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Cargando... Language in a Darwinian perspectivepor Bernard H. Bichakjian
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Bichakjian failed flatly in this book in arguing that language change is evolutional in the Darwinian sense. Sure, language change is directional and not random. But that does not prove it is Darwinian. The author argues that the unit of evolution is linguistic features -- I guess in analogy of the genes -- which is completely implausible evolutionally or linguistically. I am surprised and disappointed at the quality of the argument. (A shorter version of this book was published as a lead paper in Behavioral and Brain Science. ( ) sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Though it is well-known that nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution, in linguistics the received view is to reject the Darwinian approach. This book breaks the prevailing taboo and argues instead that linguistic features - speech sounds, grammatical distinctions and syntactic strategies - have followed an evolutionary course. Though variation exists and gratuitious changes can be found, an in-depth study clearly suggests that on the whole linguistic features have developed under two sets of selections pressures: the pressure to reduce the neuromuscular cost, and the concomitant pressure to find ever-more functional alternatives. Moving on from language to writing, the author argues that the observed optimalization process also applies to the evolution of writing from hieroglyphs to alphabets. Both language and writing are indeed better understood in the light of evolution. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)417.7Language Linguistics Dialectology and historical linguistics Historical linguistics (Diachronic linguistics)Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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