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Ecology and Exaptation All the Way in Language Evolu tion

Ecology and Exaptation All the Way in Language Evolu tion. Salikoko S. Mufwene University of Chicago. Coming soon to a bookstore near you:. What’s the ecology of language?. It’s the speaker through his mental and anatomical predisposi-tion for language

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Ecology and Exaptation All the Way in Language Evolu tion

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  1. Ecology and Exaptation All the Way in Language Evolution Salikoko S. Mufwene University of Chicago

  2. Coming soon to a bookstore near you:

  3. What’s the ecology of language? • It’s the speaker • through his mental and anatomical predisposi-tion for language • through his adaptive responses to his socio-economic environment • It’s the socioeconomic environment that determines the particular language varieties that shape his idiolect • An interesting cascade of indirect ecological determinisms apply in colonial settings: geographical ecology  economic system  population structure  language variety

  4. There’s also an internal ecology • It lies in the language itself • It’s more obvious at the communal than at the idiolectal level • It lies in the variants that compete for the same communicative or structural function • It lies in the interdependencies that obtain between particular structural features • It lies in the particular composition of the feature pool in which the variants compete

  5. Language evolution is largely determined by how the feature pool is affected by the external ecol-ogy, especially the relevant population structure

  6. A communal language is a collective pro-duction • It is an emergent phenomenon • It is the outcome of the cooperative commu-nicative activities of speakers/signers • No particular speaker/signer has the monop-oly of determining how a language variety shapes up, though some are more produc-tive than others • Different speakers innovate different forms and structures • Competition arises at the level of copying

  7. Various factors bear on the copying/spread-ing processes • Chiefly, intelligibility • Ease of production and ease of perception • Need for precision, clarity, transparency, regularity, etc.  scale of markedness • Identification with a particular group • loyalty, prestige, singularity • These and other ecological factors determine how competition is resolved (or how variation is reduced, if not eliminated)

  8. Innovation vs copying/spreading • While language is social, the engine of its evolution lies in the activities of individual speakers in individual communicative acts • It also lies typically in the dyadic or triadic interactions of individual speakers and how they accommodate each other • Communal patterns emerge from repetitions of some accommodations, which produce convergent forms, structures, and meanings • This is where the “invisible hand” operates, in the selections that favor some variants over others

  9. If uniformitarianism is a valid assumption… • … the same ecological factors that affect the diachrony of individual languages in human history (language evolution) must also have influenced the phylogeny of language in mankind (the evolution of language)

  10. Ecology as scaffolding • Use of speech and gestures in ways that distinguish human from other animals was facilitated by bipedalism • Exaptation of bucco-pharyngeal structure and hands to produce language was facilitated by particular mental infrastructure, one that found an advantage in explicit/elaborate communication with members of one’s group and an advantage in collaboration to solve problems • Language was not invented wholesale by one hominin; it’s the outcome of collaborative productions by various speakers

  11. Ecology as habitat and how it can help explain linguistic diversity

  12. Homo sapiens did not disperse from the same village nor at the same time • Homo sapiens probably did not speak the same language • The languages of Homo sapiens may/must have also varied in complexity • We have no clue about the extent of normalization in the language varieties spoken by Homo sapiens • There must have been quite a few contacts of populations and of languages since the exodus of Homo sapiens out of East Africa; they must have contributed to further specia-tion of languages

  13. Language contact as an ecological factor • Then and now, contact must have generat-ed new feature pools, produced new patterns of competition and selection • It cannot be ignored in research on the origins of typological variation • In research on Phylogenetic evolution of language, ecology contributes complexity in causation

  14. Thank you! http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/

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