A role for relaxed selection in the evolution of the language capacity
A role for relaxed selection in the evolution of the language capacity
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.0914624107
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发表时间：
2010-05-11
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Deacon, Terrence W.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Deacon, Terrence W.
解释人类语言的极度复杂性以及我们获得语言的能力长期以来一直是自然选择理论的挑战。为了回应批评，达尔文转向性选择来解释语言的极端发展。许多当代的进化理论家都试图用幸运突变或后天行为与先天倾向同化的变体来解释这一现象，最近的进化发育学方法已经确定了一些发展过程，这些过程有助于解释复杂的功能协同作用是如何通过达尔文的方式进化的。有趣的是，这些发育机制中有许多与达尔文的自然选择机制相似，通常只有一个方面不同（例如，重复的形式、变异的种类、竞争/合作）。一个共同的特征是在生物体功能的不同水平上，稳定选择过程和放松选择过程之间的相互作用。这些可能在促进语言的多层次进化过程中发挥重要作用。令人惊讶的是，在生物体水平上的选择放松可能是人类语言能力的许多复杂协同特征的来源，并可能有助于解释为什么这么多的语言信息是社会“遗传”的。
Explaining the extravagant complexity of the human language and our competence to acquire it has long posed challenges for natural selection theory. To answer his critics, Darwin turned to sexual selection to account for the extreme development of language. Many contemporary evolutionary theorists have invoked incredibly lucky mutation or some variant of the assimilation of acquired behaviors to innate predispositions in an effort to explain it. Recent evodevo approaches have identified developmental processes that help to explain how complex functional synergies can evolve by Darwinian means. Interestingly, many of these developmental mechanisms bear a resemblance to aspects of Darwin's mechanism of natural selection, often differing only in one respect (e.g., form of duplication, kind of variation, competition/cooperation). A common feature is an interplay between processes of stabilizing selection and processes of relaxed selection at different levels of organism function. These may play important roles in the many levels of evolutionary process contributing to language. Surprisingly, the relaxation of selection at the organism level may have been a source of many complex synergistic features of the human language capacity, and may help explain why so much language information is "inherited" socially.