The triggering factor of the origin of language. Stories come first: Replies to Arbib, Benítez-Burraco, Delfitto, Romano, and Sibierska & Wacewicz

This article responds to the comments and criticisms raised in relation to my previous work "Stories come first. The origins of human communication from a naturalized perspective of language". The feedback can be broadly divided into "internal" criticisms, offered by scholars who share many of the underlying assumptions of my model, and "external" criticisms, advanced by those who reject its premises. Internal critiques largely emphasize that while narrative plays a crucial role in language, it should not overshadow other constitutive aspects of linguistic competence. I acknowledge the view of language as a mosaic of properties but argue that such a perspective risks conflating the study of language evolution with that of its origins. My focus remains on identifying the triggering factor of language, which I contend is the narrative function, rooted in persuasion rather than information. External critiques instead reject narrative as the origin of language, privileging sentence-level syntax as the defining feature of linguistic capacity. Against this view, I maintain that discourse structures logically and temporally precede sentence syntax, with grammar emerging secondarily to strengthen narrative efficacy. By distinguishing between internal and external criticisms, this article clarifies the theoretical implications of my model and situates narration as the most plausible starting point for understanding the origins of human communication.