Why do we have language?

Language is the system of meaningful symbols and rules that has endowed us with communicative and cognitive powers that far exceeds anything else in the natural world. It enables us to talk about and understand things we have never encountered before, create an infinite number of distinct messages, and create new words and meanings as a society sees fit. But why and how is it that only humans possess this wonderfully diverse and useful power? Currently, two opposing views dominate the literature (biolinguistic and socio-cultural). In this poster, I present the thinking behind each view and argue that they are not mutually exclusive. I show that there is a 'middle-ground' that embraces the primary intuitions of both and also offers a more satisfactory account of the origin and function of human language