在The Language Instinct一书中,史蒂芬·平克详细讨论了语言起源研究的几种研究倾向及其问题:第一种倾向来自于动物与人类的比较研究,认为人类的语言能力可以从相关动物的交流能力中得到解释;第二种倾向以Chomsky为代表,主张语言的特殊性和复杂性难以得到进化论的解释。平克详细探讨了几种研究倾向的不足,指出了其中存在的方法论与逻辑问题,并提出了以自然选择 In The Language Instinct, Stephen Pinker discusses in detail several tendencies and problems in the study of linguistic origin: The first tendencies come from a comparative study of animals and humans, and suggest that human linguistic competence may vary from that of the animal Communicative ability; the second kind of tendency, represented by Chomsky, advocates that the particularity and complexity of language are hard to be explained by evolutionism. Pink grams explored the shortcomings of several research tendencies in detail, pointed out the existing methodological and logical problems, and proposed a natural selection