From extended phenotype to extended affordance: distributed language at the intersection of Gibson and Dawkins

Language is a complex system, and those who study it often seek simpler models to explain linguistic features. Two such models are examined here, the extended phenotype proposed by Richard Dawkins and the affordance proposed by James J. Gibson. These models are placed in the context of current research programs in language evolution and distributed cognition, and are related to one another through examples from parasitology and animal communication. The concept of an extended affordance is introduced as the environmental complement of the extended phenotype. In primate signaling systems, both phenotype and affordance are proposed to be not only extended but also distributed. The distributed phenotype and affordance are then related to the problem of body–world interaction in human language.