This article reviews the possibilities that a comparative, functionally oriented view of communication evolution offers to a linguist interested in the evolution of human languages and suggests a wide variety of areas which might be further investigated with profit. (CFM)

Describes the "special destiny-special faculty" paradigm that has dominated western thinking about the nature and origins of language and argues instead that language systems are like technologies and that language acquisition and use involves a range of capacities and skills, a view that could be called the "mosaic development…