| Title |
Darwinian perspectives on the evolution of human languages
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, July 2016
|
| DOI | 10.3758/s13423-016-1072-z |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Mark Pagel |
| Abstract |
Human languages evolve by a process of descent with modification in which parent languages give rise to daughter languages over time and in a manner that mimics the evolution of biological species. Descent with modification is just one of many parallels between biological and linguistic evolution that, taken together, offer up a Darwinian perspective on how languages evolve. Combined with statistical methods borrowed from evolutionary biology, this Darwinian perspective has brought new opportunities to the study of the evolution of human languages. These include the statistical inference of phylogenetic trees of languages, the study of how linguistic traits evolve over thousands of years of language change, the reconstruction of ancestral or proto-languages, and using language change to date historical events. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 20 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 5 | 25% |
| United States | 3 | 15% |
| Canada | 1 | 5% |
| Unknown | 11 | 55% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 16 | 80% |
| Scientists | 3 | 15% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 5% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 79 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 79 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Master | 15 | 19% |
| Researcher | 13 | 16% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 9 | 11% |
| Professor | 8 | 10% |
| Student > Bachelor | 7 | 9% |
| Other | 15 | 19% |
| Unknown | 12 | 15% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 20 | 25% |
| Linguistics | 10 | 13% |
| Psychology | 8 | 10% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 5 | 6% |
| Engineering | 4 | 5% |
| Other | 18 | 23% |
| Unknown | 14 | 18% |