ASL 'syllables' and language evolution: A response to Uriagereka

I am grateful to Juan Uriagereka (2000) for his thorough and thoughtful rev iew of my book The Origins of Complex Language (henceforth Origins; Carstai rs-McCarthy 1999).(1) The book tackles fundamental questions about the rela tionship among syntax, semantics, and cognition, and Uriagereka is not pers uaded by all my suggestions about the prehistory of this relationship. I wi ll not pursue these large issues here; rather, I want to address a more cir cumscribed issue that is nevertheless crucial to the argument of the book, so that my failure to discuss it is an important omission, as Uriagereka po ints out. This issue is whether the syllable, as a unit of phonological des cription, is modality-neutral (so as to be equally at home, with fundamenta lly the same sense, in descriptions of signed and spoken languages), or whe ther the syllables of signed and spoken languages are really different phen omena, so that the use of the term SYLLABLE for both draws attention to res emblances that are more accidental than fundamental. I will argue that the evidence supports the latter view more strongly than the former; therefore, when discussing language evolution, it is legitimate to appeal (as I do) t o aspects of spoken syllables that are undoubtedly modality-dependent, such as their physiological underpinnings in the vocal apparatus. Before addressing this issue directly, I would like to summarize briefly wh y it is important in the context of my book, Second, by way of reassurance, I will explain why the conclusion that I reach does not belittle sign lang uages, nor imply any old-fashioned skepticism about their entitlement to be recognized as real manifestations of the human language capacity.