The last two chapters have shown how the replicator-based, evolutionary approach to language which this book has developed can be put to work in practice. We have seen that it produces plausible accounts of phenomena with which other approaches have had considerable problems (chapter 8), and that it allows one to understand the mechanics behind long-term trends and conspiracies which can otherwise be difficult to talk about except informally (chapter 9).

This brings my discussion to its close. What I have tried to suggest in this book is that language can be approached in Darwinian terms, and that there are many arguments which speak for it. At the beginning a rough model of ‘language’ and its various manifestations was developed which was intended to provide a solid basis for describing and possibly explaining linguistic changes. Then, it was argued that such changes are best understood as processes in which their constituent properties are replaced by new variants as they are transmitted from speaker to speaker and from generation to generation. It was concluded that languages represented complex, replicating and adaptive systems, and were in that sense comparable to other such systems, particularly to biological species. Next, the essentials of Darwinian evolutionary theory were discussed, in order to illustrate the concepts and explanatory strategies which the study of replicating system requires. A long part was then dedicated to substantiating the assumption that languages could indeed, and not only metaphorically, be regarded as Darwinian systems.