Sketch of an Evolutionary Grammar Based on Comparative Biolinguistics. in: Röska-Hardy, Louise S. und Eva M. Neumann-Held (eds.). Learning from Animals? Examining the Nature of Human Uniqueness, Psychology Press, Hove and New York: 45-59. (original) (raw)
In any interdisciplinary endeavour that aims to link the comparative ethology of animals with linguistics, a crucial question is which theory of language is to serve as a starting point. The challenge lies in adequately specifying the grammar of human languages in an evolutionary perspective. The contribution of linguistics to such interdisciplinary research has often been inadequate for two reasons. First of all, current linguistic theories are usually based on a longstanding tradition of normative grammar and an analysis of written language—hence the relevance of grammaticality and competence in Chomsky’s models. In everyday speech language use is more variable and more context-dependent and changes-in-progress are pervasive. If we compare humans to animals, the dominant informal behaviour of humans should be the starting point for comparisons and not highly formalized behaviours regulated by institutions like schools, academies, etc. Second, linguists have a historical bias towards logical (analytic) descriptions and lack dynamic or self-organizing models. Therefore classificatory devices and hierarchical knowledge trees like phrase structures are emphasized, while the underlying forces, goals, benefits, trends, and changes are neglected. As a consequence, the intrinsic relation of language to holistic action patterns or to multichannel cognition (visual imagination, musical structure) is misrepresented in the standard models. Evolutionary biologists should turn instead to cognitive linguistics (semantics) and to pragmatic and dynamic linguistics (cf. Wildgen, 1994). In an interdisciplinary cooperation between biologists, psychologists, and linguists, one must assume that new models will be necessary that are not just versions of current types of grammars. In the following sections I will sketch the features of a model suitable for cooperative research in evolutionary biology and linguistics.
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Related papers
Universal Grammar and Biological Variation: An EvoDevo Agenda for Comparative Biolinguistics
Biological Theory, 2014
Recent advances in genetics and neurobiology have greatly increased the degree of variation that one finds in what is taken to provide the biological foundations of our species-specific linguistic capacities. In particular, this variation seems to cast doubt on the purportedly homogeneous nature of the language faculty traditionally captured by the concept of ''Universal Grammar.'' In this article we discuss what this new source of diversity reveals about the biological reality underlying Universal Grammar. Our discussion leads us to support (1) certain hypotheses advanced in evolutionary developmental biology that argue for the existence of robust biological mechanisms capable of canalizing variation at different levels, and (2) a bottom-up perspective on comparative cognition. We conclude by sketching future directions for what we call ''comparative biolinguistics,'' specifying which experimental directions may help us succeed in this new research avenue.
The Nature of Grammar, its Role in Language and its Evolutionary Origins (dissertation)
PhD Dissertation, University of East London, 2007
Grammar is more than just order and hierarchy; it is a way of expressing complex multidimensional schemas in one dimension. The need to communicate these schemas is the concern of language, but how they are communicated is the concern of grammar. Because grammar does not necessarily rely on the preexistence of language, it is possible for the elements of grammar to be prototyped as features of other mental systems before language appears. These elements can then be exapted as needed for language. So the genesis of language and the genesis of grammar do not necessarily need to be considered as a single process.
Book: Evolutionary Syntax, 2015, Oxford University Press
This book makes a case for a gradualist, adaptationist (Darwinian) approach to the evolution of syntax/grammar, subject to natural selection. It provides a specific framework for studying the evolution of syntax, with the postulates that are at the right level of granularity to allow a synergy among the fields of evolutionary biology, theoretical syntax, typology, neuroscience, and genetics. This book pursues an internal reconstruction of the stages of grammar based on the syntactic theory associated with Chomskyan Minimalism, to arrive at very specific, testable hypotheses, which are corroborated by an abundance of theoretically analyzed “living fossils” for each postulated stage, drawn from a variety of languages. What also distinguishes this approach is that it shows how these fossil structures do not just coexist side-by-side with more modern structures, but that they are in fact literally built into the very foundation of more complex structures, leading to quirks and complexities that best befit a gradualist evolutionary scenario. Importantly, the postulated stages clearly reveal the selection pressures that would have driven the progression through stages. By reconstructing a particular path along which syntax evolved, this approach is able to shed light on the crucial properties of language design itself, as well as on the major parameters of crosslinguistic variation. As a result, this reconstruction can be meaningfully correlated with the hominin timeline, as well as with the quickly accruing genetic evidence.
Charles Darwin and the Evolution of Human Grammatical Systems
Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories of animal communication were deeply embedded in a centuries-old model of association psychology, whose prodromes have most often been traced to the writings of Aristotle. His notions of frequency of occurrence of pairings have been passed down through the centuries and were a major ontological feature in the formation of associative connectivity. He focused on the associations of cause and effect, contiguity of sequential occurrence, and similarity among items. Cause and effect were often reduced to another type of contiguity relation, so that Aristotle is most often evoked as the originator of the associative bondings through similarity and contiguity, contiguity being the most powerful and frequent means of association. Contiguity eventually became the overriding mechanism for serial ordering of mental events in both perception and action. The notions of concatenation throughout the association psychology took the form of "trains" of events, both sensory and motor, in such a way that serial ordering came to be viewed as an item-by-item string of locally contiguous events. Modern developments in the mathematics of serial ordering have advanced in sophistication since the early and middle twentieth century, and new computational methods have allowed us to reevaluate the serial concatenative theories of Darwin and the associationists. These new models of serial order permit a closer comparative scrutiny between human and nonhuman. The present study considers Darwin's insistence on a "degree" continuity between human and nonhuman animal serial ordering. We will consider a study of starling birdsongs and whether the serial ordering of those songs provides evidence that they have a syntax that at best differs only in degree and not in kind with the computations of human grammatical structures. We will argue that they, in fact, show no such thing.
GRAMMAR CHANGE - A CASE OF DARWINIAN COGNITIVE EVOLUTION
Evolutionary Linguistic Theory. 2021. 3(1): 6–55. [Response to the responses: Evolutionary Linguistic Theory. 2021. 3(1): 109–121], 2021
[Paper + Response to the commentators] This paper claims that grammar change is a case of Darwinian evolution that targets the cognitively encapsulated, procedural parts of grammar. The cognitively accessible, declarative content of grammars is open for socially motivated changes. The grammar of a language is a complex neuro-cognitively represented program. Such programs are results of an ongoing evolution, that is, results of the interplay between variation and selection, on the level of cognitive processes. In cognitive evolution, the same principles apply as in biological evolution, but the domains of biology and cognition are different, of course. Evolution of grammar is not a facet of biological evolution. It is a domain of evolution on its own. Since the same general abstract principles are at work, the structure of evolutionary processes is parallel in each domain. As a consequence, many theoretical insights of a century of research in population genetics can be cautiously adduced and applied to the explanation of grammar change.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Related papers
Evolutionary Theory of Language. In: Kortmann, Bernd (ed.). 2013 ff. Theories and Methods in Linguistics. (= WSK Woerterbuecher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft Online, Ed. by Schierholz, Stefan J. & Herbert Ernst Wiegand). Berlin: Mouton. s.v., 2013