The general theme of this book is the evolutionary plausibility of the Minimalist Program. Yet there is also a background theme – the importance of evolution in studies of language. In linguistics, theory is underdetermined by data, requiring us to look to other domains in order to constrain our accounts. Evolution, however, has not been typically recognised by linguists as a constraining factor. This book shows that our theories of language must be constructed in such a way as to be compatible with the fact that language has evolved.

The tenets of a dominant modern syntactic theory – the Minimalist Program – are investigated from an evolutionary perspective, applying evidence from evolutionary biology to data from linguistics in a previously unexplored manner. Key properties of evolvability are identified in language, and the shortcomings of the Minimalist Program, in its outright rejection of these features, are exposed.

All those who seek to understand what is is that sets humans apart from all other species will find issues of interest in the chapters which follow. This includes not only evolutionary linguists, but linguists of many persuasions, as well as psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, primatologists, neuroscientists, biologists, and cognitive scientists. The book will have something new to offer to each group through its synthesis of disparate fields, its detailed critique of a current syntactic theory, and its recipe for an evolutionarily plausible syntactic theory.

Due to its strongly cross-disciplinary nature, some sections of the book will not represent new ground for every reader. This is particularly the case for chapter 1, where background issues are discussed. Readers with a background in linguistics may therefore wish to skip over sections 1.2.1, 1.2.2, and 1.6.