Cormac McCarthy published the first nonfiction piece of his career, a 3000-word essay titled “The Kekulé Problem”. It is studded with suggestive details about the anatomy of the human larynx, what happens to dolphins under anesthesia, and the origins of the click sounds in Khoisan languages, all marshalled to illuminate aspects of a profound pair of questions, Why did human language originate, and how is it related to the unconscious mind?

and a followup

We’ve little reason to assume that the common structure of language—which all human languages share—is either the most effective or indeed the only form which language can take. The fact that all languages can be translated one into the other should tell us something about the common nature of their histories. The structure of these languages—their syntax and grammar and their general form—more than suggests that they have a single origin. But it further elicits the question as to whether or not this is a structure which enjoys an independent standing. Or whether other forms might be not only possible but even preferable. If intelligent beings from other parts of the universe should attempt to converse with us would their language be translatable? Would it share enough of our notions of how to go about describing the world for us to correlate it? Our languages in their form and in their structure are a single language. They are the languages of this world but they are not—that we know of—languages of the universe. We’ve no reason to believe that there is, or could be, such a thing. We might further consider that the form of language and its usage have at once influenced our view of reality as indeed has our experience of the world continued to influence our language. There is little evidence for selection in the shaping of language. A good part of what we experience appears in the form of frozen accident. As indeed does a good part of human experience in general.

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