Evolutionary linguistics (original) (raw)

Language as an evolutionary system

Physics of Life Reviews, 2005

John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry argued that human language signified the eighth major transition in evolution: human language marked a new form of information transmission from one generation to another [Maynard Smith J, Szathmáry E. The major transitions in evolution. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press; 1995]. According to this view language codes cultural information and as such forms the basis for the evolution of complexity in human culture. In this article we develop the theory that language also codes information in another sense: languages code information on their own structure. As a result, languages themselves provide information that influences their own survival. To understand the consequences of this theory we discuss recent computational models of linguistic evolution. Linguistic evolution is the process by which languages themselves evolve. This article draws together this recent work on linguistic evolution and highlights the significance of this process in understanding the evolution of linguistic complexity. Our conclusions are that: (1) the process of linguistic transmission constitutes the basis for an evolutionary system, and (2), that this evolutionary system is only superficially comparable to the process of biological evolution.

Lecture Notes: Language and Evolution

2007

The study of evolution and language provides a unique opportunity for carefully examining basic questions about evolution, language, and the kinds of explanations available for sources of order in physical, biological, cognitive and cultural domains.

Human Evolution: The Linguistic Evidence

Evolutionary studies, 2022

In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin substantiates the idea that our species originated by natural selection, including the mind. Consequently, he meets the challenge of Max Müller, for whom the capacity for language in particular cannot be explained as a result of natural selection. Darwin overcomes the challenge with a conjecture about the evolution of language that is less well known but more suggestive and powerful, complete and integrated than others currently in force; moreover, by focusing on articulate speech, it is more biologically plausible. The power of his proposal stems from a deep knowledge of language. Here too, Darwin studies phylogeny with an eye to ontogeny; glossogeny, that is, linguistic change, does not escape him either. Phylogeny, ontogeny, and glossogeny constitute, in this order, the three parts of this article.

Darwinian perspectives on the evolution of human languages

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2016

Human languages evolve by a process of descent with modification in which parent languages give rise to daughter languages over time and in a manner that mimics the evolution of biological species. Descent with modification is just one of many parallels between biological and linguistic evolution that, taken together, offer up a Darwinian perspective on how languages evolve. Combined with statistical methods borrowed from evolutionary biology, this Darwinian perspective has brought new opportunities to the study of the evolution of human languages. These include the statistical inference of phylogenetic trees of languages, the study of how linguistic traits evolve over thousands of years of language change, the reconstruction of ancestral or proto-languages, and using language change to date historical events.

Multidisciplinary approaches in evolutionary linguistics

Language Sciences, 2013

Studying language evolution has become resurgent in modern scientific research. In this revival field, approaches from a number of disciplines other than linguistics, including (paleo)anthropology and archaeology, animal behaviors, genetics, neuroscience, computer simulation, and psychological experimentation, have been adopted, and a wide scope of topics have been examined in one way or another, covering not only world languages, but also human behaviors, brains and cultural products, as well as nonhuman primates and other species remote to humans. In this paper, together with a survey of recent findings based on these many approaches, we evaluate how this multidisciplinary perspective yields important insights into a comprehensive understanding of language, its evolution, and human cognition.

From Cultural Selection to Genetic Selection: A Framework for the Evolution of Language

Selection, 2001

This paper is an attempt to construct a programmatic framework for the evolution of human language. First, we present a novel characterization of language, which is based on some of the most recent research results in linguistics. As these results suggest, language is best characterized as a specialized communication system, dedicated to the expression of a surprisingly constrained set of meanings. This characterization calls for an account of the evolution of language in terms of the interaction between cultural and genetic evolution. We develop such an evolutionary model on the basis of the mechanism of culturally-driven genetic assimilation. As we show, a careful analysis of the diverse effects of this mechanism derives some of the most crucial properties of the evolved linguistic capacity as a specific, functional communication system.