3rd Conference
The Evolution of Language
April 3rd - 6th , 2000
Abstracts
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3rd Conference Abstracts |
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
75 Alta Road
Stanford, CA 94305-8090
abstract
There are a number of approaches that are available to the linguist to study earlier phases in the evolution of human language or languages. The present paper aims at discussing the potential that grammaticalization theory offers to the reconstruction of language evolution. Findings of this paradigm have been used in previous works to study language genesis (e.g. Sankoff 1979; Aitchison 1996), using in particular findings from pidgin and creole languages.
Grammaticalization theory relies on regularities in the evolution of linguistic forms, especially on the unidirectionality principle and the implications it has for the recustruction of earlier language states (Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer 1991; Hopper & Traugott 1993). The purpose of the paper is to show that there are certain classes of grammatical forms that can be assumed to presuppose other grammatical forms in time. In the course of the paper, an attempt is made to reconstruct sequences of grammatical evolution with a view establishing how language may have been structured at earlier stages of human evolution.
Aitchison, Jean. 1996. The seeds of speech: Language origin and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bybee, Joan L., Revere D. Perkins & William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Comrie, Bernard. 1992. Before complexity. In Hawkins & Gell-Mann (eds.). 193-211.
Hawkins, John A. & Murray Gell-Mann (eds.). 1992. The evolution of human language. Proceedings of the Workshop on the Evolution of Human Languages, held August, 1989 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Santa Fe: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Heine, Bernd. 1997. Cognitive foundations of grammar. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer 1991. Grammaticalization: a conceptual framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hill, Kenneth C. (ed.). 1979. The genesis of language. (The First Michigan Colloquium, 1979.) Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers.
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth C. Traugott. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sankoff, Gillian. 1979. The genesis of a language. In Hill (ed.) 1979. 23-47.
Conference site: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/