[lingtalks] CHD Seminar: FRIDAY - Bill Croft
Katie Wagner
kgwagner at ucsd.edu
Mon Dec 1 15:25:07 PST 2008
The Center for Human Development Presents
Bill Croft
University of New Mexico
Department of Linguistics
Friday, December 5th
12-1pm (discussion 1-1:40pm)
room 003 in the Cognitive Science Building
"Evolutionary Linguistics: An Emerging Paradigm for the 21st Century"
After a hiatus of nearly a century, linguists have returned Darwin's
debt to historical linguistics by reintroducing neo-Darwinian
evolutionary models to the study of language. These models are usually
presented as evolutionary theories of language change, but in fact
they are evolutionary theories of language itself. The crucial
theoretical assumption that must be overcome is the linguistic
equivalent of biological essentialism: that a language possesses an
"essence" in the form of a set of rules governing a fixed grammatical
structure. This view, which dominated 20th century linguistics,
idealizes away from the all-pervasive variation that exists in human
language behavior, and the dynamic, evolving system that results from
that variation. I present an evolutionary framework for language based
on the philosopher David Hull's General Analysis of Selection,
outlined in Explaining language change: an evolutionary approach. The
General Analysis of Selection abstracts away from biology-specific
elements of selection processes, allowing evolutionary models to be
applied in a systematic and consistent fashion to change by
replication in other domains, including conceptual change in science
and language change. One important element that does not carry over
from biology (contrary to some views) are the actual mechanisms by
which evolutionary change occurs. I will describe the types of
mechanisms that appear to be operating in language change, based on
recent research, including research in collaboration with a group of
statistical physicists.
Everyone is welcome.
Speaker list and papers are available at http://www.chd.ucsd.edu/seminar/f08sched.shtml
For any questions about the seminar contact Katie at kgwagner at psy.ucsd.edu
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