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Information about Evolutionary Linguistics

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 many decades[1]. Recently [2], however, the field is reviving due to the development of new technologies.

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. He introduced the representation of language families as an evolutionary tree in articles published in 1853.

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 field was quickly abandoned[3]; famously, the Société Linguistique de Paris in 1866 refused to admit any further papers on the subject. But recent developments in technology have enabled researchers to implement and test evolutionary language models.

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 Free University of Brussels (VUB). 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 ongoing research has cumulated over the past ten years[4] and 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.

Use in technology

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.

Using evidence in existing languages

Some linguists[5] have taken the approach of using similarities in existing languages. This includes the universal 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.[6] Some linguists, such as John McWhorter, have analyzed the evolution and construction of basic communication methods such as Pidginization and Creolization.[7]

Evolution Factors

It seems that languages show different rates of change in different environments. Languages whose speakers are isolated, for example, 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.

Notes

1. ^ Date needs to be defined and sourced.
2. ^ Date needs to be defined and sourced.
3. ^ Date needs to be defined and sourced.
4. ^ Date needs to be defined and sourced.
5. ^ Defined and source.
6. ^ (2005) Deutscher, Guy. The Unfolding of Language, Owl Books.
7. ^ (2002) McWhorter, John. The Power of Babel: The Natural History of Language, Random House Group.

References

  • Cangelosi, A. and Harnad, S. (2001) The adaptive advantage of symbolic theft over sensorimotor toil: Grounding language in perceptual categories Evolution of Communication 4(1):pp. 117-142.
  • Deacon, T. (1997) The symbolic species: the coevolution of language and the brain, Norton, New York.
  • Hauser, M.D. (1996) The evolution of communication, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
  • Daniel Dor and Jablonka Eva (2001). How language changed the genes. In Tabant J. Ward. S. (editors). Mouton de Gruyer: Berlin, pp 149-175.
  • Dor D. and Jablonka E. (2001) From cultural selection to genetic selection: a framework for the evolution of language. Selection, 1-3, pp. 33-57.
  • Hauser, M.D. Hauser, N. Chomsky and W.T. Fitch (2002) The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?, Science 298: 1569–1579.
  • Jackendoff, R. (2002) Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution Oxford University Press, New York
  • Lieberman, P. (2003) Motor control, speech, and the evolution of language. In: M. Christiansen and S. Kirby, Editors, Language evolution: states of the art, Oxford University Press, New York.
  • Komarova, N.L. (2007). Language and Mathematics: An evolutionary model of grammatical communication. In: History & Mathematics. Moscow, KomKniga/URSS. P. 164-179. ISBN 9785484010011.
  • Nowak, M.A. and N.L. Komarova (2001) Towards an evolutionary theory of language, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5 (7), pp. 288–295.
  • Pinker, S. (1994) The language instinct, HarperCollins, New York.
  • Pinker, S. and P. Bloom (1990) Natural language and natural selection Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: pp. 707–784
  • Sampson, Geoffrey: Evolutionary Language Understanding, published 1996 by Cassel (London), ISBN 0304336505
  • Steels, L. (2001) Grounding Symbols through Evolutionary Language Games. In: Cangelosi A. and Parisi D. (Eds.) Simulating the Evolution of Language Springer.
  • Steklis, H.D. and Harnad, S (1976) From hand to mouth: Some critical stages in the evolution of language In: Harnad, S., Steklis, H. D. and Lancaster, J., (1976) (Eds) Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280: 1-914.
  • See also the UIUC Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography/Repository (1200+ related references, citations, and fulltext pointers)
  • Encyclopedia Americana,Americana Corporation of Canada{1959}-Iceland-Language

Further reading

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

External links

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Science (from the Latin scientia, 'knowledge'), in the broadest sense, refers to any systematic knowledge or practice.[1] Examples of the broader use included political science and computer science, which are not incorrectly named, but rather named according to
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The origin of language (glottogony) is a topic that has attracted considerable speculation throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous and diagnostic traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other species.
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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 consequences that are observable by the senses. Empirical data is data that is produced by experiment or observation.
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See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.


A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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August Schleicher (February 19, 1821 – December 6, 1868) 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.
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Biology (from Greek: βίος, bio, "life"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge"), also referred to as the biological sciences, is the scientific study of life.
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species is one of the basic units of biological classification. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.
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Comparative linguistics (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent.
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FOSSIL is a standard for allowing serial communication for telecommunications programs under the DOS operating system.
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The Société Linguistique de Paris (established 1864) is the editing body of the BSL (Bulletin de la Société Linguistique) journal on linguistics, containing the proceedings of the society's seven per year.
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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.
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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.
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Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG) is a construction grammar formalism designed by Luc Steels implementing the notion of emergent grammar and operates from a multi-agent perspective (none of the agents will speak the exact same language), useful for studies in
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    In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. The replaced phrase is the antecedent of the pronoun.
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      Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference) that indicate which entities a speaker refers to, and distinguishes those entities from others.
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      In linguistics, nominalization refers to the use of a verb or an adjective as a noun, with or without morphological transformation, so that the word can now act as the head of a noun phrase.

      Nominalization happens in languages around the world.
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      verb is a word belonging to the part of speech that usually denotes an action (bring, read), an occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand).
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      Communication is a process that allows organisms to exchange information by several methods. Communication requires that all parties understand a common language that is exchanged with each other.
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      pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups who do not share a common language, in situations such as trade. Pidgins are not the native language of any speech community, but are instead learned as second languages.
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      A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a "new" language, sometimes with features that are not inherited from any apparent source, without however qualifying in any appreciable way as a mixed language.
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      Icelandic}}} 
      Writing system: Latin (Icelandic variant) 
      Official status
      Official language of:  Iceland
      Regulated by: Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies
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      ISO 639-1: is
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      Location of  Iceland

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      inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) to reflect grammatical (that is, relational) information, such as gender, tense, number or person.
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      Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all languages comprising this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the latter mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age Northern Europe.
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