The puzzle of language without syntax: A review of Steven Mithen's The Language Puzzle

In The language puzzle , Steven Mithen assumes that universal grammar has been altogether debunked, and argues that the question of the origin of natural‐language syntax and compositionality has largely been answered by the work of computational evolutionary linguists Simon Kirby and collaborators, thus: “syntax spontaneously emerges from the generation‐to‐generation language‐learning process itself”. I show that Kirby and collaborators' work in fact presupposes the entirety of syntax in an innate language of thought, and that it subscribes to a notion of universal grammar no weaker than the mainstream one from generative linguistics in the 21st century.