The claim that only syntactic recursion is uniquely human and linguistic is problematic and inconsistent with human anatomy and neural control of the vocal tract.

The faculty of language: what's special about it?

Human linguisticality is uncontroversial, but the idea that language building blocks are part of an innate blueprint for human language disappears when considering convergent cultural evolution of grammatical structures.

Human Linguisticality and the Building Blocks of Languages

The evolution of language faculty, not individual languages, is the key event that enabled human language capacities, with no known group differences amongst humans.

Why Only Us? Language and Evolution

Human language is unique due to a shared species-specific computational ability, with a fixed brain correlate, dating back to approximately 100 000 years ago.

Evolution, brain, and the nature of language

Language evolved from mental processes with gradual evolutionary trajectories, and its uniqueness may be its ability to communicate mental experiences and knowledge gained from them.

Language Evolution: A Changing Perspective

The human language capacity is a species-specific biological property, unique to humans, and has not evolved since human groups dispersed.

The language capacity: architecture and evolution

Human intelligence is unique in that it is able to acquire and use spoken language, and recursive grammar, which is not found in tamarin monkeys.

Is Language the Key to Human Intelligence?

Vocal learning, the most specialized and rarest component of spoken language, evolved from an ancient motor learning pathway, influencing our understanding of brain mechanisms and disorders.

Evolution of vocal learning and spoken language

Human syntax and lexicon may have evolved from pre-existing cognitive capacities in our ancestors and other species, promoting a gradual evolution scenario for language.

Human language evolution: a view from theoretical linguistics on how syntax and the lexicon first came into being

Language acquisition is largely due to our genetic endowment, with rhythmic properties of language biasing word segmentation and speech categories playing specific roles in statistical dependencies and structural generalizations.

Why is language unique to humans?

The faculty of language (FLN) evolved for reasons other than communication, and understanding it requires interdisciplinary cooperation across various disciplines.

The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?

Human language evolved as a mosaic of components with different biological bases and evolutionary histories, making it the most advanced communication system of any living animal and the most evolved communications system of fossil hominids.

The Evolution of Human Language

Language evolved in humans through a process of gene-culture coevolution, allowing for communication between people and promoting human cooperation and cultural diversity.

Why Possibly Language Evolved

Language evolved in humans and not in other animals, making it one of the biggest unsolved puzzles in human history.

The Evolution of Language

A white matter dorsal tract, present only in the mature human brain, may be the "missing link" that explains humans' unique capacity for language.

Language in Our Brain: The Origins of a Uniquely Human Capacity

Formal universals can help understand human language acquisition, embracing both diversity and underlying biological unity, while maintaining compatibility with modern evolutionary theory.

Unity and diversity in human language

Human FOXP2 has undergone recent selection for changes in amino-acid coding and nucleotide polymorphism, suggesting it has been a key gene in human speech and language development.

Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language

Balanced and unbiased comparative studies are crucial for identifying unique components of human speech and language, as treating humans as equal species in vocal-communication research may provide no evidence for human superiority.

Animals Have No Language, and Humans Are Animals Too

The evolution of language is an extension of representation systems, not primarily a communication system, and may involve smaller steps from primary representational systems to protolanguage and protolanguage to language.

Language and species

Comparative research on animal communication can provide insights into the mechanisms and origins of human language, with conflicting viewpoints on proto-syntax, neural basis of Merge operation, and neurogenetic changes for vocal learning.

What can animal communication teach us about human language?

These studies suggest that human language is unique due to a combination of species-specific biological properties, shared computational abilities, and the evolution of mental processes and vocal learning pathways.