Grammar has been assumed to be the fundamental characteristic that made language unique. Grammatical form codes speech and utterances in different basic structures – the most common being SOV, SVO or OVS. As seen in the three structures, there are different ordering to the Subject, Verb and Object agreement. Yet across the three different structures, there remains a generic structure: the agent, the recipient and the action would need to be present in each sentence regardless of the structure used.

Recent studies have shown, however, that the theory of mind has played a larger role in the evolution of language, compared to grammar. Language could not have evolved without the affiliated evolution of TOM in humans. There would be communication – even grammatical communication – but all these would simply be factual statements without any human emotion injected into the speech, somewhat like robot speech (Malle, 2004).

Miller (2006) raises some key issues regarding the complexity of the relationship between language and TOM. In order for successful communication to happen, it is essential for the speaker to have an awareness of mental states. Language is, thus, one of the key mechanisms used to express the different aspects of TOM.

Consider the following scenario:

A child points at a tree and says, “Look at that tree mummy!”

His mum asks, “What colour is the tree?”

The young boy replies, “Green!”

The above scenario shows how language can be used to express different aspects of TOM. In the very first sentence when the child points out the object, he attempt to use language to create joint attention. Here, his mother’s attention would be directed to the object that he is referring to. His mother’s reply in the second sentence is indication of this joint attention, because she acknowledges the object, and goes on further to ask him to clarify some characteristics of the object. In this sentence, the mother crafts a sentence to create communicative intent for her son to continue the conversation. The young boy’s reply in the third line is clear that the boy recognizes communicative intent presented in his mother’s question, and that is an aspect of TOM demonstrated.

As seen above, language and TOM is linked and some researchers have been concerned with identifying the possible links between the two, and they have proposed different schools of thoughts regarding the link between language and TOM.