The genetic source
We can think of the human baby in its first few years as a living example of some of these physical
changes taking place. At birth, the baby’s brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight and the larynx is
much higher in the throat, allowing babies, like chimpanzees,tobreatheanddrinkatthesametime.
The investigation of the origins of language then turns into a search for the special “language gene” that
only humans possess. Ifweareindeedtheonlycreatureswiththisspecialcapacityforlanguage,thenwillit be
completely impossible for any other creature to produce or understand language.