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Article published In:
Biological Evolution: More than a metaphor for grammar change
Edited by Maria Rita Manzini
[Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 3:1] 2021
► pp. 6–55
Position Paper

Grammar change

A case of Darwinian cognitive evolution

| University of Salzburg

Structurally, cognitive and biological evolution are highly similar. Random variation and constant but blind selection drive evolution within biology as well as within cognition. However, evolution of cognitive programs, and in particular of grammar systems, is not a subclass of biological evolution but a domain of its own. The abstract evolutionary principles, however, are akin in cognitive and biological evolution. In other words, insights gained in the biological domain can be cautiously applied to the cognitive domain. This paper claims that the cognitively encapsulated, i.e. consciously inaccessible, aspects of grammars as cognitively represented systems, that is, the procedural and structural parts of grammars, are subject to, and results of, Darwinian evolution, applying to a domain-specific cognitive program. Other, consciously accessible aspects of language do not fall under Darwinian evolutionary principles, but are mostly instances of social changes.

Keywords: evolution of language, cognitive evolution, procedural versus declarative, grammar change
Article outline
  • 1.Evolution: From metaphor to materiality
    • 1.1Grammar as a cognitive-virus program
    • 1.2Evolution: Disambiguating a transposed concept
      • 1.2.1Evolution as metaphor
      • 1.2.2Lamarckian vs. Darwinian evolution
      • 1.2.3Generalized darwinism
  • 2.Mechanisms of evolution in biology
    • 2.1Darwinian evolution by natural selection
    • 2.2Flow and drift
  • 3.Elements of a (Neo-)Darwinian, cognition-based evolution of grammar
    • 3.1Grammars as cognitive systems are susceptible to variation and selection
    • 3.2Darwinian cognitive evolution operates on processes and structures, not on content
    • 3.3Naturally selected vs. drifting
  • 4.Natural selection or social change, or both
  • 5.Consequences
    • Speciation
    • Adaptive landscape
    • Convergent evolution
    • Untriggered changes
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00024.hai
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