Language Evolution: An Ecological Perspective

Salikoko Mufwene (1)

1 Department of Linguistics

Language is a complex phenomenon and it can be examined from different complementary perspectives, including but certainly not limited to its modular architecture, its functions as means of communication and as identity marker, and its relation to cognition as catalog of knowledge and experience. In the context of my current research on language evolution, I have chosen to conceive of it both as a complex adaptive system and as a piece of technology that was built incrementally and has been modified several times over by its users and makers (speakers and signers alike) to meet their current communicative needs, under the influence of habits developed previously. The succession of these adaptive modifications, which often entail no improvements, is what evolution boils down to. I mean by "language" (without an article!) what is identified in French as le langage, an abstraction of convenience for the common characteristics of individual languages, which downplays diversity among them.

Mots clés: linguistics; ecology

Domaines: Linguistique

Salikoko Mufwene. Language Evolution: An Ecological Perspective. Perspectives (Réseau français des instituts d'études avancées), 2011, 4, pp.3. ⟨halshs-00799858⟩