Evolutionary Linguistics - Approaches

Approaches

One original researcher in the field is Luc Steels, head of the research units of Sony CSL in Paris and the AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He and his team are currently 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 research 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. The approach of computational modeling and the use of robotic agents grounded in real life is claimed to be 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.

Some linguists, such as John McWhorter, have analyzed the evolution and construction of basic communication methods such as Pidginization and Creolization.

"Nativist" models of "Universal Grammar" are informed by linguistic universals such as the 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. This is a purely descriptive approach to what we mean by "natural language" without attempting to address its emergence.

Finally there are those archaeologists and evolutionary anthropologists – among them Ian Watts, Camilla Power and Chris Knight (co-founder with James Hurford of the EVOLANG series of conferences) — who argue that 'the origin of language' is probably an insoluble problem. In agreement with Amotz Zahavi, Knight argues that language — being a realm of patent fictions — is a theoretical impossibility in a Darwinian world, where signals must be intrinsically reliable. If we are to explain language's evolution, according to this view, we must tackle it as part of a wider one — the evolutionary emergence of symbolic culture as such.

Read more about this topic:  Evolutionary Linguistics

Famous quotes containing the word approaches:

    Someone approaches to say his life is ruined
    and to fall down at your feet
    and pound his head upon the sidewalk.
    David Ignatow (b. 1914)

    The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.
    Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)