The paper’s author has taken issue with Mark Liberman’s discussion of Dead Elephants:

http://www.derekbickerton.com/blog/_archives/2005/7/1/989877.html

Amongst other points he says this:

Mark, in quoting from The Symbolic Species you seem altogether unaware of the main point of the book, which began with just what you call the biggest mystery–why lots of creatures don't have language. And Terry answered it–symbolism is very hard to achieve, and dead counter to the way other animals' minds work. There's a second good answer: they don't need it. It's all very well to point out the various advantages language confers, but evolution has no look-ahead, so no animal could know any of this.

This seems to me to be logically flawed on a fundamental level. To extrapolate his argument, if evolution did have a “look-ahead” he seems to be implying that other animal forms would have developed language.

Rubbish.

The way we know evolution works is nothing to do with this kind of ‘motivational’ effect – it’s to do with post-facto outcomes. In other words, evolution is a constant process of variation which liberates the seeds of new possibilities, and converse pressures of environment and competition dictate which prove to be an advantage. Those animals carrying an evolutionary change that so proves to be a practical advantage will be more likely to carry those genetic characteristics into the next generation, whilst unsuccessful characteristics will tend to be extinguished.

So in the case of language, I suggest his position is untenable: since he accepts language confers many benefits, the question still remains why no other species seems to have developed the same kind of conceptualising capacity we have.

Of course, the aquatic ape theory does suggest some possible links with animals like dolphins which seem to have come closest…