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Evolutionary Aspects of Language Change

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Evolutionary Thinking Across Disciplines

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Abstract

While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early nineteenth century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The findings led to the establishment of historical linguistics as a scientific discipline, devoted to the investigation of how languages change and why. Although evolutionary thinking plays a major role in historical linguistics, practitioners often have the tendency to emphasize the peculiarities of language evolution rather than the commonalities with other kinds of evolution. In part, this seems to be justified by some phenomena for which it is difficult to find counterparts in different disciplines. In part, however, this may also due to a communication problem that is characteristic for interdisciplinary research, since scholars lack a common terminology. As a result, it is difficult for linguists to explain their particular evolutionary views on language change to practitioners from other disciplines, while evolutionary terminology from disciplines such as biology is difficult to grasp for linguists. In the study, I will try to present some important evolutionary aspects of language change for which it is hard to find counterparts in other disciplines and then point to current challenges of evolutionary studies in historical linguistics which have to deal with these aspects.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Max Planck Society Research Grant CALC³ (https://digling.org/calc/) and the ERC Consolidator Grant ProduSemy (Grant No. 101044282, see https://doi.org/10.3030/101044282). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency (nor any other funding agencies involved). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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  1. Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

    Johann-Mattis List

  2. Chair of Multilingual Computational Linguistics, University of Passau, Passau, Germany

    Johann-Mattis List

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Agathe du Crest

  2. Institute of Philosophy, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Martina Valković

  3. Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    André Ariew

  4. Institute of Philosophy, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Hugh Desmond

  5. Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Philippe Huneman

  6. Institute of Philosophy & Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLS), Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Thomas A. C. Reydon

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List, JM. (2023). Evolutionary Aspects of Language Change. In: du Crest, A., Valković, M., Ariew, A., Desmond, H., Huneman, P., Reydon, T.A.C. (eds) Evolutionary Thinking Across Disciplines. Synthese Library, vol 478. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33358-3_6

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