Competition and Selection in Language Evolution

Abstract

The primary thesis of this paper is that selection plays a role in language evolution. Underlying this position is the assumption that a language is a Lamarckian species, a construct extrapolated from idiolects spoken by individuals who acknowledge using the same verbal code to communicate with each other. There is no perfect replication in any case of language "acquisition", which is actually a recreation process in which the learner makes a system out of features selected from utterances of different individuals with whom he/she has interacted. In a way similar to gene recombination in biology, each learner gradually and selectively reintegrates into new system features which are often modified in the process. At the population level, the congruence of some divergent idiolectal selections is often strong enough for a language to evolve into a new communal system. A fundamental question for my hypothesis is: What principles regulate selection? I also assume hybridism in language "transmission", which is polyploidic, as features of every idiolect originate not only in various competing idiolects, but possibly also in different dialects or languages in contact. The question about feature selection remains the same.

The pivotal role of metaphor in the evolution of human language

“…Importantly, however, metaphor is not a deviant special case of language use, nor is literal use the default setting for language; metaphorical language use is often speciously considered exceptional only because of the seductively erroneous assumption that language is a tool which enables the speaker to encode meaning and the hearer to decode it (Wilson and Sperber, 2012). Linguistic communication is, however, not simply an encoding-decoding process, nor is it even a process of reverse-engineering in which the hearer puts the speaker's original meaning back together again (Mufwene, 2002;Brighton, Smith, and Kirby, 2005); rather it is best characterised by the complementary processes of ostension and inference (Sperber and Wilson, 1995).…”

Language change in a multiple group society

“…Also, because language "needs to keep pace with new realities, new technologies and new ideas, from ploughs to laser printers, and from politicalcorrectness to sms-texting" [10], new means of expressing an idea can enter the language of a community via innovations from its members. Thus, linguistic variants enter a competition for speakers [11]. It is this aspect in the change of languages that we have a closer look at in this paper.…”

“…(11). For large values of the parameter f , corresponding to weak coupling between the groups, there is a logarithmic correction due to the spatial arrangement of the groups:…”

Front rounded vowels in Azorean Portuguese: A reappraisal

“…The feature pool is an abstract entity that unites all the grammatical, lexical, pragmatic, and phonological representations that the new community's individuals bring together (Mufwene 2002: 46; see also Mufwene 2001). An individual speaker does not necessarily need to have access to all of the features in the feature pool, especially at the beginning of a social transformation such as the settlement of a new territory.…”