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1 results

  • Chapter 4 - Evolving Language in Interaction

  • from Part I - Language and Its Power
  • Anna M. Borghi, University of Rome
  • Book:
    The Freedom of Words
    Published online:
    20 July 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023, pp 125-150

  • Summary

    Chapter 4 shows how language has evolved through interaction. The first part focuses on the role that hand gestures, mouth movements, vocal actions, and the interplay of different modalities, together with the development of imitation capabilities, play in the evolution of language. In the second part, I show how language has evolved from interaction among people who progressively converged on the same meanings. I illustrate several new interdisciplinary approaches and methods adopted to study the emergence and evolution of language in dyads, groups, and populations, from agent-based simulations to experimental semiotics to culturomic approaches. Finally, I show how a combination of iconicity and arbitrariness might drive the cultural evolution of language. Iconic words, that is, words with a resemblance between form and meaning (e.g., "boom"), will emerge first, followed by more abstract ones, which are grounded in other words.