The Interactional Instinct for Language

The real language instinct, which I do believe we have but which nobody ever talks about, is the interactional instinct. Why is it that we among all primates not only want but absolutely need to communicate with one another? That is the fundamental problem that no other species in the world faces. So you're saying that language is just one of many means we have to communicate and that we don't have a special propensity to learn it in particular ways. Is that right? Well, I think that children are born and organize everything in their experience around them. They show a remarkable ability for statistical generalizations and the ability to link things that occur together in time. You see evidence from the way p