Joe Dees <joedees@addall.com> Wrote:
>incremental expansions of linguistic competence, being a social skill, possess no survival
>value in the absence of interlocuters
I don't follow. If I'm even a little bit better than most of my fellow beings at communicating my
mental state to others and at understanding their mental state then I will find it a little bit easier
than most at finding a mate and avoiding fights I can't win. If I know a language nobody else
does then yes, it's of no use to me, but if I have language skills nobody else does it is
useful to me. For example, dogs have no language skills but we do and are able to
communicate our wishes to them well enough to train them.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:12 MDT