Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:03:56.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Windows with a view on language evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2004

RUDOLF BOTHA
Affiliation:
Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 7600 Stellenbosch, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Accounts of the evolution of human language must, by their very nature, express claims of a historical sort: claims about why, when, where or how human language emerged and/or developed in some distant past. What is more, it is of the essence of those claims that they are put forward in the absence of direct evidence about the events and factors that may or may not have been involved in the evolution of language. In modern work on language evolution, however, scholars have come up with various strategies aimed at lessening or even solving this problem of evidential paucity. One of these approaches starts from the assumption that language evolution can be studied by examining other phenomena about which there is direct evidence. This article sets out, in informal terms, what it is to use such phenomena as windows on language evolution.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This paper evolved from a seminar given at NIAS, Wessenaar in November, 2003.