Merge: Noam Chomsky On The Cognitive Function That Made Language Evolve

“You got an operation that enables you to take mental objects [or concepts of some sort], already constructed, and make bigger mental objects out of them. That’s Merge. As soon as you have that, you have an infinite variety of hierarchically structured expressions [and thoughts] available to you … a second-order theory of mind, so you know that somebody is trying to make you think what somebody else wants you to think.”