http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/m-nsa021605.php
Natural selection as we speak
Final devoicing has evolved many times in the history of the world's
languages. Sounds, like biological organisms, show convergent
evolution. Image: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Click here for a high resolution photograph.
The forces of variation and selection which shape human language have
become issues of extensive research. Documentation of sounds and sound
patterns, and their evolution over the past 7000-8000 years allows
linguists to quantify the important role of human perception,
articulation and imperfect learning as language is passed from one
generation to the next. At this year's AAAS conference in Washington,
DC, Juliette Blevins, senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, presents a new approach to the
problem of how genetically unrelated languages across the world often
show similar sound patterns, without invoking innate mechanisms
specific to grammar. Languages as far apart as Native American,
Australian Aboriginal, Austronesian and Indo-European show similar
patterns of vowel and consonant inventory and distribution, but
exceptions to sound patterns regarded as universal show that these
similarities are best viewed as the result of convergent evolution.
A new model of sound change shows that evolutionary principles can
account for striking phonetic similarities across unrelated languages,
as well as the rarity of certain sounds. German and Russian are not
the only languages in the world where sounds like b, d, and g lose
their characteristic vocal fold 'buzz' at the end of the word. Dozens
of unrelated languages, from Afar on the sands of Ethiopia, to Ingush
in the northern Caucasus have similar sound patterns.
Clicks as speech sounds have likely evolved only once in human
history, and have spread through contact. There is no natural phonetic
pathway from non-click to click sounds, explaining their rarity.
Image: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Click here for a high resolution photograph.
Why are these patterns found in unrelated languages? Why do languages
favour silent p t k sounds over noisy b d g sounds at the end of the
word? And why are these sounds common, while clicks have arisen only
once in human history? Dr. Juliette Blevins, Senior Scientist at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, provides
answers to these and many other phonological puzzles in a symposium on
Evolutionary Phonology at the 2005 AAAS Annual Meeting, in Washington,
DC.
Building on the work of a 16th century Chinese scholar, the famous
19th century Junggrammatiker of Leipzig, and Darwin, of course,
Blevins shows that parallel evolution is the primary source of shared
sound patterns. As language is naturally transmitted from one
generation to the next, human perception and articulation makes
certain kinds of sound change (like the shift of final b d g to p t k)
more frequent than others. At the same time, people are very unlikely
to mispronounce or mishear a simple consonant as a click-sound,
providing few opportunities for clicks to evolve naturally.
The implications of this work go far beyond our understanding of
vowels, consonants, buzzes and clicks. By showing how universal
tendencies in sound structure emerge from phonetically motivated sound
change, Evolutionary Phonology undermines a central tenet of modern
Chomskyan linguistics: that Universal Grammar, an innate human
cognitive capacity, plays a dominant role in shaping grammars. Blevins
argues that humans learn sound patterns on the basis of their exposure
to hundreds of thousands of examples of them in the first years of
life. Where universal tendencies exist, they are emergent properties
of language as a self-organizing system.
Other participants in the AAAS symposium on Evolutionary Phonology are
Prof. Terrence Deacon (University of California, Berkeley), Prof.
Janet Pierrehumbert (Northwestern University), and Prof Andrew Wedel
(University of Arizona, Tucson).
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