The evolution of language has developed into a large research field. Two questions are particularly relevant for this strand of research: firstly, how did the human capacity for language emerge? And secondly, which processes of cultural evolution are involved both in the evolution of human language from non-linguistic communication and in the continued evolution of human languages? Much research on language evolution that addresses these two questions is highly compatible with the usage-based approach to language pursued in cognitive linguistics. Focusing on key topics such as comparing human language and animal communication, experimental approaches to language evolution, and evolutionary dynamics in language, this Element gives an overview of the current state-of-the-art of language evolution research and discusses how cognitive linguistics and research on the evolution of language can cross-fertilise each other. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

How did the biological, brain and behavioural structures underlying human language evolve? This is an introduction to the interdisciplinary debates.

Addresses the question: how can we unravel the evolution of language, given that there is no direct evidence about it?

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This is a study of how children acquire language and how this affects language change over generations. Written by an international team of experts, the volume proceeds from the basis that we can not only address the language faculty per se within the framework of evolutionary theory, but also the origins and subsequent development of languages themselves; languages evolve via cultural rather than biological transmission on a historical rather than genetic timescale. The book is distinctive in utilizing computational simulation and modelling to help ensure the theories constructed are complete and precise. Drawing on a wide range of examples, the book covers the why and how of specific syntactic universals; the nature of syntactic change; the language-learning mechanisms required to acquire an existing linguistic system accurately and to impose further structure on an emerging system; and the evolution of language(s) in relation to this learning mechanism.

The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics provides a comprehensive introduction and essential reference work to cognitive linguistics. It encompasses a wide range of perspectives and approaches, covering all the key areas of cognitive linguistics and drawing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in pragmatics, discourse analysis, biolinguistics, ecolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, neuroscience, language pedagogy, and translation studies. The forty-three chapters, written by international specialists in the field, cover four major areas: • Basic theories and hypotheses, including cognitive semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, frame semantics, natural semantic metalanguage, and word grammar; • Central topics, including embodiment, image schemas, categorization, metaphor and metonymy, construal, iconicity, motivation, constructionalization, intersubjectivity, grounding, multimodality, cognitive pragmatics, cognitive poetics, humor, and linguistic synaesthesia, among others; • Interfaces between cognitive linguistics and other areas of linguistic study, including cultural linguistics, linguistic typology, figurative language, signed languages, gesture, language acquisition and pedagogy, translation studies, and digital lexicography; • New directions in cognitive linguistics, demonstrating the relevance of the approach to social, diachronic, neuroscientific, biological, ecological, multimodal, and quantitative studies. The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for all researchers working in this area.

Languages are constantly changing. New words are added to the English language every year, either borrowed or coined, and there is often railing against the 'decline' of the language by public figures. Some languages, such as French and Finnish, have academies to protect them against foreign imports. Yet languages are species-like constructs, which evolve naturally over time. Migration, imperialism, and globalization have blurred boundaries between many of them, producing new ones (such as creoles) and driving some to extinction. This book examines the processes by which languages change, from the macroecological perspective of competition and natural selection. In a series of chapters, Salikoko Mufwene examines such themes as: - natural selection in language - the actuation question and the invisible hand that drives evolution - multilingualism and language contact - language birth and language death - the emergence of Creoles and Pidgins - the varying impacts of colonization and globalization on language vitality This comprehensive examination of the organic evolution of language will be essential reading for graduate and senior undergraduate students, and for researchers on the social dynamics of language variation and change, language vitality and death, and even the origins of linguistic diversity.

What is it that makes us human? This is one of the most challenging and important questions we face. Our species' defining characteristic is language - we appear to be unique in the natural world in having such an incredibly open-ended system for putting thoughts into words. If we are to truly understand ourselves as a species we must understand the origins of this strange and unique ability. To do so, we need to answer some of the most intriguing questions in contemporary scientific research: Where did language come from? How did it evolve? Why are we unique in possessing it? This book, for the first time, brings together the leading thinkers who are trying to unlock the puzzle of language evolution. Here we see the latest ideas and theories from fields as diverse as anthropology, archaeology, artificial life, biology, cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology. In a series of seventeen well-written and accessible chapters we get an unrivalled view of the state of the art in this exciting area. Current controversies are revealed and new perspectives uncovered, in a clear and readable guide to the latest theories. This collection marks a major step forward in our quest to understand the origins and evolution of human language. In doing so it sheds new light on the process of evolution, the workings of the brain, the structure of language, and - most importantly - what it means to be human. Language Evolution is essential reading for researchers and students working in the areas covered, and has been used as a textbook for courses in the field. It will also attract the general reader who wants to know more about this fascinating subject.

This essay reflects on the fact that as we learn more about the biological underpinnings of our language faculty, the dominant evolutionary narrative coming out of the linguistic tradition most explicitly oriented towards biology ("biolinguistics") appears increasingly implausible. This text offers ways of opening up linguistic inquiry and fostering interdisciplinarity, taking advantage of new opportunities to provide quantitative, testable hypotheses concerning the complex evolutionary path that led to the modern human language faculty. The essay is structured around three main themes: (i) renewed appreciation for the comparative method applied to cognitive questions, leading to the identification of elementary but fundamental abstractions in non-linguistic species relevant to language; (ii) awareness of the conceptual gaps between disciplines, and the need to carefully link genotype and phenotype without bypassing any "intermediate" levels of description (certainly not the brain); and (iii) adoption of a "philosophical" outlook that puts the complexity of biological entities front and center.

For the first time in history, scholars working on language and culture from within an evolutionary epistemological framework, and thereby emphasizing complementary or deviating theories of the Modern Synthesis, were brought together. Of course there have been excellent conferences on Evolutionary Epistemology in the past, as well as numerous conferences on the topics of Language and Culture. However, until now these disciplines had not been brought together into one all-encompassing conference. Moreover, previously there never had been such stress on alternative and complementary theories of the Modern Synthesis. Today we know that natural selection and evolution are far from synonymous and that they do not explain isomorphic phenomena in the world. ‘Taking Darwin seriously’ is the way to go, but today the time has come to take alternative and complementary theories that developed after the Modern Synthesis, equally seriously, and, furthermore, to examine how language and culture can merit from these diverse disciplines. As this volume will make clear, a specific inter- and transdisciplinary approach is one of the next crucial steps that needs to be taken, if we ever want to unravel the secrets of phenomena such as language and culture.