Evolutionary linguistics

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Evolutionary linguistics is the scientific study of the origins and development of language. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data: spoken language leaves no traces. This led to an abandonment of the field for more than a century[1]. Since the late 1980s, the field has been revived in the wake of progress made in the related fields of psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, evolutionary anthropology and cognitive science.

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[edit] History

August Schleicher (1821-1868) and his ‘Stammbaumtheorie’ are often quoted as the starting point of evolutionary linguistics. Inspired by the natural sciences, especially biology, Schleicher was the first to compare languages to evolving species. [2] He introduced the representation of language families as an evolutionary tree in articles published in 1853. Joseph Jastrow published a gestural theory of the evolution of language in the seventh volume of Science [3]

The Stammbaumtheorie proved to be very productive for comparative linguistics, but didn't solve the major problem of evolutionary linguistics: the lack of fossil records. The question of the origin of language was abandoned as unsolvable. Famously, the Société Linguistique de Paris in 1866 refused to admit any further papers on the subject. The field has re-appeared in 1988 in the Linguistic Bibliography, as a subfield of psycholinguistics. A dedicated research conference was first held in 1996. The Studies in the Evolution of Language series has been appearing with Oxford University Press since 2001.

[edit] Study methods

One of these researchers is Professor Dr. Luc Steels, head of the research units of Sony CSL in Paris and the AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He and his team are investigating ways in which artificial agents self-organize languages with natural-like properties and how meaning can co-evolve with language. Their research is based on the hypothesis that language is a complex adaptive system that emerges through adaptive interactions between agents and continues to evolve in order to remain adapted to the needs and capabilities of the agents. This research has been implemented in fluid construction grammar (FCG), a formalism for construction grammars that has been specially designed for the origins and evolution of language.

The approach of computational modeling and the use of robotic agents grounded in real life is theory independent. It enables the researcher to find out exactly what cognitive capacities are needed for certain language phenomena to emerge. It also focuses the researcher in formulating hypotheses in a precise and exact manner, whereas theoretical models often stay very vague. The precision and theory independence of these kinds of experiments make them of great value for the scientific debate.[citation needed]

Some linguists, such as John McWhorter, have analyzed the evolution and construction of basic communication methods such as Pidginization and Creolization.[4]

"Nativist" models of "Universal Grammar" are informed by linguistic universals such as the existence of pronouns and demonstratives, and the similarities in each languages process of nominalization (The process of verbs becoming nouns) as well as the reverse, the process of turning nouns into verbs.[5] This is a purely descriptive approach to what we mean by "natural language" without attempting to address its emergence.

[edit] Evolution Factors

It seems that languages show different rates of change in different environments.[citation needed] Languages whose speakers are isolated - usually on islands - apparently change more slowly—Icelandic is an outstanding example of this. Norsemen brought Icelandic to Iceland in the 9th century; as its speakers had little contact with the outside world, it has changed very little during its 1100 years of development. It has changed so little, in fact, that Icelandic texts written 800 years ago are intelligible to speakers of Icelandic in the 21st century. The language is also highly inflected, and much more so than other Germanic languages. Likewise, Sardinian is considered to be the most conservative Romance language.

[edit] EVOLANG Conference

The Evolution of Language International Conferences[1] have been held biennially since 1996.

  1. 1996 Edinburgh: Hurford, J. R., Studdert-Kennedy, M. & Knight C. (eds), Approaches to the Evolution of Language - Social and Cognitive Bases, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  2. 1998 London: Chris Knight, James R. Hurford and Michael Studdert-Kennedy (eds), The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form, Cambridge University Press,
  3. 2000 Paris: J. L. Desalles & L. Ghadakpour (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Evolution of Language
  4. 2002 Harvard: J. Hurford & T. Fitch (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Evolution of Language
  5. 2004 Leipzig
  6. 2006 Rome: Kenny. Smith, Andrew, D. M. Smith, Angelo Cangelosi, The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Evolution of Language, World Scientific, ISBN 9812566562.
  7. 2008 Barcelona [2]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ for about 12 decades, from the 1860s to the 1980s.
  2. ^ [[:Template:Liba Taub: Evolutionary Ideas and "Empirical" Methods: The Analogy Between Language and Species in the Works of Lyell and Schleicher. British Journal for the History of Science 26, pages 171-193 (1993)]]
  3. ^ Jastrow J (1886). "The Evolution of Language". Science 7 (176S): 555–557. doi:10.1126/science.ns-7.176S.555. PMID 17778380. 
  4. ^ (2002) McWhorter, John. The Power of Babel: The Natural History of Language, Random House Group.
  5. ^ (2005) Deutscher, Guy. The Unfolding of Language, Owl Books.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

  • Kenneally, Christine. The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, Viking Adult (July 19, 2007), ISBN 0-670-03490-8

[edit] External links

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