Question

The following passages were adapted from academic articles discussing the evolutionary origins of human language.

Passage A
Proponents of the adaptationist view of language origins argue that the complex syntactic structures characteristic of human language evolved through conventional Darwinian selection. In this view, language is fundamentally a communicative tool, forged over hundreds of thousands of years to meet the escalating demands of hominin social organization. As group sizes expanded, the need to exchange detailed information about the environment and social relationships exerted selective pressure on early hominids. Consequently, the gradual transition from rudimentary proto-languages—likely consisting of simple word combinations—to fully syntactic speech provided a distinct reproductive advantage. The intricacies of grammar, therefore, are not inexplicable evolutionary anomalies; rather, they are precisely calibrated solutions to the functional problem of efficiently transmitting complex thoughts between individuals. Just as the vertebrate eye evolved incrementally to process light, syntax evolved incrementally to process social meaning.

Passage B
The standard adaptationist account of language evolution—which posits that grammar arose incrementally for the purpose of communication—fails to account for the unique architectural properties of human syntax. The core of human linguistic competence relies on a discrete computational mechanism, specifically the capacity for unbounded recursive combination. Such a mechanism cannot logically evolve in a piecemeal fashion; one cannot possess a fraction of a recursive operation. Instead, it is highly probable that the neural wiring enabling syntax emerged abruptly as a byproduct of a minor genetic mutation affecting brain development. Under this framework, language was originally an internal instrument of thought—a way to structure mental concepts—rather than a system of external communication. While this syntactic capacity was subsequently exapted for communicative purposes, thereby conferring undeniable evolutionary benefits, its fundamental design was driven not by the messy functional demands of social interaction, but by constraints of biological form and neural efficiency.

Based on the arguments presented in the passages, match each assertion on the left with the correct description of the authors' attitudes toward it on the right.