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5.16 How did language evolve?

Linguists generally agree that humans have an innate capacity for language. However, since we all broadly share the same genetic codes, language differences can obviously not be attributed to genetic variations between language speakers. The main debate concerning the genetic origin of language is the presence of universals that appear from the analysis of many languages (Kirby, 2007). Evolutionary linguists believe that language differences do not emerge from biology, but rather from evolution in the domain of languages. Chomsky and others have however suggested that children have an innate knowledge of universal grammar that dominates any language spoken and this biological inheritance ensures that children can learn language easily with comprehension. However, Chomsky denies that language development follow a separate Darwinian selection process suggesting instead that language may have evolved from a selection process among other preexisting abilities. On the other hand Pinker and Bloom (1990) concluded that specialization for language is apparent in the complex design of human language and the syntactic rules that emerged evolved from biological adaptation.

Most linguists think human language capacity evolved based on important pre-adaptations that included the ability to represent reality cognitively. Physiological change in the brain and face musculature, and especially the social nature of our species were important selective adaptations that supported language development. Most fundamentally, the origin of language comes from the inherent human instinct for cooperation. As a species we learned early in evolution to solve problems regarding the ecology and niches by cooperating with others thereby advancing socio-cognitive skills (Distin, 2011). While other primates are able to learn and cooperate only humans are capable of selective imitation based on motivation for learned behavior.

Distin notes that from the very beginning human infants display a conformity bias through which they learn arbitrary elements of human behavior, but also rational behaviors that lead to desirable goals. The human infant also appears to be born with an instinct to recognize human adults as models for imitation from whom to absorb the cultural and linguistic norms of the society. Distin argues that without an instinct for conformity language learning would not occur nor other aspects of human psychology. For example, language has important identity functions since they first of all convey social norms, but also serve to promote cultural cohesion. Language is the way by which people know their cultural group identity and therefore also serve as a means of identifying people belonging to our ingroup with whom we are more likely to cooperate compared to members of culturally competitive groups. We are less likely to cooperate with those whose language is unfamiliar, even when some of the barriers to communication are removed.

5.16.1 Contacts between different language speakers.

Contacts between people speaking different languages typically lead the participants to find ways to overcome barriers to communication by means of some compromise (Winford, 2003). The need for communication compromises have been modified by the considerable borrowing from the English language as it has dominated the world in recent times as the ubiquitous medium of communication. In many cases borrowing is insignificant and amount to a few words that seem to express more precisely what the native speaker wishes to convey. Utilizing English or other dominant languages can also reflect the prestige of possessing more worldly values and is associated with status that is not conveyed by using the less dominant language.

Languages are shaped either by borrowing from other groups or by imposition of the dominant language on minorities as for example when English replaced native Celt languages (Van Coetsem, 2000). As we can observe in regard to the spread of the English language lexical change or vocabulary are easily changed and used in less dominant languages, however the speaker still uses the grammar of his native tongue. Structural features like grammar are more resistant to change in cross- language contacts leading often to very peculiar expressions. However, in contacts where one language is clearly dominant, for example in the context of colonialism, imposition may also affect the grammar of the recipient’s language (Winford, 2005).

Those of us who have learned more than one language benefit by metalinguistic awareness defined as the increasing consciousness of features of our own language about which we were previously unaware. A second language also increases our ability to learn additional future new languages (Jessner, 1999). This increased language acquisition is facilitated by the common features within families of languages. For example, knowing English, German and or Danish, makes it possible for the speaker to see the considerable overlap in the Dutch language. According to Jessner, metalinguistic thinking is a higher level of cognition since we are not thinking just about what the language conveys, but rather about the language symbols themselves and the ways we are representing information in language. Contacts enable us to incorporate the information represented by seeing the common overlap, but also the distinctions between the two or more languages.

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