🚀 go-pugleaf

I thought this was worth repeating here for those who might want to
get hold of the original article. I think I'd take exception to the
idea that it's survived only as a "behavioral fossil" though, as even
the Italians show quite a bit of support for sign-supported speech,
and the various sign languages around the world are another.

http://www.americanscientist.org/articles/99articles/Corballis.html
American Scientist, March-April, Volume 87, No. 2
The Gestural Origins of Language

Human language may have evolved from manual gestures, which survive
today as a behavioral fossil coupled to speech.
Michael C. Corballis

Human language is one of the finest accomplishments of biological
evolution. Much of our species� success is fundamentally dependent on
the capacity of language to generate ideas that allow us to escape
from the immediate present or to describe events and phenomena that
have never existed. Yet the origin and evolution of this powerful tool
is quite mysterious. Other forms of animal communication bear so
little resemblance to human language that it seems unlikely that any
of them could be a precursor to spoken language. Pulling together
various observations on the neurology of language, the sophistication
and cross-cultural nature of sign languages, and the ability of apes
to communicate with signs, Corballis argues that the origins of human
language may lie in manual gestures, not in vocalization. 


--
Therese Shellabarger - Civis Mundi - tlshell@concentric.net