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Does the theory of evolution apply to languages? Are languages analogous to species, changing over time due to a process of selection? Linguists have been fighting over this question since the publication of Darwin's /Origin/ in 1859. This article shows why it has been hard for linguists to reach consensus on this point. Darwin discovered a process of change that was until then completely unknown: change in the frequency of individuals with certain properties within a population. No individual feathered dinosaur acquired better flying capabilities in its lifetime, but over generations, those with better flying capabilities consistently had more offspring. With such a conceptual innovation, the meanings of scientific terms change. After Darwin, the term /organism/ means something very different when it refers to an individual and the way it changes (“development”) than when it refers to a population and the way that changes (“evolution”), as the causes and effects are different. When such semantic changes are not fully recognized, misunderstandings may arise, and that is precisely what happened when linguists started to debate the questions mentioned above. An innovation in linguistics at the end of the 20th century, the usage-based model, now embraces the difference between individual level phenomena (knowledge of a language) and population level ones (conventions of a community). In this framework, the answer to the initial question can be an unequivocal “yes”.
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This page is a summary of: Evolution in Linguistics – Conceptual Innovation, Metonymy, and Miscommunication, Cognitive Semantics, May 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/23526416-bja10058.
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