The evolution of language and speech: What we know from genetics

The ability to learn and use languages (also known as our language-readiness) relies on a complex cognitive and biomechanical machinery that is deeply rooted in our biology and evolutionary history, but which has nevertheless been recently reshaped in our lineage. To some extent, this reshaping resulted from changes in the sequence and/or the expression patterns of selected genes. Some of these genetic changes further facilitated cultural processes that have also played a major role in language evolution. In this chapter we review some of the key candidate genes for these changes, with a focus on our language-ready brain, our speech-ready organs, and our self-domestication. We discuss the shortcomings of present-day genetic approaches to language evolution and advance some avenues of future research.