Exaptations

The concept of exaptation has been pressed into service in discussion of the evolution of FL. Indeed, the idea that extant mechanisms can be recycled for novel uses lies at the heart of the minimalist project, IMO. This idea has been used by Dehaene to great effect in his account of reading and Jan Koster has, in the comment sections, been a strong advocate of this idea as applied to FL more generally.  At any rate, here is a nice popular article discussing some recent ruminations on exaptation that I ran across.