Enriching the social environment in Catania’s behavioral theory of language evolution

A. Charles Catania has been one of the most prominent thinkers on language and verbal behavior in the field of behavior analysis and behaviorism. He developed one of the most comprehensive behavior-analytic accounts of language evolution by conceptualizing verbal behavior as a product of selection at phylogenic, ontogenic, and cultural levels. Central to his theory is the view that language functions primarily as a means for one individual to change the behavior of another. The present paper reviews Catania’s behavioral theory of language evolution and extends it by enriching the social environments in which verbal behavior is presumed to have evolved. Drawing on findings from behavior analysis, ethology, archaeology, and anthropology, the paper argues that human ancestors were already equipped with rich, nonverbal social repertoires maintained largely by social contingencies and that these environments were fundamentally multidirectional rather than strictly hierarchical. It is proposed that verbal behavior emerged within these complex social systems as a means of augmenting, mediating, and extending existing social interactions rather than solely as a tool for top-down control. By situating Catania’s theory within a broader account of social complexity, this analysis offers an enriched behavioral framework for understanding the evolution of human language as verbal behavior.