Evolutionary linguistics
Encyclopedia
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 practically no traces. This led to an abandonment of the field for more than a century. Since the late 1980s, the field has been revived in the wake of progress made in the related fields of psycholinguistics
, neurolinguistics
, evolutionary anthropology
, evolutionary psychology
, and cognitive science
.
(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
. 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
, 1886.
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
. In 1990, Steven Pinker
and Paul Bloom published their paper "Natural Language & Natural Selection" which strongly argued for an adaptationist approach to language origins. Their paper is often credited with reviving the interest in evolutionary linguistics. This development was further strengthened by the establishment (in 1996) of a series of conferences on the Evolution of Language (now known as "Evolang"), promoting a scientific, multidisciplinary approach to the issue, and interest from major academic publishers (e.g., the Studies in the Evolution of Language series has been appearing with Oxford University Press
since 2001) and scientific journals.
. An English family with a severe, heritable language dysfunction was found to have a defective copy of this gene. Mutations of the corresponding gene in mice (FOXP2 is fairly well conserved; modern humans share the same allele as Neanderthals
) cause reductions in size and vocalization rate. If both copies are damaged, the Purkinje layer (a part of the cerebellum
that contains better-connected neurons than any other) develops abnormally, runting
is more common, and pups die within weeks due to inadequate lung development. Additionally, higher presence of FOXP2 in songbirds is correlated to song changes, with downregulation
causing incomplete and inaccurate song imitation in zebra finches
. In general, evidence suggests that the protein is vital to neuroplasticity. There is little support, however, for the idea that FOXP2 is 'the grammar gene' or that it had much to do with the relatively recent emergence of syntactical speech.
Another controversial dichotomy is the question of whether human language is solely human or on a continuum with (admittedly far removed) animal communication systems
. Studies in ethology
have forced researchers to reassess many claims of uniquely human abilities for language and speech. For instance, Tecumseh Fitch has argued that the descended larynx is not unique to humans. Similarly, once held uniquely human traits such as formant perception, combinatorial phonology and compositional semantics are now thought to be shared with at least some nonhuman animal species. Conversely, Derek Bickerton and others argue that the advent of abstract words provided a mental basis for analyzing higher-order relations, and that any communication system that remotely resembles human language utterly relies on cognitive architecture that co-evolved alongside language.
As it leaves no fossils, language's form and even its presence are extremely hard or impossible to deduce from physical evidence. Computational modeling is now widely accepted as an approach to assure the internal consistency of language-evolution scenarios. Approximately one-third of all papers presented at the 2010 Evolution of Language conference http://evolang2010.nl rely at least in part on computer simulations.
, 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 claimed to be 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.
Some linguists, such as John McWhorter
, have analyzed the evolution and construction of basic communication
methods such as Pidgin
ization and Creolization
.
"Nativist" models of "Universal Grammar
" are informed by linguistic universals such as the existence of pronoun
s and demonstrative
s, and the similarities in each languages process of nominalization
(the process of verb
s becoming noun
s) as well as the reverse, the process of turning nouns into verbs. This is a purely descriptive approach to what we mean by "natural language
" without attempting to address its emergence.
Finally there are those archaeologists and evolutionary anthropologists – among them Ian Watts,, Camilla Power and Chris Knight
(co-founder with James Hurford
of the EVOLANG series of conferences) — who argue that 'the origin of language' is probably an insoluble problem. In agreement with Amotz Zahavi, Knight argues that language — being a realm of patent fictions — is a theoretical impossibility in a Darwinian world, where signals must be intrinsically reliable. If we are to explain language's evolution, according to this view, we must tackle it as part of a wider one — the evolutionary emergence of symbolic culture
as such.
Origin of language
The origin of language is the emergence of language in the human species. This is a highly controversial topic. Empirical evidence is so limited that many regard it as unsuitable for serious scholars. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject...
. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
data
Data
The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
: spoken language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
leaves practically no traces. This led to an abandonment of the field for more than a century. Since the late 1980s, the field has been revived in the wake of progress made in the related fields of psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the...
, neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methodology and theory from fields such as neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive science,...
, evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates. Evolutionary anthropology is based in natural science and social science...
, evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
, and cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
.
History
August SchleicherAugust Schleicher
August Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language...
(1821–1868) and his Stammbaumtheorie are often quoted as the starting point of evolutionary linguistics. Inspired by the natural sciences, especially biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, Schleicher was the first to compare languages to evolving species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
. He introduced the representation of language families as an evolutionary tree in articles published in 1853.
Joseph Jastrow
Joseph Jastrow
Joseph Jastrow was an American psychologist, noted for inventions in experimental psychology, design of experiments, and psycho-physics. Jastrow was one of the first scientists to study the evolution of language, publishing an article on the topic in 1886...
published a gestural theory of the evolution of language in the seventh volume of Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
, 1886.
The Stammbaumtheorie proved to be very productive for comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
, but didn't solve the major problem of evolutionary linguistics: the lack of fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
records. The question of the origin of language was abandoned as unsolvable. Famously, the Société Linguistique de Paris
Société Linguistique de Paris
The Société de Linguistique de Paris is the editing body of the BSL journal on linguistics, containing the proceedings of the society's seven per year. Each year in January the group holds a study day dedicated to a particular topic...
in 1866 refused to admit any further papers on the subject.
The field has re-appeared in 1988 in the Linguistic Bibliography
Linguistic Bibliography
The Linguistic Bibliography / Bibliographie Linguistique is an annual publication, which first appeared in 1949, providing comprehensive bibliographical descriptions of publications in theoretical linguistics...
, as a subfield of psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the...
. In 1990, Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
and Paul Bloom published their paper "Natural Language & Natural Selection" which strongly argued for an adaptationist approach to language origins. Their paper is often credited with reviving the interest in evolutionary linguistics. This development was further strengthened by the establishment (in 1996) of a series of conferences on the Evolution of Language (now known as "Evolang"), promoting a scientific, multidisciplinary approach to the issue, and interest from major academic publishers (e.g., the Studies in the Evolution of Language series has been appearing with Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
since 2001) and scientific journals.
Recent developments
Evolutionary linguistics as a field is rapidly emerging as a result of developments in neighboring disciplines. To what extent language's features are determined by genes, a hotly debated dichotomy in linguistics, has had new light shed upon it by the discovery of the FoxP2-geneFOXP2
Forkhead box protein P2 also known as FOXP2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FOXP2 gene, located on human chromosome 7 . FOXP2 orthologs have also been identified in all mammals for which complete genome data are available...
. An English family with a severe, heritable language dysfunction was found to have a defective copy of this gene. Mutations of the corresponding gene in mice (FOXP2 is fairly well conserved; modern humans share the same allele as Neanderthals
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
) cause reductions in size and vocalization rate. If both copies are damaged, the Purkinje layer (a part of the cerebellum
Cerebellum
The cerebellum is a region of the brain that plays an important role in motor control. It may also be involved in some cognitive functions such as attention and language, and in regulating fear and pleasure responses, but its movement-related functions are the most solidly established...
that contains better-connected neurons than any other) develops abnormally, runting
Runt
A runt is a smaller specimen in a group of animals, usually of offspring in a litter.Runt may also refer to:*Runt , a 1970 album by Todd Rundgren, originally credited to the band Runt...
is more common, and pups die within weeks due to inadequate lung development. Additionally, higher presence of FOXP2 in songbirds is correlated to song changes, with downregulation
Downregulation and upregulation
Downregulation is the process by which a cell decreases the quantity of a cellular component, such as RNA or protein, in response to an external variable...
causing incomplete and inaccurate song imitation in zebra finches
Zebra Finch
The Zebra Finch, Taeniopygia guttata, is the most common and familiar estrildid finch of Central Australia and ranges over most of the continent, avoiding only the cool moist south and the tropical far north. It also can be found natively in Indonesia and East Timor...
. In general, evidence suggests that the protein is vital to neuroplasticity. There is little support, however, for the idea that FOXP2 is 'the grammar gene' or that it had much to do with the relatively recent emergence of syntactical speech.
Another controversial dichotomy is the question of whether human language is solely human or on a continuum with (admittedly far removed) animal communication systems
Animal communication
Animal communication is any behavior on the part of one animal that has an effect on the current or future behaviour of another animal. The study of animal communication, is sometimes called Zoosemiotics has played an important part in the...
. Studies in ethology
Ethology
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....
have forced researchers to reassess many claims of uniquely human abilities for language and speech. For instance, Tecumseh Fitch has argued that the descended larynx is not unique to humans. Similarly, once held uniquely human traits such as formant perception, combinatorial phonology and compositional semantics are now thought to be shared with at least some nonhuman animal species. Conversely, Derek Bickerton and others argue that the advent of abstract words provided a mental basis for analyzing higher-order relations, and that any communication system that remotely resembles human language utterly relies on cognitive architecture that co-evolved alongside language.
As it leaves no fossils, language's form and even its presence are extremely hard or impossible to deduce from physical evidence. Computational modeling is now widely accepted as an approach to assure the internal consistency of language-evolution scenarios. Approximately one-third of all papers presented at the 2010 Evolution of Language conference http://evolang2010.nl rely at least in part on computer simulations.
Approaches
One original researcher in the field is Luc SteelsLuc Steels
Luc Steels is a Belgian scientist, and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is also heading the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. Steels, along with Rodney Brooks , was one of the initiators of the behaviour-based robotics approach to...
, head of the research units of Sony CSL in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and the AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is a Flemish university located in Brussels, Belgium. It has two campuses referred to as Etterbeek and Jette.The university's name is sometimes abbreviated by "VUB" or translated to "Free University of Brussels"...
. 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
Complex adaptive system
Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are dynamic networks of interactions and relationships not aggregations of static entities...
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
Fluid construction grammar
Fluid construction grammar is a construction grammar formalism designed by Luc Steels implementing the notion of emergent grammar and operates from a multi-agent perspective , useful for studies in evolutionary linguistics.FCG is a fully operational formalism for construction grammars and proposes...
(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 claimed to be 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.
Some linguists, such as John McWhorter
John McWhorter
John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His linguistic specialty is creole and the process through which it forms.-Early life:...
, have analyzed the evolution and construction of basic communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
methods such as Pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
ization and Creolization
Creolization
Creolization is a concept that refers to the process in which new African American cultures emerge in the New World. As a result of colonization there was a mixture between people of indigenous, African, and European decent, which became to be understood as Creolization...
.
"Nativist" models of "Universal Grammar
Universal grammar
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...
" are informed by linguistic universals such as the existence of pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s and demonstrative
Demonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
s, and the similarities in each languages process of nominalization
Nominalization
In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb as the head of a noun phrase, with or without morphological transformation...
(the process of verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s becoming noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s) as well as the reverse, the process of turning nouns into verbs. This is a purely descriptive approach to what we mean by "natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
" without attempting to address its emergence.
Finally there are those archaeologists and evolutionary anthropologists – among them Ian Watts,, Camilla Power and Chris Knight
Chris Knight (anthropologist)
Chris Knight is a British anthropologist and political activist.Following an MPhil in Russian Literature from the University of Sussex in 1977, he gained his PhD in 1987 at the University of London for a thesis on Claude Lévi-Strauss's four-volume Mythologiques...
(co-founder with James Hurford
James Hurford
James R. Hurford is the author of several notable books on linguistics and language evolution.He is General Editor of Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language, he is also a member of the Research Unit in Language Evolution and Computation at the University of Edinburgh where he is an emeritus...
of the EVOLANG series of conferences) — who argue that 'the origin of language' is probably an insoluble problem. In agreement with Amotz Zahavi, Knight argues that language — being a realm of patent fictions — is a theoretical impossibility in a Darwinian world, where signals must be intrinsically reliable. If we are to explain language's evolution, according to this view, we must tackle it as part of a wider one — the evolutionary emergence of symbolic culture
Symbolic culture
Symbolic culture is a concept used by archaeologists, social anthropologists and sociologists to differentiate the cultural realm constructed and inhabited uniquely by Homo sapiens from ordinary "culture", which many other animals possess. Symbolic culture presupposes more than the ability to learn...
as such.
EVOLANG Conference
The Evolution of Language International Conferences http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/evolang/http://www.let.uu.nl/evolang2010.nl/history.php have been held biennially since 1996.- 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.
- 1998 LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
: 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, - 2000 ParisÉcole Normale SupérieureThe École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
: J. L. Desalles & L. Ghadakpour (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Evolution of Language - 2002 BostonHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
: J. Hurford & T. Fitch (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Evolution of Language - 2004 LeipzigMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyThe Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Planck Society network....
- 2006 RomeUniversity of Rome La SapienzaThe Sapienza University of Rome, officially Sapienza – Università di Roma, formerly known as Università degli studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a coeducational, autonomous state university in Rome, Italy...
: Angelo Cangelosi, Andrew D. M. Smith, Kenny Smith The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Evolution of Language, World Scientific, ISBN 9812566562. - 2008 BarcelonaUniversity of BarcelonaThe University of Barcelona is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. It is a member of the Coimbra Group, LERU, European University Association, Mediterranean Universities Union, International Research Universities Network and Vives Network...
: http://stel.ub.edu/evolang2008/pro.htm Andrew D. M. Smith, Kenny Smith, Ramon Ferrer i Cancho "The Evolution of Language (EVOLANG 7)", World Scientific, ISBN 9812776117. - 2010 UtrechtUtrecht UniversityUtrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....
, the Netherlands, April 14–17, 2010. http://evolang2010.nl. Andrew D. M. Smith, Marieke Schouwstra, Bart de Boer, Kenny Smith "The Evolution of Language (EVOLANG 8)", World Scientific, ISBN 9814295213.
See also
- Origin of languageOrigin of languageThe origin of language is the emergence of language in the human species. This is a highly controversial topic. Empirical evidence is so limited that many regard it as unsuitable for serious scholars. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject...
- BiolinguisticsBiolinguisticsBiolinguistics is the study of the biology and evolution of language. It is a highly interdisciplinary field, including linguists, biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, mathematicians, and others...
- Universal DarwinismUniversal darwinismUniversal Darwinism refers to a variety of approaches that extend the theory of Darwinism beyond its original domain of biological evolution on Earth...