Protolanguage and mechanisms of meaning construal in interaction

- This paper presents a Cognitive-Linguistic, constructionist, and usage-based approach to language evolution.
- The mechanisms and evolutionary foundations of the emergence of (proto)constructions in interaction are explored.
- The evolution of protolanguage is explained through processes of meaning construal and ad hoc constructionalization.
- Language developed out of protolanguage via processes of conventionalization, grammaticalization and constructionalization.

Recent interactional and dialogic approaches within Cognitive Linguistics, construction grammar, and the usage-based framework see structure as emerging from mechanisms of meaning construal in interaction. This view has wide-ranging implications for accounts of the evolution of language. The main aim of this paper is to argue that this perspective can also help explain the emergence of protolanguage in early humans through processes of ad hoc constructionalization. To advance this argument, this paper investigates the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of the emergence of constructions in interactions. The key result of this study is a model of language from the perspective of Interactional Cognitive Linguistics and Dialogic Construction Grammar: The emergence of protolanguage built on the capacity for context-dependent and pragmatics-based meaning construal shared with other great apes. In addition, it was also aided by increased evolved metapsychological and domain-general structure building capacities. On the basis of these mechanisms, early humans established a temporary protoconstructicon. Frequent repetitions of this process in turn led to protoconstructions becoming more stable and spreading through the population. From this protolinguistic platform, processes of grammaticalization and constructionalization led to the emergence of structured networks of constructions and human language.