Editorial: The Adaptive Value of Languages: Non-linguistic Causes of Language Diversity

Frontiers in Psychology

Antonio Benítez-Burraco¹ 

关键词: language diversity;    cultural evolution;    language evolution;    adaptive value of languages;    language change;    ecolinguistics;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01827

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The goal of this volume is to shed light on the non-linguistic causes of language diversity, and particularly, to explore the possibility that some aspects of the structure of languages result from an adaptation to the natural and/or human-made environment. Variation is pervasive in language. The languages we speak are not homogeneous. They change, both structurally and functionally, from one social group to another, from children to adults, from men to women, from one ethnic group to another, not to mention through historical, and evolutionary time. Moreover, the context in which conversational exchanges take place also affects the structure and the pattern of usage across languages. Besides social variation, geography also accounts for aspects of the variation observed within languages. The differential dispersal of linguistic features across geographically-defined areas usually results in different dialects of one language spoken across the whole distribution area of the language. Ultimately, each person acquires and makes use of a subtly different version of their mother tongue. All of this is very familiar, and over the years, linguists have learnt that these aspects of linguistic variation result from linguistic and extralinguistic factors are constrained in systematic ways, to the extent that they can be described by the right mixture of general principles and statistical biases (e.g. Labov, 2001).

【 授权许可】

CC BY