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The Evolution of Bilingualism

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Bilingualism and Cognitive Control

Part of the book series: The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series ((BMBBS,volume 6))

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Abstract

This chapter explores how a critical cognitive skill such as bilingualism might have evolved in early hominins and why. Bilingualism has flourished and is growing in spite of many changes in social, cultural and cognitive variables. Unless bilingualism facilitated social–cultural interaction, it would not have been selected by evolution. What one achieves socially, culturally, cognitively and economically by bilingualism is well-documented. Available evidence from the evolution of neural systems and cognitive systems in Homo sapiens and their time scales hint at both a cultural and biological basis of the evolution of bilingualism. It is important to explore how the brain prepared itself to accommodate two languages, basically two different symbolic systems, and how the necessary neural architecture might have supported it. Possible answers may be found in theories of language evolution and cognitive archaeology. Cognitive abilities that support bilingualism (inhibition, executive control, task shifting, goal maintenance monitoring, goal planning and contextual awareness) evolved first. If we are interested in knowing how the brain gained the ability to deal with two languages, we should investigate the emergence of some core cognitive systems, and also what kind of social and cultural forces shaped such mechanisms.

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  1. Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

    Ramesh Kumar Mishra

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Mishra, R.K. (2018). The Evolution of Bilingualism. In: Bilingualism and Cognitive Control. The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_2

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