The nature of the species-specificity of human language

Beginning from the agreement between CBM and DBM on the species-specificity of human language, in this chapter the authors will discuss the strictly technical interpretation with which the evolutionary approach defines this notion and which has been much abused particularly in philosophical speculation. In particular, they connect with the notion of the origin of Lorenzian ethology to grasp the “coercive” content of the very idea of species-specificity. For Darwinian biolinguistics, the species-specificity of language is first and foremost the recognition of its biological constraints and the cognitive limitations. It follows a naturalistic linguistic philosophy emphasizing the special formatting of human linguistic cognition, as conditioned by a specific bodily language technology, and tecnomorphic characteristics of thought arising from it. © Springer International Publishing AG 2016.