Linguistics from an Evolutionary Point of View

Beginning Linguistics students are sometimes treated to an array of mock “theories” about the evolution of language, including the “Bow-wow” theory, the “Dingdong” theory and others with equally silly and dismissive names. The 1886 ban on the subject (along with proposals for a universal language) by the Société Linguistique de Paris is well known, and also sometimes thrown up as a proscription that should be reimposed. Research into the evolution of language never really died, though its serious contributors, such as C.F. Hockett [1960] and Philip Lieberman [1984], were tiny in number. In the past twenty years, the resurrection of the subject has accelerated dramatically. The resurgence can be attributed to a general increase in multidisciplinary research, and to impressive empirical advances in relevant fields such as genetics, psychology of language, ethology (especially primatology), computer modelling, linguistics (especially language typology and some formal modelling) and neuroscience. Linguistics has traditionally been isolated from evolutionary considerations. Saussure’s [1916] emphasis on the primacy of synchronic descriptions coloured all of mainstream 20 century Linguistics. The core of generative grammar is synchronic work. Moreover, the emphasis in generative theory on the discovery of abstract formal principles governing the shape a language can take tends to isolate the study of language from neighbouring disciplines. The prevailing assumption within this dominant paradigm has been that the principles to be discovered are peculiar to language alone [Chomsky, 1965; 1975; 1981]. If regularities are observed that can be accounted for in terms of more general human behaviour, or even animal behaviour, such as memory limitations, limitations on the physiology of the output device (vocal or manual), or constraints on processing complexity, these have tended to be sidelined as not within the domain of Linguistics proper, which is taken to be whatever is special to language alone. There is more than a whiff of Platonism in much 20 century theorizing about language. Of course, as Linguistics is a large field, there have been dissenting voices (e.g. [Bybee, 1985; 1994; Givón, 1979; 1990]), emphasizing the integration of the study of language structure with the study of human and animal behaviour generally, and taking a