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Abstract：
The aim of this article is to provide an evolutionarily grounded explanation of central aspects of the structure of language. It begins with an account of the evolution of human causal reasoning. A comparison between humans and non-human primates suggests that human causal cognition is based on reasoning about the underlying forces that are involved in events, while other primates hardly understand external forces. This is illustrated by an analysis of the causal cognition required for early hominin tool use. Second, the thinking concerning forces in causation is used to motivate a model of human event cognition. A mental representation of an event contains two vectors representing a cause as well as a result but also entities such as agents, patients, instruments and locations. The fundamental connection between event representations and language is that declarative sentences express events (or states). The event structure also explains why sentences are constituted of noun phrases and verb phrases. Finally, the components of the event representation show up in language, where causes and effects are expressed by verbs, agents and patients by nouns (modified by adjectives), locations by prepositions, etc. Thus, the evolution of the complexity of mental event representations also provides insight into the evolution of the structure of language.
摘要：
本文的目的是为语言结构的中心方面提供一个基于进化的解释。它始于对人类因果推理进化的解释。人类和非人类灵长类动物之间的比较表明，人类的因果认知是基于对事件中涉及的潜在力量的推理，而其他灵长类动物几乎不了解外力。对早期人类工具使用所需的因果认知的分析说明了这一点。第二,关于因果关系中的力量的思想被用来激发人类事件认知的模型。事件的心理表示包含表示原因和结果的两个向量，但也包含诸如代理之类的实体。病人,仪器和位置。事件表示和语言之间的基本联系是陈述句表达事件（或状态）。事件结构还解释了为什么句子由名词短语和动词短语构成。最后,事件表示的组件以语言显示，其中原因和结果用动词表示，代理人和患者按名词(由形容词修饰)，介词的位置，等。因此，心理事件表征的复杂性的演变也提供了对语言结构演变的洞察力。
