An attentional-bias account of language emergence

Abstract

Why do humans alone develop language? I argue that evolution selected a binding bias, not specialized syntactic machinery: a hyperprior treating addressed, multi-timescale communicative events (infant-directed speech, with eye contact and rhythmic prosody) as reliable evidence. Under active inference, the same precision profile biases both perceptual uptake and vocal convergence; no separate imitation system is required. Human echolocation illustrates the logic: trained blind individuals navigate by self-generated clicks, a complex skill from generic neural systems; complexity doesn’t entail selection. The account explains language’s universality and the combinatorial limits of other vocal learners. Three falsifiable tests: a neonatal preference study, a computational replay varying the gain profile, and a newborn functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) assay. Selection targeted what we notice, not what we compute.