Editing Universal grammar (section)

== The main hypotheses ==

In an article entitled "The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?"<ref name="Hauser">{{Citation | last1 = Hauser | first1 = Marc | last2 = Chomsky | first2 = Noam | author2-link = Noam Chomsky | last3 = Fitch | first3 = William Tecumseh | author3-link = W. Tecumseh Fitch | title = The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? | journal = Science | volume = 298 | pages = 1569–1579 | date = 22 November 2002 | url = http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20021122.pdf | doi = 10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 | pmid = 12446899 | issue = 5598 | access-date = 28 December 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131228122250/http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20021122.pdf | archive-date = 28 December 2013 | url-status = dead | df = dmy-all }}</ref> Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch present the three leading hypotheses for how language evolved and brought humans to the point where they have a universal grammar.

The first hypothesis states that the faculty of language in the broad sense ('''FLb''') is strictly homologous to animal communication. This means that homologous aspects of the faculty of language exist in non-human animals.

The second hypothesis states that the FLb is a derived and uniquely human adaptation for language. This hypothesis holds that individual traits were subject to natural selection and came to be specialized for humans.

The third hypothesis states that only the faculty of language in the narrow sense ('''FLn''') is unique to humans. It holds that while mechanisms of the FLb are present in both human and non-human animals, the computational mechanism of [[recursion]] has evolved recently, and solely in humans.<ref>{{Citation | last1 = Hauser | first1 = Marc | last2 = Chomsky | first2 = Noam | author2-link = Noam Chomsky | last3 = Fitch | first3 = William Tecumseh | author3-link = W. Tecumseh Fitch | title = The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? | journal = Science | volume = 298 | pages = 1569–1579 | date = 22 November 2002 | url = http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20021122.pdf | doi = 10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 | pmid = 12446899 | issue = 5598 | access-date = 11 April 2024 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131228122250/http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20021122.pdf | archive-date = 28 December 2013 | url-status = dead | df = dmy-all | quote = We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. [...] the core recursive aspect of FLN currently appears to lack any analog in animal communication and possibly other domains as well.}}</ref>