Toward an evolutionary framework for language variation and change

Abstract

In this paper, we identify the parallels and the differences between language and life as evolvable systems in pursuit of a framework that will investigate language change from the perspective of a general theory of evolution. Despite the consensus that languages change similarly to species, as reflected in the construction of language trees, the field has mainly applied biological techniques to specific problems of historical linguistics and has not systematically engaged in disentangling the basic concepts (population, reproductive unit, inheritance, etc.) and the core processes underlying evolutionary theory, namely mutation, selection, drift, and migration, as applied to language. We develop such a proposal. Treating language as an evolvable system places previous studies in a novel perspective, as it offers an elegant unifying framework that can accommodate current knowledge, utilize the rich theoretical framework of evolutionary biology, and synthesize many independent strands of inquiry, initiating a whole new research program.

Tenth Workshop on NLP for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects (VarDial 2023)

“…This method has been previously successfully used in phylogenetic studies in biology (Fitch and Margoliash, 1967) (Gilbert andParker, 2022) (de Vienne et al, 2011). The borrowing of the automatic classification method from biology is justified, as the evolution of language and the evolution of life share a lot of similarities (Pasquini et al, 2023), which have been highlighted recently (Ladoukakis et al, 2022), and the concept of linguistic phylogeny tree is borrowed from biology (Schleicher, 1863). This may lead to a new potential way of lect classification, a possibility to clusterise lects with the same computational methods as species (Wattel, 1996) (Bapat, 2010).…”

Interindividual vocal tract diversity influences the phonetic diversification of spoken languages

“…However, there is extensive interindividual variation in terms of the size and shape of the hard and soft tissues involved in speech production 4,5 . Both "nature" (natural selection, genetic drift) [6][7][8][9] and "nurture" (environment, culture, lifestyle) [10][11][12][13] shape an individual's vocal tract morphology and imbue their voice with acoustic markers (age, gender, sex, size) 14,15 and speaker-specific voice qualities 16,17 , making them sound unique 18 .…”