The Mirror System Hypothesis for the evolution of the language-ready brain (e.g., Rizzolatti & Arbib, TINS, 1998; Arbib, BBS, 2005) suggests a path for evolution of brain mechanisms atop the mirror system for grasping, with new processes supporting simple imitation, complex imitation, gesture, pantomime and finally protosign and protospeech.
The present talk will briefly summarize the evolutionary story as background for a suggested program of research in neurolinguistics, with modeling challenges at the levels both of schemas and neural networks to make contact with data from psycholinguistics, neurophysiology, and neurology.