How can an infinite number of sentences be generated from one human mind? How did language evolve in apes? In this book Donald Loritz addresses these and other fundamental and vexing questions about language, cognition, and the human brain. He starts by tracing how evolution and natural adaptation selected certain features of the brain to perform communication functions, then shows how those features developed into designs for human language. The result -- what Loritz calls an adaptive grammar -- gives a unified explanation of language in the brain and contradicts directly (and controversially) the theory of innateness proposed by, among others, Chomsky and Pinker.

How can the human brain generate an infinite number of sentences? Why can humans use language while other primates cannot? Using hard neurological, biological and mathematical evidence, Donald Loritz tries to answer some of our fundamental questions about the origins of language and explore what the answers might tell us about the nature of the human brain. His conclusions go against conventional wisdom in that they contradict theories of innateness proposed by Steven Pinker and others.