The Emergence of Evolutionary Thinking in Linguistics: Towards a New Conceptual Framework

语言进化传统上是在人文科学中研究的；与生物进化的类比很少，通常适用于非常具体的语言现象。然而，在过去的15年里，对语言进化和变化的研究发生了重大转变。一些独立的研究对语言进化的机制提出了类似的建议。它们都在语言和生物进化的基本要素和过程之间使用明确的类比。达尔文的自然选择和种群遗传学的现代综合为理解生命的进化和多样化提供了一个统一的框架。语言类比的基础如下：进化单位(基因)被一代又一代忠实地复制，但复制并不完美，一些变体会比其他变体被复制更多。最近的语言进化研究没有分享的是语言元素和过程与生物元素和过程相匹配的方式；这阻碍了不同作者之间的有效对话，并使进展停滞不前。这个项目将提出一些问题，关于进化思维在目标研究中的准确实施及其在更广泛的背景下的作用：语言进化和生物进化之间有什么相似之处？在最近的研究中，语言进化所涉及的单位、过程和机制是什么？对语言动力学的严格分析对文化进化和进化认识论有何贡献？我们建议构建一个严格定义的进化概念框架，在这个框架中，可以分析、比较和对比不同的语言进化模式。这一概念框架将提供一个通用词汇表，使我们能够更容易地提出新的研究问题，并有助于确定需要进行更多研究的领域；它将允许检查现有模型的自我一致性；它将为未来语言变化和进化的计算和实验研究提供信息；最后，它将促进对话、合作和理论的进一步发展。概念框架将在文化进化和进化论的更广泛的生物学、人类学和哲学背景下进行分析。这些文献包括关于进化的一般机制的研究；关于文化和语言的社会和认知先决条件的进化的研究；关于基因和文化的共同进化的研究；以及关于文化和语言进化的理论，包括模因论，这是目前最明确地基于文化和生物学之间的类比的理论，以及它的批评者。我们将调查我们的框架对语言与文化之间的关系以及可以通过相同的进化过程解释的系统之间的关系的影响。拟议的研究将影响语言进化、历史语言学以及语言变异和变化的领域，尤其是通过重新定义它们之间的边界。它还将把语言动力学的研究置于文化和进化研究的背景下。

Language evolution has traditionally been studied within the humanities; analogies with biological evolution have been few and far between and have generally been applicable to very specific linguistic phenomena. In the last fifteen years, however, the study of language evolution and change has been undergoing a significant shift. A number of studies have independently made similar proposals about the mechanisms of language evolution. They all share the use of explicit analogy between the elements and processes underlying linguistic and in biological evolution. The modern synthesis of Darwin's natural selection and population genetics provides a unified framework to understand the evolution and diversification of life. The basis of the linguistic analogies is the following: Units of evolution (genes) are copied faithfully generation after generation, but copying is not perfect, and some variants will be copied more than others. What the recent language evolution studies do not share is the way that linguistic elements and processes are matched with biological elements and processes; this has prevented effective dialogue between the different authors and has stagnated progress. This project will be asking questions about the precise implementation of evolutionary thinking in the target studies and its role in a wider context: What analogies are made between linguistic and biological evolution? What are the proposed units, processes and mechanisms involved in language evolution in the recent studies? What knowledge does a rigorous analysis of language dynamics contribute to cultural evolution and evolutionary epistemology? We propose to construct a framework of rigorously defined evolutionary concepts where different models of language evolution can be analyzed, compared and contrasted. This conceptual framework will provide a common vocabulary that will make it easy to formulate new research questions and it will help identify areas where more research is needed; it will allow checking existing models for self-consistency; it will inform future computational and experimental research in language change and evolution; finally, it will facilitate dialogue, collaboration and further development of the theories.The conceptual framework will be analyzed in the wider biological, anthropological and philosophical contexts of cultural evolution and evolutionary theory. This literature includes studies on the general mechanisms of evolution; on the evolution of social and cognitive prerequisites for culture and language; on the co-evolution of genes and culture; and on theories of cultural and of linguistic evolution, including memetics, the current most explicitly based on analogy between culture and biology, and its critics. We will investigate the implications of our framework for the relationships between language and culture, and between systems that can be explained by the same evolutionary processes.The proposed research will impact the fields of language evolution, historical lingusitics and language variation and change, not least by redefining the boundaries between them. It will also situate the study of language dynamics within the context of cultural and evolutionary studies.