Communication Without Design: Language Is Not Merely Ornamental to Cognition

Abstract

Viewing language as a dynamic system shaped by interaction raises questions about how Hockett’s design features should be interpreted.While this shift successfully broadens the functional and semiotic scope of language, we argue that it leaves key questions about internal cognitive architecture insufficiently specified. In particular, the proposed framework underestimates the role of temporally structured event representation, hierarchical syntax, and displacement as cognitively enabled phenomena rather than purely pragmatic or interactional achievements. We suggest that without an explicit account of how linguistic forms interface with memory systems that support event indexing and temporal organization, the generative core of language—digital infinity and stable reference beyond the here and now—remains unexplained. Drawing on recent neurocomputational and biolinguistic work, we outline minimal theoretical commitments required to integrate interactional perspectives with mechanistic accounts of compositional structure and reference.