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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.
Saussure approaches the essence of language from two sides. For the one, he borrows ideas from Steinthal [31] and Durkheim, concluding that language is a 'social fact'. For the other, he creates a theory of language as a system in and for itself which arises from the association of concepts and words or expressions. Thus, language is a dual ...
The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. [1] Given the presence of a tripartite number system in modern Nilo-Saharan languages, linguist N.A. Blench inferred a noun classifier in the proto-language, distributed based on water courses in the Sahara during the "wet period" of the Neolithic ...
The monogenetic theory points to a single origin of all of the world's languages and it is the most accepted theory. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It states that all current languages have formed through language change from a single tongue that gradually differentiated into unintelligible languages.
This theory assumes an inborn capacity for language where language learning takes place from a place of priming. As such, Chomsky's view is that humans invariably have a certain language input at birth and therefore language learning after happens as enforcement based on the already present structure of grammar in the individual.
In terms of evolutionary theory, historical linguistics (as opposed to research into the origin of language) studies Lamarckian acquired characteristics of languages. This perspective explores how languages adapt and change over time in response to cultural, societal, and environmental factors.
As mentioned above, biolinguistics challenges the idea that the acquisition of language is a result of behavior based learning. This alternative approach the biolinguistics challenges is known as the usage-based (UB) approach. UB supports that idea that knowledge of human language is acquired via exposure and usage. [25]
Hans-Jörg Schmid’s "Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization" Model offers a comprehensive recent summary approach to usage-based thinking. [19] In great detail and with reference to many sub-disciplines and concepts in linguistics he shows how usage mediates between entrenchment, the establishment of linguistic habits in individuals via repetition and associations, and conventionalization, a ...