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The evolution of languages or history of language includes the evolution, divergence and development of languages throughout time, as reconstructed based on glottochronology, comparative linguistics, written records and other historical linguistics techniques. The origin of language is a hotly contested topic, with some languages tentatively ...
The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language must draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...
v. t. e. Evolutionary linguistics or Darwinian linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language. [ 1 ][ 2 ] Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The approach is also closely linked with evolutionary anthropology, cognitive linguistics and biolinguistics.
Approaches to language as part of cultural evolution can be roughly divided into two main groups: genetic determinism which argues that languages stem from the human genome; and social Darwinism, as envisioned by August Schleicher and Max Müller, which applies principles and methods of evolutionary biology to linguistics.
Cladistic representation of the Mayan linguistic family, going back 4000 years.(The numbers represent proposed historical dates in the Common Era).. In historical linguistics, the tree model (also Stammbaum, genetic, or cladistic model) is a model of the evolution of languages analogous to the concept of a family tree, particularly a phylogenetic tree in the biological evolution of species.
A bow-wow theory (or cuckoo theory) is any of the theories by various scholars, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder, on the speculative origins of human language. [ 1 ] According to bow-wow theories, the first human languages developed from onomatopoeia , that is, imitations of natural sounds. [ 2 ]
In evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary linguistics, the mimetic theory of speech origins[1] is an analysis of the factors leading to the evolution of language in human ancestors, typically during the Homo erectus era. This theory is most commonly associated with Merlin Donald, who developed the idea in his 1991 book Origins of the Modern ...
Evolutionary psychology of language is the study of the evolutionary history of language as a psychological faculty within the discipline of evolutionary psychology. It makes the assumption that language is the result of a Darwinian adaptation . There are many competing theories of how language might have evolved, if indeed it is an ...