Why Don't Languages Adapt to Their Environment?

Abstract

The issue of whether languages adapt to their environment depends on our understanding of language, adaptation, and environment. I consider these three concepts from an internalist or biolinguistic point of view. If adaptation is defined as the result of the differential transmission of phenotypic traits by means of natural selection, then both natural species and languages are adapted. Recall that according to Darwin's own insight, the evolutionary mechanisms for species and languages are "curiously the same" (or "curiously parallel"). However, if the concept of adaptation entails that the environment is the essential source of the structure of evolving objects, then neither natural species nor languages can be said to be adapted to their environment. In the case of languages, I will argue that much of their structure is insensitive to historical change and, therefore, incapable of adaptation to the external environment. The immediate environment of languages is in fact internal to the mind/brain and is thus less variable than the social and physical environment in which people live. On the other hand, the dimensions of languages that are variable have such an indirect relation with the physical and social environment that the notion of adaptation to extra-linguistic reality can only be applied weakly, and then it is unable to explain the main patterns of linguistic structural diversity.

Investigating diachronic trends in phonological inventories using BDPROTO

“…But they can also be related to socio-cultural, biological, or environmental factors, such as population size, genes, or humidity. Many such factors have been proposed in the literature (e.g., Pericliev 2004;Hay and Bauer 2007;Everett 2013;Greenhill 2014;Everett et al 2015;Maddieson and Coupé 2015;Everett 2017; Benítez-Burraco and Moran 2018) and continue to be hotly debated (e.g., Moran et al 2012;Donohue and Nichols 2011;Greenhill 2016;Roberts 2018;Mendívil-Giró 2018). In the following, we mention just a few candidates for causal factors that shape phonological segment inventories by shaping the directionality of language change.…”

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

“…Some have claimed that languages are tightly constrained systems-"un système où tout se tient" [a system where everything fits together; (30)]. Many generative linguists assert that human cognition imposes strong constraints on grammatical variation such that only a small number of underlying factors are required to explain the observed diversity (31)(32)(33). In contrast, others have argued that distinct components of language can vary individually, "All parts of a language appear in principle to be independently mobile" (34).…”

Language: Its Origin and Ongoing Evolution

“…(Darwin 1871, p. 58). However, this idea of progress in linguistic evolution is considered dysfunctional by some (Labov 1991;Mendívil-Giró 2018) due to its inability to explain the main patterns of linguistic structural diversity; a growing body of research asserts the contrary. The process of language diversification cannot be understood without considering the pressures that several factors (physical, ecological, and social) put on language users in different environments (Bentz et al 2018).…”