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Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution: A Darwinian Approach to Language Change

'Selfish sounds': Darwinism in linguistics

Hardback , eBook Looking for an inspection copy? This title is not currently available on inspection. Provides a new and controversial perspective on language change, which is likely to stimulate academic argument and further research Demonstrates how the emerging new paradigm of memetics might be operationalised and put to the test Combines insights from evolutionary biology, cognitive science and historical linguistics, and is therefore truly interdisciplinary. Log in to review. How do you rate this item? Reviews must contain at least 12 words about the product.

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Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution: A Darwinian Approach to Language Change

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'Selfish sounds': Darwinism in linguistics

Radioprotection New to CJO in Radioprotection publishes articles on all aspects of radiological protection, including non-ionising…. History in Africa History In Africa focuses on historiographical and methodological concerns and publishes textual analysis and criticism,…. New Surveys in the Classics The New Surveys in the Classics are a series of short books dedicated to key themes and concepts in the classical…. Iraq Iraq is an academic periodical founded in and appearing annually. Contrary to established, speaker-centred theories of language change his generalised Darwinian approach does not reduce the properties of human behaviour to the intentions and goals of free-willed human agents.

As opposed to hermeneutic theories of historical linguistics, the generalised Darwinian approach is radically analytic and regards cultural and linguistic change as something that happens with speakers' selves being only partly involved in the process, and experiencing it rather than driving it.

In a way it could be said that the generalised Darwinian framework "allows one to abandon the concept of the all-powerful speaker in the same way as biological evolutionary theory allowed us to abandon the concept of an intentional intelligent designer behind biological life. According to Nikolaus Ritt, one of the problems which evolutionary approaches to cultural studies face is that so many other theories are already well-established in this research area.

A common attitude is to say, 'Well, we already have our own ways of talking about language change. Why do we need a biologically-inspired model? Good examples of such phenomena are sets of changes which are obviously directed but unfold over time spans that are impossible to even survey by individual speakers. They have come to be known as 'drifts'. A case of such a drift seems to have affected the sound shapes of English words or better: Over time their shapes seem to have gradually evolved in a direction where they came to fit better into the rhythmical patterning that characterises English speech.

Thus, the rhythmic units they established became more uniform", Nikolaus Ritt explains. Traditional theories have problems with such findings, because they describe language change as being driven by speakers' needs, their goals and their intentions", says Nikolaus Ritt. For this reason we believe that the causal mechanisms that drive long-term changes of this kind cannot be derived from the intentions and goals of individual speakers. Instead, we think that evolutionary theory offers a promising alternative perspective.

From the evolutionary perspective this kind of development is best understood if one regards rhythm as an environmental constant in the linguistic world in which words and the sounds they are made up of have to survive and replicate. Because of the constant environmental pressure which rhythm exerts on them, the sound shapes of English words have gradually changed to become better adapted to the rhythmically structured utterances through which they get expressed and transmitted.

Of course humans are the ones who speak, and they are the ones who acquire language, but the pattern of change that has come to unfold over the centuries results from the interaction of rhythm and sounds.

Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution: A Darwinian Approach to Language Change

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'Selfish sounds': Darwinism in linguistics