Having looked at both schools of thought, we have decided that TOM influences language. In order for language acquisition to happen in children, it is necessary for the children to have theory of mind. However, at a certain age, language becomes autonomous from TOM and can overcome any form of deficits in TOM if present. Even as language becomes autonomous from TOM in the later years, TOM remains a factor that influences language.

In language acquisition, it is clear that TOM has influenced protolanguage and enabled the development of the protolanguage to language. The bulk of this chapter has focused on TOM and its influence on language, in terms of language acquisition in children. The question remains, however, how does TOM shape the evolution of language?   

Beyond the area of acquisition, it appears that even in the evolution of TOM and the evolution of language, TOM evolves first, and it leads to the subsequent evolution of language from protolanguage to language. Malle’s (2004) proposed chain of model as seen below, is a model that we would advocate as well.

protolanguage → TOM → language

Malle (2004) proposes the emergence of a primitive theory of mind (TOM-1) as the first adaptive step, on which any form of language learning can be acted upon. At the primitive level of TOM-1, the features that developed at this stage are:

These features of TOM-1 is similar to the first three stages of TOM development in infants, before 12 months old. Here, Malle speculates that while these stages are developed within 12 months in acquisition, the evolution of these features of TOM-1 would have been separated by a few million years, in the hominid self.

Here, imitation and joint attention could initiate cooperative learning, while joint attention and sensitivity could improve behavior prediction and coordinate shared activities – hunting and tool-making activities that were evident in the hominids. These three elements of TOM-1 would thus become the framework upon which protolanguage could act upon, with expressive vocalization and gestures being used at this stage to refer to certain objects or goals. At the same time, the presence of these three elements leads to communicative interactions between hominids. Hominids can imitate each others vocal projections through imitation, vocal reference can be reinforced through joint attention and inferential sensitivity would see hominids inferring vocal references as having some communicative intent. At the primitive stage of TOM-1, it is clear that language has yet to be developed at this stage, with gestures and vocalized expressions used to express TOM.

TOM-2 is the second stage of TOM development. As a result of TOM-1 and proto language, there would be an increase in communication between the hominids . The simplistic nature of the protolanguage (random vocalized expressions and gestures) is likely to have caused difficulties in communication and possible miscommunication among hominids. Referring back to table 1, TOM-2 would have the same features as TOM that is developed in children between 13-24 months. TOM-2 would see the development of the ability to recognize intent expressed by others, and the ability to recognize desires others may have that differentiates from self desires.

At this stage, a more refined TOM would lead to a more developed protolanguage or PL-2. Here PL-2 would be the intermediate stage between the protolanguage and language. For clearer visualization, the development of protolanguage proposed by Malle (2004) would be:

protolanguage → PL-2 →  language

At the PL-2 stage, there would be a decrease in the number of gestures used, and an increase in more precise linguistic references used, other than random vocalized expressions. Here, the presence of grammatical distinctions (nouns, verbs, adjectives) is an indication of the referential nature of PL-2 compared to the expressive nature in the previous protolanguage stage.

As observed in the discussion above, it is clear that as the different aspects of TOM are developed in hominids over the years, protolanguage is also being developed at the same time. Thus, in order for language to have developed from a protolanguage, TOM-1 and TOM-2 played essential roles in shaping the the protolanguage and PL-2. Both TOM-1 and TOM-2 have seen a development of different cognitive aspects in the human brain from the time of hominids that has resulted in the subsequent development of the protolanguage to language.

Thus, the evolution TOM is important in shaping the evolution of language from TOM.