Perspective From experience to imagination: Language and its evolution as a social communication technology Daniel Dor Department of Communication, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel article info Article history: Received 14 April 2016 Received in revised form 12 October 2016 Accepted 12 October 2016 Available online 14 November 2016 abstract In this paper, I present a new general hypothesis concerning the origin and evolutionary development of human language and its speakers. The hypothesis is based on the theory of language I develop in Dor (2015): language should be properly understood as a social communication technology of a very particular type, collectively constructed for the specific function of the instruction of imagination. The hypothesis, then, runs as follows: pre-lin- guistic humans (most probably Homo erectus) developed their culture and their pre-lin- guistic communication to the point where the collective invention of language became both necessary and possible. The moment of the origin consisted of no more than exploratory attempts to use what had already been achieved to go into the realm of the instruction of imagination. When the new function began to show its potential, a devel- opmental process was launched that was directly driven throughout by the constant pressure to raise the levels of collective success in instructive communication. Throughout the process, individuals were selected for their ability to meet the challenges of the emerging technology, and the required capacities were (partially and variably) genetically accommodated. Homo sapiens, an imaginative species adapted for fast speech, and maybe our sisters species too, eventually emerged from the collectively-driven process with unique adaptations to language. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction The relationship between the question of the essence of human language and the question of its evolution is complex and dialectic. On the one hand, different conceptions of language call for different evolutionary explanations: “your theory of language evolution depends on your theory of language” (Jackendoff, 2010, p. 63). On the other hand, the evolution of lan- guage is the most crucial bottleneck that every theory of language should be able to squeeze through. If we do not accept the idea that the gift of language was bestowed upon us by the powers above, we have no choice but to ask, with respect to every theoretical conception of language: how is language seen this way evolvable? From this point of view, the discourse on language evolution may be read as an extensive debate on the evolvability of three general conceptions of language (quite obviously, each conception has many variations, the demarcation lines between the three conceptions are not always clear, and scholars sometimes adopt hybrid positions). The first two conceptions are informed by the discourse of the last half century in theoretical linguistics, which has been founded on the assumption that human language is essentially a cognitive property of the individual mind-brain. The assumption was formulated by Noam Chomsky, who conceptualizes language as a uniquely-human, innately-given, specific property of the mind-brain, a E-mail address: danield@post.tau.ac.il. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Neurolinguistics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroling http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2016.10.003 0911-6044/© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Journal of Neurolinguistics 43 (2017) 107e119