Can Languages Evolve?

Note: This post continues a discussion of the book Creating Language by Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater. For previous posts see here and here. The authors turn generative grammar on its head by asserting that language evolves to fit the brain rather than vice-versa. It is an appealing idea, but how literally are we to take this word evolution? How many features of biological evolution are visible in linguistic change? Traits: Biological specimens are complex with a number of different traits. Languages too have many traits: pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary being three obvious ones. Without different traits, there would be nothing to evolve. Variety: Neither biological individuals not linguistic utterances are identical. They have different combinations of traits, and this variety gives the process something to select, or at least drift. Lack of design: Evolutionary products seem so well adapted to their circumstances that many people assume they were designed, but they are the fruit of selection and drift. Language has many characteristics that seem to result from drift. Pronunciations, for example, can shift quite a bit in fairly short time spans. The Great Vowel Shift in English during the 1300s altered the way many vowels were generated without needing some great plan behind the change. Syntax too just seems to happen and vocabulary is just there. Even when a word is deliberately coined (e.g. television) some other term may come to dominate (e.g., TV in A...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Source Type: blogs