ausblenden:
Schlagwörter:
-
Zusammenfassung:
The origins and evolution of language and speech, and the processes
governing language change represent major areas of interdisciplinary
research impacting not only on language sciences but also on the
fundamental question of what it means to be human. However,
their scientific investigation is notoriously difficult due to a lack of
data and, partly as a consequence, a tendency for debates to be
driven by a priori strong theoretical positions.
Probably the dominant
proposal within linguistics was that language emerged suddenly
and recently, coincident with a speciation event that resulted in our
own species,
Homo sapiens
. Various proposals included a single (or
a few) genetic mutation(s) resulting in the sudden appearance of
core language properties (such as recursion) through unspecified
mechanisms, sometimes with clear anti-evolutionary connotations.
However, recent advances in our understanding of language and
speech and their neural and genetic underpinnings strongly advocate
against such saltationist scenarios, and together with new data from
archaeology, palaeoanthropolgy and ancient DNA, favour the gradual
emergence of language and speech on a much longer timescale going
back at least to our last common ancestor with the Neandertals. The
complexity of these biological foundations of language require new
theories of language acquisition and use that highlight the constant
interaction between culture and genetics.
Another important insight is
represented by the role played by language as a cultural phenomenon
in a process of gene-culture co-evolution whereby language constructs
a specific niche which, in turn, changes the landscape of selective
pressures acting on our genome. In this sense, language and speech
(and the culture they support) are very powerful cases of phenotypic
plasticity with trans-generational consequences. Relatedly, the idea
that language is a true evolutionary system in itself becomes more and
more mainstream, and methods adapted from evolutionary biology
(such as Bayesian phylogenetics and phylo-geography) are successfully
applied to recalcitrant problems in historical linguistics.
Thus, recent
advances such as evo-devo, the appreciation of phenotypic plasticity
and developmental robustness and the complexity of the evolutionary
processes afforded by the structure of our genomes, both inform
and can be informed by debates in language evolution. However, we must be careful in how we transfer such concepts, methods and
findings across disciplines, as there is the real danger that superficial
and metaphorical appeals to evo-devo are used to justify old and
fundamentally non-evolutionary proposals, confusing the literature and
creating false debates
