When one considers the emergence of language almost unbidden from infants one is moved to ask profound questions about the underlying brain structures that give rise to language and more particularly the evolutionary processes that caused shape and form to emerge from the firmament.
While we fill in the pieces of the puzzle we must allow conjecture to guide us in our theory formulation for as the story of the physicist and the lost keys goes we need to look in the light.
Linguistics gives us a fingerprint of the underlying structures and processes that have shaped cognitive development and the emergence of consciousness. The linguistics body of knowledge gives us an echo of part of the underlying structure of the universe.
My own conjecture is that because organisms (entities) exist in a world of action they are guided in their evolution toward consciousness by interaction with the physical world which inherently involves energy, mass, space, perception, specialization and changing environment. These shape the river of emerging consciousness.
The double helix is deeply rooted in the structure of the universe and in that lies the emergent properties of consciousness and cognition.
Initially organisms interact and communicate in simple stimulus response modes but, like the chords in the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", with increasing strength and sophistication.
So it is that the study of linguistics is like an xray on the structures of the universe that gives rise to cognitive systems.
With careful attention to linguistic patterns we may be able to reverse engineer aspects of cognition that can be put to use in robotics and in creating artificial general intelligence.
