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The evolution of linguistic rules

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Abstract

Rule-like behaviour is found throughout human language, provoking a number of apparently conflicting explanations. This paper frames the topic in terms of Tinbergen’s four questions and works within the context of rule-like behaviour seen both in nature and the non-linguistic domain in humans. I argue for a minimal account of linguistic rules which relies on powerful domain-general cognition, has a communicative function allowing for multiple engineering solutions, and evolves mainly culturally, while leaving the door open for some genetic adaptation in the form of learning biases.

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Notes

  1. cf. Strunk and White (1979).

  2. As an example, the Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics (Brown 2005) conservatively lists 13 distinct schools of phonology, 12 models of morphology, and 27 syntactic frameworks.

  3. What Huddlestone and Pullum (2002) call the ‘labile ordering of residual pre-head modifiers’.

  4. In this case, something vaguely resembling Optimality Phonology.

  5. However, as an anonymous reviewer points out, there is an extensive literature on potential similarities between action sequencing and language processing which has yet to resolve itself into anything resembling a consensus, so we should remain cautious about making any categorical statements here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University, Coombs Building 9, Room 2220, Canberra, ACT, 2612, Australia

    Matthew Spike

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  1. Matthew Spike
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Spike, M. The evolution of linguistic rules. Biol Philos 32, 887–904 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9610-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9610-x

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