| Summary: | The evolution of human language probably passed several gateways or decisive periods. Our aim is to show that they have the form of a cascade of bifurcations, i.e. of binary choices. At each step small causal constellations may have decided on which way to go. This explains the overall improbability of a phenomenon like human language in the animal kingdom (which was and is the major argument of creationists). The hierarchy and temporal sequence of “decisions” (Darwinian principles were the deciders) gives us a hint at the architecture of human language. In particular the emergence of verbal valence (argument structure, constructions), of subject-predicate constellations and syntactic devices can be explained as a result of these evolutionary steps. We presume that throughout the evolution basic schemata of (manual) action, like the GRASP-schema were of central importance for the conceptual unfolding of human language.
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