume that human beings have had from the beginning had a capacity for language--a viewpoint consistent with the idea that human beings were created--then no such problem exists. Thus, once again, I would argue that it seems more likely that language is a gift from the Creator than the result of some random process of evolution.
Image from thedeconstruction.org