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Cultural Evolution ofLanguage Dan DediuMichael CysouwStephen C. Levinson2013 год

Cultural Evolution of Language
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Аннотация: This chapter argues that an evolutionary cultural approach to language not only has already proven fruitful, but it probably holds the key to understand many puzzling aspects of language, its change and origins.The chapter begins by highlighting several still common misconceptions about language that might seem to call into question a cultural evolutionary approach.It explores the antiquity of language and sketches a general evolutionary approach discussing the aspects of function, fi tness, replication, and selection, as well the relevant units of linguistic evolution.In this context, the chapter looks at some fundamental aspects of linguistic diversity such as the nature of the design space, the mechanisms generating it, and the shape and fabric of language.Given that biology is another evolutionary system, its complex coevolution with language needs to be understood in order to have a proper theory of language.Throughout the chapter, various challenges are identifi ed and discussed, sketching promising directions for future research.The chapter ends by listing the necessary data, methods, and theoretical developments required for a grounded evolutionary approach to language. Language from an Evolutionary PerspectiveLanguage plays a central role in human cultural life, with thousands of languages being spoken, showing extensive and (from the point of view of other animal communication systems) unexpected variation throughout the world (Fitch 2011).From an evolutionary perspective, a central question posed by this variety of languages is how this diversity arose.Likewise, it is of central importance to elucidate the processes that shaped this variation, and to discover whether these processes differed in the past from what they are today (see, e.g., Baronchelli et al. 2012).Understanding these processes is not only relevant for understanding the history and evolution of languages, it can also
Год издания: 2013
Авторы: Dan Dediu, Michael Cysouw, Stephen C. Levinson, Andrea Baronchelli, Morten H. Christiansen, William Croft, Nicholas Evans, Simon Garrod, Russell D. Gray, Anne Kandler, Elena Lieven
Издательство: The MIT Press
Источник: The MIT Press eBooks
Ключевые слова: Linguistics and language evolution, Historical Linguistics and Language Studies, Language and cultural evolution
Другие ссылки: The MIT Press eBooks (HTML)
ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (PDF)
ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (HTML)