The Cultural Evolution of Language

Language is one of only a handful of human cultural systems that is both unique to our species, and universal. This chapter will focus on the cultural evolution of language, situating this alongside the phylogenetic and developmental timescales which also feed into the evolution of language. The chapter begins by outlining the relationship between the emergence of human language and the language faculty and the more rapid, ongoing processes of language change, which are often framed as predominantly cultural. In particular, previous work has emphasised how these timescales interact, and how cultural factors in particular shape which aspects of language exhibit broad cross-cultural variation or stability. This is followed by detailed evidence for this relationship from three domains, focusing on the role of cultural evolution in language as observed in natural language (both historical corpora and cross linguistic data), the cultural evolution of language in agent-based models, and finally, experimental studies of the cultural evolution of language. We conclude that the study of the cultural evolution of language forms an important data-rich model for the study of the evolution of cultural systems more generally, while also providing key insights into the specific dynamics of this uniquely human behaviour.

Secondary Somatic Nominations in Media Texts Covering Economy, Business and Politics Spheres

The article set out to reveal the specific features of secondary somatic nominations in media texts in the spheres of economy, business, and politics. The significance of the problem under study is implied by a need for elucidating the evolution of language consciousness by shedding light on how corporeal lexis in the Russian language is involved in verbalization of reality in the spheres in question. The study demonstrated that secondary somatic nominations evolve due to transformation of the meaning of a linguistic unit, whose primary meaning is associated with various aspects of the human body existence. This transformation of the meaning seems to be a common way of denotating reality in the texts under investigation. We specified the sources of somatic expansion, whose semantic content is most frequently redefined in the thematic fields in question. We also identified the denotation areas (conceptual fields) where corporeal lexis is used in their secondary meanings. Our research demonstrated considerable pragmatic potential of the texts including somatic linguistic units. We established that their evaluative content results from axiological connotations associated with various corporeal concepts in the Russian linguoculture. Their expressiveness is achieved due to imagery created by unusual contextualization of somatic linguistic units. The results of the current study made it possible to establish the ways of transforming the meanings of somatic linguistic units in the investigated spheres in the Russian language. Transformation of the meanings of somatic lexis occurs by using metaphors, metonymy, similes, irony, epithets, oxymoron, gradation, language game, etc.

Ersatz Rigor

The natural evolution of language that can capture nature’s varied behaviors in effective terms frequently encourages descriptive practices that encode physical data in deviously complex ways. Often this complexity sets in without being overtly noticed by the agents in question. When this happens, “small metaphysics” conundrums frequently arise in the form “what is this bit of language actually telling us about the world beyond?” Historically, many of the familiar systems of grander metaphysics arose from these puzzling seeds, and these same schemes frequently place unacceptable restrictions upon the free development of science. To cast off the oppressive yoke often encouraged by this vein of philosophical musing, Rudolf Carnap and others developed a logicized conception of “theory” that claimed to liberate science (and philosophy) from any concern with “metaphysics” whatsoever. This point of view will be called “theory T thinking” in this book. But Carnap’s proposed remedy represents a diagnostic mistake; the real-life complexities of efficient data registration demand direct examinations of the strategic assumptions that underlie the effective forms of word-to-world alignment. The present book rejects the misleading conceptions of “methodological rigor” that Carnap’s conception of “theory” encourages.

CLARITY: comparing heterogeneous data using dissimilarity

Integrating datasets from different disciplines is hard because the data are often qualitatively different in meaning, scale and reliability. When two datasets describe the same entities, many scientific questions can be phrased around whether the (dis)similarities between entities are conserved across such different data. Our method, CLARITY, quantifies consistency across datasets, identifies where inconsistencies arise and aids in their interpretation. We illustrate this using three diverse comparisons: gene methylation versus expression, evolution of language sounds versus word use, and country-level economic metrics versus cultural beliefs. The non-parametric approach is robust to noise and differences in scaling, and makes only weak assumptions about how the data were generated. It operates by decomposing similarities into two components: a ‘structural’ component analogous to a clustering, and an underlying ‘relationship’ between those structures. This allows a ‘structural comparison’ between two similarity matrices using their predictability from ‘structure’. Significance is assessed with the help of re-sampling appropriate for each dataset. The software, CLARITY, is available as an R package from github.com/danjlawson/CLARITY .

Linguistic territoriality in Switzerland

This article argues that the linguistic territoriality principle cannot be considered as a general guideline for the design of language policy but rather as a tool to find the right balance between linguistic freedom and linguistic peace under given circumstances. The article traces the origin and evolution of language policy principles during the drafting process of the new constitutional article in its three official language versions. The Swiss language regime is embedded in an institutional system of executive federalism in which mostly monolingual cantons and municipalities are in charge of implementing nearly all public policy. This significantly reduces the relevance of the inconsistency between a formally personalistic multilingual federal language regime and linguistic territoriality deriving from cantonal language regimes. The point of the new federal regulation is to provide room for manoeuvre for cantonal policymakers to adopt legislation based on linguistic territoriality. The relevant constitutional article recognises that territorial language policies can be implemented to ensure linguistic peace. At the same time, the personality principle may be adopted to protect autochthonous linguistic minorities.

Notes on a tree: reframing the relevance of primate choruses, duets, and solo songs

The complexity of primates’ singing behavior has long gathered the attention of researchers interested in understanding the selective pressures underpinning the evolution of language. Among these pressures, a link between territoriality, pair-living, and singing displays has been suggested. Historically, singing primates have been found in a few taxa that are not closely related to each other, and, in the last years, their phylogeny has dramatically changed. Hence, we aimed at understanding if the dogmatic association between territorial behavior and a monogamous social structure still holds in the light of current research. Moreover, singing behavior has often been considered a whole, but animals can perform different singing forms depending on how many individuals call simultaneously. Currently, it is unclear to which extent these singing forms are widespread among these primate groups. Given that there is no unique definition for a song, solo, duet, and chorus, we envisioned some of the most used descriptions. We then formulated some new definitions that we followed in our review of the presence/absence of these different forms of song organization among singing primates’ taxa. In particular, we suggested that tarsier species that are typically considered non-singers may indeed sing, and we pointed out that non-duetting gibbons may perform duet interactions. We found that, besides duets, chorusing behavior and solo songs are essential features of primates’ communication, but their study is still in a descriptive phase. Moreover, while territorial behavior seems to be conserved in these singing taxa, we highlighted that the monogamous social structure is not the rule. Pair-living plus multi- females groups displaying singing behavior are common too. We suggest that ending to consider these taxa as uniform in their sociality and vocal behavior might be a significant turning point to unravel the different selective pressures that influenced the emergence and organization of such peculiar vocal behavior.

The Archaeology of Number Concept and Its Implications for the Evolution of Language

This chapter examines the evolution of number concept, via the ability to conceive of and use other representations of quantity. It approaches the evolution of number concept via the development of the concept in children. It finds that the child's acquisition of the concept leans heavily on the language scaffold of labelling. It considers the notion that the key in the child's construction of the number concept is the memorized set of words that constitutes the numeral list. This, in turn, raises the possibility that the presence of number concept might correlate with, and consequently be evidence for, the presence of language, provided that the presence of number in deep prehistory could be documented. It is possible that the evolutionary development of an integer concept may differ from its development in children. Hence, the chapter turns to the ethnographic and archaeological records for evidence about its evolutionary development.

Animism and Language Evolution

The exact mechanism of the evolution of language remains unknown. One of the central problems in this field is the issue of reliability and deceit that can be characterized in terms of honest signaling theory. Communication systems become vulnerable to dishonesty and deceit when there are conflicting interests between the signaler and receiver. The handicap principle explains how evolution can prevent animals from deceiving each other even if they have a strong incentive to do so. It suggests that the signals must be costly in order to provide accurate and reliable communication between animals. Language-like communication systems, being inherently vulnerable to deception, could only evolve and become evolutionarily stable if they had some mechanisms that can make the communication hard to fake and trustworthy. One of the theories that try to solve the problem of reliability and deception is the ritual/speech coevolution hypothesis. According to this theory, hard-to-fake rituals evolved concurrently with language - by reinforcing trust and solidarity among early humans and preventing deceitful and manipulative behavior within the group. One of the drawbacks of this hypothesis is that the relationship between ritual and speech is too indirect. Rituals could not have a real-time effect on every instance of speech and encompass all aspects of everyday language communication. Therefore they are not efficient enough to provide instant verification mechanisms to guarantee honest communication. It is more likely that the animistic nature of language itself, rather than ritual, was the handicap-like cost that helped to ensure the reliability of language during its origin. The belief in the parallel dimension of animistic spirits emerged concurrently with language as a hard-to-fake attestation mechanism that ensured inviolability of one's speech. The notion that animism emerged because of early behaviorally modern humans’ incoherent and flawed observations about the natural world is unlikely, because it implies a very improbable scenario, that there had been a more coherent and rational pre-animistic period which later degraded to animistic one.

Building blocks of language

Articulate language is a form of communication unique to humans. Over time, a spectrum of researchers has proposed various frameworks attempting to explain the evolutionary acquisition of this distinctive human attribute, some deploring the apparent lack of direct evidence elucidating the phenomenon, whilst others have pointed to the contributions of palaeoanthropology, the social brain hypothesis and the fact that even amongst contemporary humans, social group sizes reflect brain size. Theologians have traditionally (largely) ignored evolutionary insights as an explanatory paradigm for the origin of humankind. However, an increasing number are, of late, contributing to a worldview of humanity which accommodates both the epistemological realities of evolutionary biology as well as insights from theology. This includes reviewing and assessing the origins of articulate language and the physiological attributes necessary for its development. It is in this sense that the evolution of language is relevant from a theological perspective. The association between mental capacity and articulate language, already noted by Darwin, is relevant in explaining the larger group sizes found amongst humans, as is the incipient role played by the evolution of laughter in triggering the neuroendocrine system promoting bonding, to the eventual development of articulate language. Our aim is to review a selection of contemporary perspectives on the evolution of language, amongst others, reasons for the ease with which young children acquire language competency, and whether we may be hardwired for language from birth. Further reading is suggested in the footnotes.Contribution: This article is part of a special collection reflecting on the evolutionary building blocks of our past, present and future. It is based on historical thought and contemporary research with regards to the evolutionary emergence of language. It fits well with the intersectional and trans-disciplinary nature of this collection and journal.

Dynamic-and-Systemic Principles of Synergetics in Functional Linguistics.

Th article describes the specifis, principles and methods of synergetics as a promising area of modern research. Synergetics is presented by the author as a holistic integral paradigm used in many sciences which confims its interdisciplinary and even universal nature. Th object of this paradigm is the interaction of complex systems, and since the mere concept ‘system’ is widely used in many scientifi filds, the relevance of synergetics is beyond doubt. Th author describes the main characteristics of the structure and functioning of a system. Th key concepts of synergetics and their explanation are also given. Further, the article discusses the branches of linguistics which use principles of synergetics – linguosynergetics and functional linguosynergetics as its variety. Since the study of text and discourse and their parameters as complex systems is of particular interest to many linguists, linguosynergetics has become one of the demanded scientifi paradigms in this area of research. Th author points out the objectives and tasks of linguistic synergetics, and functional linguosynergetics in particular, their basic concepts, principles and methods. Attention is also paid to the functioning of linguistic means, as well as the formation and interpretation of meaning depending on certain discursive space. Th author comes to the conclusion that thanks to synergetics language can be studied from specifi angles, and the application of its principles greatly contributes to the theory of the evolution of language. Linguosynergetics provides ample opportunities for describing language/text/discourse as a complex dynamic open system, and functional linguosynergetics, in turn, helps describe the features of its functioning and evolution.