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Evolutionary linguistics
 
 
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Evolutionary linguistics is the scientific study of the origins and development of language
Origin of language

The origin of language, also known as glottogony, is a topic that has attracted considerable attention throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous traits that distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species....
. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical
Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment, as opposed to theory. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or Logical consequence that are observable by the senses....
 data
DATA

Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa is a multinational Non-governmental organization founded in January 2002 in London by U2's Bono along with Robert Sargent Shriver III and activists from the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign....
: spoken language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 leaves 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 psychology and neurobiology factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language....
, neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics

File:Gray726-Brodman.pngFile:DTI-sagittal-fibers.jpgNeurolinguistics is the study of the Neuron mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language....
, evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology

Evolutionary anthropology is the study of the relation between social behavior and the evolution of hominids and non-hominid primates. It includes:...
 and cognitive science
Cognitive science

Cognitive science may be concisely defined as the study of the nature of intelligence. It draws on multiple empirical disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, sociology and biology....
.

st Schleicher (1821-1868) and his ‘Stammbaumtheorie’ are often quoted as the starting point of evolutionary linguistics.






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Evolutionary linguistics is the scientific study of the origins and development of language
Origin of language

The origin of language, also known as glottogony, is a topic that has attracted considerable attention throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous traits that distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species....
. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical
Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment, as opposed to theory. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or Logical consequence that are observable by the senses....
 data
DATA

Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa is a multinational Non-governmental organization founded in January 2002 in London by U2's Bono along with Robert Sargent Shriver III and activists from the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign....
: spoken language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 leaves 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 psychology and neurobiology factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language....
, neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics

File:Gray726-Brodman.pngFile:DTI-sagittal-fibers.jpgNeurolinguistics is the study of the Neuron mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language....
, evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology

Evolutionary anthropology is the study of the relation between social behavior and the evolution of hominids and non-hominid primates. It includes:...
 and cognitive science
Cognitive science

Cognitive science may be concisely defined as the study of the nature of intelligence. It draws on multiple empirical disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, sociology and biology....
.

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
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
, 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....
. He introduced the representation of language families as an evolutionary tree in articles published in 1853. Joseph Jastrow
Joseph Jastrow

Joseph Jastrow was an United States psychologist, born in Warsaw, Poland. He was the son of Talmud scholar Marcus Jastrow and younger brother of Morris Jastrow....
 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 considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals....
 

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 in order to establish their history relatedness....
, but didn't solve the major problem of evolutionary linguistics: the lack of fossil
Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
 records. The question of the origin of language was abandoned as unsolvable. Famously, the Société Linguistique de Paris
Société Linguistique de Paris

The Soci?t? de Linguistique de Paris is the editing body of the BSL journal on linguistics, containing the proceedings of the society's seven per year....
 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 is an annual publication, first appearing 1947, providing a comprehensive bibliography of publications in linguistics , published by Springer Verlag....
, as a subfield of psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychology and neurobiology factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language....
. A dedicated research conference was first held in 1996. The Studies in the Evolution of Language series has been appearing with Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is a publisher and a department of the University of Oxford in England. It is the largest university press in the world, being larger than all the American university presses combined with Cambridge University Press....
 since 2001.

Study methods

One of these researchers is Professor Dr. Luc Steels
Luc Steels

Luc Steels is a Belgium scientist, and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is also heading the SONY Computer Science Laboratory in Paris....
, head of the research units of Sony CSL in Paris
Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
 and the AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Vrije Universiteit Brussel

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is a Flemish Community university located in Brussels, Belgium. It has two campuses referred to as Etterbeek and Jette....
. 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 diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience....
 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), 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.

Some linguists, such as John McWhorter
John McWhorter

File:JohnMcWhorter.jpgJohn Hamilton McWhorter V is an American Linguistics and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations....
, have analyzed the evolution and construction of basic communication
Communication

Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs...",, 1: an act or instance of transmitting and 3 a: "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or beha...
 methods such as Pidgin
Pidgin

A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, in situations such as trade....
ization and Creolization
Creolization

Creolization is a g eography concept which focuses on the inflow of commodity to a place --it is the process of seeing how commodities are assigned meanings and uses in receiving cultures....
.

"Nativist" models of "Universal Grammar
Universal grammar

Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans . It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages....
" 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 with or without a Determiner , such as Wiktionary:you and Wiktionary:they in English language....
s and demonstrative
Demonstrative

Demonstratives are deictic expression words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to, and distinguishes those entities from others. Demonstratives are employed for spatial deixis and as discourse deictics, referring to propositions mentioned in speech....
s, and the similarities in each languages process of nominalization
Nominalization

In linguistics, nominalization refers to the use of a verb or an adjective as a noun, with or without morphology transformation, so that the word can now act as the head of a noun phrase....
 (the process of verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
s becoming noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class 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....
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 a language that is spoken, Sign language, or writing by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages and from constructed languages....
" without attempting to address its emergence.

EVOLANG Conference

The Evolution of Language International Conferences 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
    École Normale Supérieure

    The ?cole normale sup?rieure is a France Grandes ?coles . The ENS was initially conceived during the French Revolution, and intended to provide the First French Republic with a new body of teacher, trained in the critical spirit and secular values of the the Enlightenment....
    : J. L. Desalles & L. Ghadakpour (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Evolution of Language
  4. 2002 Harvard
    Harvard University

    Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher learning in the United States....
    : J. Hurford & T. Fitch (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Evolution of Language
  5. 2004 Leipzig
    Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

    The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, founded in 1997. It is part of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft network....
  6. 2006 Rome
    University of Rome La Sapienza

    Sapienza University of Rome is a coeducational, autonomous state university in Rome, Italy. It is the largest European university and the most ancient of the city's three state-funded universities; Sapienza was founded in 1303, University of Rome Tor Vergata in 1982, and Third University of Rome in 1992....
    : 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
    University of Barcelona

    The University of Barcelona is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. It is a member of the Coimbra Group and Joan Llu?s Vives Institute....
     


Further reading



See also

  • Origin of language
    Origin of language

    The origin of language, also known as glottogony, is a topic that has attracted considerable attention throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous traits that distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species....


External links