Re: Re:

how does story telling fit in to the origin of langu=ge. ? internal stories? overlay on mus=c . alarms? how important are stories ?

Don't see how it would work.=C2 We can't tell stories until language is already available.

There are, of course, speculations ab=ut how language might have developed very slowly, first with short sentences, then longer ones, etc. One could interweave specula=ions about story telling into these. Problem with these tales is the=usual one with speculation — one can imagine 1 million possibiliti=s. Dick Lewontin's important paper on evolution of cognition is again relevant. And there is a more formidable probl=m: the leap to unboundedness is saltational, by definition, so nothing is =ained by the speculations, a fact that many of those engaged in these effo=ts seem not to have grasped.

gesturing im hungry, ? does that n=ed a language first with your broad definition?

Apes can gesture "I'm=hungry," but their symbolic systems differ radically from human la=guage in just about every significant respect.

There are very broad uses of language= but I think they're more confusing than helpful. There is a=biological system: human language. The English word "languag=" (which, incidentally, doesn't translate easily, even to closely re=ated languages) covers a lot more than that, just as "move =9D or "energy" in English cover a lot more than what scien=ists mean by the term. Seems to me a good idea to follow scientific =ractice and avoid the broad uses, except in informal discourse.

we agree, that is why i try to stay away from the wo=d infinity in broad usem infinity is really on a math co=cept.