Soru

Passage A
The evolutionary genesis of human language is best understood as a gradual, adaptive process driven by natural selection. Rather than a sudden leap, language developed incrementally from ancestral gestural and vocal communication systems visible in non-human primates. As early hominins faced increasing social complexity, those capable of conveying nuanced semantic information—such as mapping food sources or negotiating social hierarchies—gained a survival advantage. Over hundreds of thousands of years, anatomical adaptations in the vocal tract and neural expansions in areas like Broca’s region co-evolved, refining a crude proto-language into the syntactically rich system we use today. Thus, communication was the primary driver, shaping our cognitive architecture to facilitate cooperative social bonds.

Passage B
The sudden appearance of human language in the archaeological record contradicts any slow, incremental adaptation. Instead, language is a biological anomaly arising from a single macromutation in an individual member of the hominin lineage, roughly 100,000 years ago. This genetic mutation enabled 'Merge,' the recursive cognitive operation that joins two mental elements to form a new, hierarchically structured expression. Crucially, this capacity did not emerge to facilitate communication or social cooperation. Rather, it was a computational upgrade for internal thought—allowing for complex planning, categorization, and mental modeling. Communication was merely an exaptation, a secondary utility applied to an already existing, internally oriented cognitive tool.

Based on the passages, the authors of Passage A and Passage B disagree most fundamentally on which of the following questions regarding the evolution of human language?