Darwinian perspectives on the evolution of human languages

Pagel, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7287-8865 (2017) Darwinian perspectives on the evolution of human languages. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24 (1). pp. 151-157. ISSN 1069-9384 doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1072-z

Abstract/Summary

Human languages evolve by a process of descent with modification in which parent languages give rise to daughter languages over time and in a manner that mimics the evolution of biological species. Descent with modification is just one of many parallels between biological and linguistic evolution that, taken together, offer up a Darwinian perspective on how languages evolve. Combined with statistical methods borrowed from evolutionary biology, this Darwinian perspective has brought new opportunities to the study of the evolution of human languages. These include the statistical inference of phylogenetic trees of languages, the study of how linguistic traits evolve over thousands of years of language change, the reconstruction of ancestral or proto-languages, and using language change to date historical events.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/66141
Identification Number/DOI	10.3758/s13423-016-1072-z
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Biological Sciences > Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Publisher	Psychonomic Society
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