Glottogenesis As a Result of Self-Organization

One of the most important aspects for the understanding of evolution (including the evolution of communication systems that led to the emergence of human language) is the attention to possible intermediate stages on the way from the ancestral state to the novel one. This work attempts to demonstrate that there is no need for catastrophic evolutionary jumps even for such large-scale evolutionary gains as human language: to explain them, it is sufficient to recognize the principle whereby quantitative changes are transformed into qualitative ones. Intermediary stages are possible even for the features of the all-or-nothing kind: the feature may be manifested only in a certain percent of individuals, or only at specific moments, or may, not being innate, easily arise under convenient circumstances. Adaptivity of intermediary stages of glottogenesis comes from the fact that the basic selective factor is not the ability to produce communicative signals but the ability to interpret any aspects of conspecifics’ behavior, even if they are not intended to convey information. On this basis, under suitable evolutionary conditions, organisms, adapted to such an interpretation, form language in the process of self-organization. Forced from forests into open landscapes due to climate change, omnivorous social primates began to notice such elements of conspecifics’ behavior that allowed them to choose a behavioral program in a given situation more effectively. The number of behavioral programs increased as hominins began to make tools, use fire and then moved to colder climatic zones. Therefore, the number of worth-noting details of the environment increased as well. This produced an ever-growing demand for signals that helped to distinguish relevant features of environment, and that propelled the brain growth facilitating an increase in the amount of signals not only in the overall repertoire but also in individual utterances. This feedback loop leads to the growing percentage of the population members able to produce and comprehend distinct signals, produce several signals per utterance and combine their meanings, and also to modify the already existing signals in order to express a new meaning and understand such new meaning effectively. When this percentage is close to 100%, the glottogenesis may be considered completed.