Position Paper
Grammar change
A case of Darwinian cognitive evolution
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.
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
References (120)
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