Evolutionary linguistics

19995 characters Ritt /SA German lemma 1 Evolutionäre Linguistik definition in 2 Forschungsrichtung, die sich der biologischen Entstehung der German Sprachfähigkeit sowie der geschichtlichen Entwicklung einzelner menschlicher Sprachen aus evolutionstheoretischer Perspektive nähert. English lemma 3 evolutionary linguistics definition in 4 an approach to the study of human language based on evolutionary theory English and attempting to account both for the emergence of the language faculty and for the historical development of specific human languages. further explanations 5 0. Basics Evolutionary Linguistics is inspired by the Theory of Evolution. Going back to CHARLES DARWIN, the theory explains the existence of different examples biological species and their inheritable traits. Its core is simple: many phenotypic and behavioural traits of organisms are encoded in their genes. When organisms reproduce, copies of those genes are passed on to their offspring, which consequently develop corresponding traits. Since errors ( mutations ) occur in the process, populations are normally characterised by genetic, phenotypic, and behavioural variation. At the same time, the phenotypic and behavioural traits for which gene variants code may either increase or decrease the chances of an organism to survive and reproduce (i.e. its fitness ). Since environmental resources sustain only a limited number of organisms, evolutionary theory predicts that gene variants with a positive effect on the reproductive success of their carriers will outnumber and oust ( be naturally selected over ) their less advantageous competitors. Since the effect which a genetically determined trait has on the reproductive success of its carrier depends on environmental conditions, evolutionary theory also explains why species tend to diversify and to adapt to the ecological niches they inhabit. Thus, it accounts for both the diversity of life and the fact that living organisms appear purposefully designed to maximise the reproductive success of their genes. Evolutionary Theory is relevant to the study of language in two areas: first in approaches to the human language faculty, and secondly in attempts to explain the historically specific properties of different human languages. With regard to the human language faculty, the relevance of evolutionary theory is obvious. Its physiological and cognitive components express species-specific constituents of the human genome and are evidently beneficial to the survival and reproduction of humans. The Theory of Evolution is the only theory that can account for the emergence of such purposeful complexity, and attempts at understanding the language faculty must clearly be based on it. In principle, it can be said with confidence that the human language faculty must have evolved because genes coding for it have (a) emerged through mutations in ancestor genes and (b) been stabilised in the human gene pool because they increased the fitness of their carriers. While this constrains hypotheses about the emergence of the human language faculty, however, it does not yet say much about the specific ways in which the human language faculty evolved, and leaves many open questions for evolutionary linguists to address. While Darwinian evolutionary theory is the obvious framework for studying the emergence of the language faculty, its relevance for studying the properties of specific historical languages is less direct. It derives from the fact that the principles of Darwinian evolution are per se not specific to the biological domain, but apply to all replicator systems, i.e. systems whose components (a) get copied faithfully enough to form lineages, and (b) have properties that affect the likelihood of their own replication (cf. GELL-MANN 1992). Since this may be true of linguistic constituents such as phonemes, words, syntactic constructions, etc., languages also qualify as replicator systems. That there are obvious analogies between biological species and human languages has often been observed. Like biological traits, for example, languages are passed on between generations of individuals; like the lineages of species, the historical lineages of languages diversify and form family trees; like gene transmission, the transmission of linguistic constituents gives rise to variation, and the rise of new linguistic variants often results in the loss of established ones. Such analogies suggest that human languages and biological species may indeed represent different instances of the same system type, and that the principles of Darwinian evolution may underlie both of them. Although the emergence of the language faculty and the historical development of specific languages appear to belong to different ontological domains, neither of the two can easily be understood without taking the other into account. If the structures of actual historical languages reflect the biological make-up of the human language faculty, a theory that accounts for the emergence of the former helps to explain the latter as well. Conversely, the fitness enhancing effects of a biological language faculty clearly depend on the existence of a specific actual language. Thus, while the biological constraints inherent to the language faculty constrain the design space in which historical language development unfolds, the properties of actual historical communication practices must clearly also have affected the evolution of the biological language faculty. Therefore, the biological evolution of the language faculty and the socio-historical development of specific languages can be seen as co-evolutionary processes which mutually influence each other. (DEACON 1998, CHRISTIANSEN/CHATER 2008) 1. Evolutionary approaches to the human language faculty Language is one of the most distinctive traits of the human species, and interest in its origin has always been great. At least since the 18th century scholars have attempted to account for it in scientific terms (e.g. HERDER 1772). The problem is difficult to study, however, because language leaves no traces unless it is written. Even if one assumes that language emerged only with modern man (i.e. about 120.000 years ago), this means that during more than 90 percent of its history it existed only in the spoken mode. Thus, no direct evidence of early language exists, and the question what counts as indirect evidence and how it is to be interpreted requires extreme caution. Such caution was mostly lacking in early studies of the problem, so that in 1866 the French Linguistic Society issued a famous ban on the topic. However, after having counted as unaddressable for more than a century, the problem has gained renewed attention since the 1980ies and engaged scholars from different academic fields. Since 1996, a biennial conference on language evolution has regularly attracted a wide audience. What distinguishes contemporary studies from early 19th century approaches, is (a) that they are based on a better understanding of biological evolution, (b) that more is known about the cognitive foundations of language, its functions, and its diachrony, (c) that more solid, albeit still indirect, evidence on the evolution of language has been produced in neighbouring disciplines, and (d) that increased use is being made of mathematical and/or computational methods. Nevertheless, a standard theory of language evolution is not nearly within reach. Instead, contemporary research has shown that the problem needs to be broken down into a number of constituent questions, all of which are highly challenging. Thus, one of the key insights of contemporary evolutionary linguistics is that simple, essentialist conceptions of the language faculty are misconceived (HURFORD 2007). Instead, it is better to think of it as a complex configuration of biological components which cooperate to fulfil a set of functions, such as aiding cognition, establishing social relations, or communicating information. Each of the involved components has its own evolutionary history, which may be only partly determined by the role it plays for language. 1.1. Adaptations in language emergence A fundamental question in evolutionary linguistics is which of the human traits that serve linguistic functions owe their specific properties to having been adapted for this purpose. A case in point is the comparably low position of the human larynx. Larynx lowering has produced a pharyngeal cavity which facilitates the production of distinctly coloured vowels (such as /i/, /u/ and /a/). However, it is not certain that it has evolved solely or primarily for that purpose. Instead, it may be a side-effect of bi-pedalism, or have been selected for its capacity to enhance male threat displays (OHALA 2000) rather than for speech perception. Although the role of vowel colour in the phonology of human languages may still be related to the evolution of a lowered larynx, the simple conclusion that larynx lowering indicates the evolutionary emergence of language is unwarranted. Similar points can be made about most biological traits involved in human language, ranging from phonological capacities (e.g. categorical sound perception) to semantic/pragmatic ones (e.g. theory of mind). Surprisingly often, they turn out not to be as uniquely human as previously thought, and homologous or analogous traits in other animals serve non-linguistic functions (CHOMSKY/HAUSER/FITCH 2002). Although the way they interact in humans to enable linguistic communication may be unique, it is difficult to assess to what extent the specifically human variants of these traits have been adapted for the linguistic functions they serve. Unresolved details notwithstanding, it is widely accepted that the fitness enhancing properties of language must have exerted a selection pressure on its biological components, and that the modern human language faculty represents the product of many gradual adaptations each of which enhanced the functionality of language as a whole, while none of them marked an absolute watershed between non-language and language (JACKENDOFF/PINKER 2005). However, a minority view is held by some scholars with a generativist background (CHOMSKY/HAUSER/FITCH 2002). According to this view most components of the Language Faculty in the Broad sense (LFB) came to be co-opted for linguistic functions without being altered, with only one trait representing a truly language-related adaptation, namely the capacity to deal with syntactic constituency and recursive embedding. Referred to as Language Faculty in the Narrow sense (LFN) it is thought to have been selected as a link between the conceptual/intentional system and the sensory/motor system. 1.2. Syntax or symbols A related issue concerns the roles which syntax and the lexicon played in the emergence of language. While generativist linguists regard the evolution of syntactic constituency as crucial in the emergence of language, others (e.g. DEACON 1997) attribute greater importance to the emergence of symbolic signification, i.e. the ability to deal with conventional signs, in which the relation between acoustic signifiers and conceptual signifieds is looser and more variable than in the rigidly indexical signs characteristic of animal communication. Since humans have both symbols and syntax, and all other species have neither, the question cannot be addressed empirically. However, the problem has come to be attacked quite successfully by evolutionary game theory and computer simulation. Both provide good means for testing the logical consistency of hypotheses about evolutionary systems, because they allow one to compute or to simulate how even fairly complex multi-agent systems develop over time, given (a) assumed possibilities for their constituents to vary and (b) assumed constraints on the stability or fecundity of their constituents. With regard to the symbol vs. syntax problem, simulation (e.g. KIRBY 2000, STEELS 1998) and game theory (e.g. NOVAK/KRAKAUER 1999) suggest that populations of agents who pass on their communication systems among each other through learning and imitation may develop syntactically structured sign systems even if they start out only with an inventory of lexical symbols. Although such methods depend on the plausibility of the premises built into them, they do demonstrate that it is possible for morpho-syntactically structured communication systems to emerge from systems that contain only words at first. Thus, they lend greater support to theories which regard syntax as having naturally developed in symbolic communication systems than to theories which regard syntax as absolutely fundamental. 1.3. The primary purpose of language: social or communicative Although most evolutionary linguists assume that the fitness enhancing functions of language played a central role in its emergence, the question which of them should be regarded as primary and in what order they became relevant in the selection of language-related traits also remains to be solved. One widely held view attributes a central role to the fact that language communicates information about the environment and must thereby have facilitated co-operation in hunting and gathering. (PINKER/BLOOM 1999). Another view (DUNBAR 1998) is that the primary force behind the evolution of language was the social need to indentify and recognise group members by their vocalisations. This need may have arisen when hominid groups became too large for social relations to be negotiated through grooming. The capacity of identifying group members through vocalisations created a pressure to imitate one another s vocalisation patterns and led to group-specific vocalisation conventions, which had to be learnt by infants and came to represent the first arbitrary and conventional signs. Their potential for signalling factual rather than only social information was exploited only later. 1.4. Nature or culture Recent studies in evolutionary linguistics suggest that many properties of human language may be the products of cultural rather than genetic evolution. Thus, CHRISTIANSEN and CHATER (2008) point out that many fundamental properties of actual human languages are too variable and change too rapidly for natural selection to keep track of them. Like DEACON (1998) or TOMASELLO (2008), they suggest that such historically variable traits may represent cultural adaptations to relatively loose biological constraints on how human brains store, process and communicate information. Since simulations and game theoretical models (KIRBY 2000, NOVAK/KRAKAUER 1999, STEELS 1998) suggest that even syntactic and phonological structure may have emerged in that way, evolutionary linguists have become increasingly interested in the transmission and the historical development of languages. 2. Evolutionary approaches to language change The possibility that many properties of human language may reflect cultural rather than biological developments has motivated evolutionary research on the processes underlying linguistic diachrony. In such approaches, the constituents of languages are viewed as cultural analogues of genes, or linguistic memes (DAWKINS 1976, RITT 2004), which get replicated through imitation in communication and language acquisition. The biological make-up, the social instincts, and the cognitive needs of human speakers are regarded as environmental constraints and selective pressures on the cultural evolution of language. Thus, evolutionary approaches differ from hermeneutic and functional theories of linguistic diachrony, which regard speakers as the ultimate beneficiaries and agents of linguistic change. Instead, linguistic history is seen as a Darwinian struggle among rivalling variants of language constituents, for which speakers provide the material substrate. Since the make-up and the biologically specified needs of human organisms are still granted a central role in the selection of constituent variants, however, the predictions of evolutionary theories of language change differ little from those derived from speaker interests. Thus, saying that speech sounds are adapted to the mechanics of human articulation differs little from saying that speakers prefer speech sounds which are easy to articulate. Cases in which evolutionary approaches might prove superior to speaker-centred ones are long term drifts (Malkiel 1981) in which languages seem to evolve in a clear direction. Such drifts often span many generations and are unlikely to reflect speaker intention. Thus, English seems to have seen a gradual but steady reduction in the inventory of consonants accompanied by a strengthening of contrasts in the vowel system. In evolutionary terms, these apparently directed changes can be seen as adaptive responses to the fact that English has had fixed word stress and a stress timing rhythm for more than 1000 years. (RITT 2010) Another problem for evolutionary theories of language is the question to what ontological domain replicating language constituents should be attributed. While most evolutionary linguists think of linguistic replicators in terms of neurally implemented instructions, others (CROFT 2000) prefer to see the acoustic or written constituents of utterances as the units of linguistic evolution, even though utterance tokens are highly variable and get the status of copies of one another only when recognised as such. What may turn out as the greatest asset of evolutionary theories of language change is their deliberately analytic stance, and that they make no reference to the concept of speakers selves, which is so powerful that it often deprives hermeneutic theories of language of their explanatory value. synonyms 6 antonyms 7 cross- 8 Darwinian linguistics references abbreviation of 8a NR 9 HAUSER, M. / CHOMSKY, N. / FITCH, W.T. [2002] The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, author s name references and further reading and how did it evolve? In: Science 298: 1569-1579 CHRISTIANSEN, M.H. / CHATER, N. (2008). Language as shaped by the brain. In: Behavioral & Brain Sciences 31: 489-558 CROFT, W. [2000] Explaining language change: an evolutionary approach. London DAWKINS, R. 1976. The selfish gene. Oxford DEACON, T. [1997] The symbolic species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. Cambride, MA. DUNBAR, R. [1998] Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, MA. GELL-MANN, M. [1992] Complexity and complex adaptive systems. In: HAWKINS J.A. / GELLMANN, M. [eds.] The evolution of human languages. Reading, MA: 3-18 HERDER, J. G. [1772] Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache. Berlin HURFORD, J. [2007] The origins of meaning. Oxford JACKENDOFF R. / PINKER, S. [2005] The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language. In: Cognition 97: 211-225 KIRBY, S. [2000] Syntax without natural selection: how compositionality emerges from vocabulary in a population of learners. In: KNIGHT, C. / STUDDERT-KENNEDY, M. [eds.] The evolutionary emergence of language: social function and the origins of linguistic form. Cambride: 303-324 MALKIEL, Y. [1981] Drift, slope, and slant: background of, and variations upon, a Sapirian theme. In: Language 57. 535-570 NOWAK, M.A. / KRAKAUER, D.C. [1999] The evolution of language. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 96: 8028-8033 OHALA, J. J. [2000]. Irrelevance of the lowered larynx in modern Man for the development of speech. Evolution of Speech - ENST. Paris PINKER, S. / BLOOM, P. [1990] Natural language and natural selection. In: Behavioral & Brain Sciences 13: 707-784 RITT, N. 2004. Selfish sounds and linguistic evolution. Cambridge RITT, N. 2010. How to weaken one’s consonants, strengthen one’s vowels, and remain English at the same time. In: BERMUDEZ-OTERO, R. / DENISON, D. / MCCULLY, C. / MOORE, E. [eds.] Analysing older English. Cambridge STEELS, L. [1998] The origins of syntax in visually grounded robotic agents. In: Artificial Intelligence 103:133-156.