Monkeys Can't Talk

Was Grice an evolutionist?

In WoW:iii he gives as an example of a false sentence:

"Monkeys can talk".

By exportation, we infer that Grice thought that

Monkeys can't talk.

--- (Vide, "Darwin and the origin of language").

The blame is not really Grice's -- but a policeman.

Grice writes: According to [Strawson's] speech act theory, at least part
of what the utterer of [the sentence,

'What the policeman
said is true']

is doing is to assert whatever it was that the

policeman stated. But the utterer may NOT KNOW what that
statement was; he may think that the policeman's statement
was TRUE because policemen always speak the truth, or that
that policeman always speaks the truth, or that policeman
in those circumstances could not but have spoken the truth.
Now ASSERTION presumably involves committing oneself, and
while it is possible to commit oneself to a statement
which one has NOT IDENTIFIED (not interpreted? JLS) (I could
commit myself to the contents of the Thirty-Nince Articles
of the Church of England, without knowing what they say),
I do not think I should be properly regarded AS HAVING
COMMITTED MYSELF TO THE CONTENT OF THE POLICEMAN'S
STATEMENT, merely in virtue of having said that it was TRUE."

Re:

Monkeys can't talk.

Grice goes on:

When to my surprise I learn that the policeman actually said,
'Monkeys can talk,' I say (perhaps), 'Well, I was wrong', not
'I withdraw that', or 'I withdraw my commitment to that'.
I never was committed to it.
WoW:56.

---- It's odd that Grice would withdraw his commitment to that, yet think that PAROTS (well, pirots) can talk...