[ANU Pacific.Institute] Welcome to Language Evolution & Change reading group

[Hedvig Skirgard]

Dear everyone,



There is a reading group for Language Evolution & Change that meets every Thursday at 13.00. The group is open to all, undergrads, postgrads, staff etc of any discipline. Each week, we pick a reading that deals with language evolution and/or change and talk about it. It's quite casual, and you're welcome to join whenever you want.


Last week we read papers on pacific prehistory and sent a message to you all. We don't send out messages every week to larger lists, if you want to get every update you'll have to subscribe to a separate smaller group. Just send your preferred email address to me or Siva and we'll add you. Recently it came to our attention that non-linguists may be interested in some of the readings, so this message goes out to CHL students, Pacific Institute scholars & anthropologists.


We won't be sending out any more general messages. If new people arrive at your department with interest in these things, feel free to send them our way.



So far, we've done readings in variationist sociolinguistics, computational approaches to typology, evolutionary linguistics, ancient DNA and archeology, classical historical linguistics, biological methods applied historical linguistics and more. You can see all past readings and get PDFs of them on our alliance site.



Next week will be the last time in the Engma room, and we'll be reading a paper by Wray & Grace from 2005. It's one of mine (Hedvig) personal favourites. It deals with evolutionary pressures of how outward looking a community is, and how language got its quirks and kinks, underspecification/holisticity and how language evolved in the first place. It neatly ties up some of the other papers we've done (and relates to the recent paper that the philosophers evo-theory group is doing too).



31 May

Place: Engma room

Time: 13.00 - 14.30

Paper picker: Hedvig

Paper:

Wray, Alison and George W. Grace. 2007. The consequences of talking to strangers: evolutionary corollaries of socio-cultural influences on linguistic form. Lingua 117. 543-578.



Abstract:

We explore the proposal that the linguistic forms and structures employed by our earliest language-using ancestors might have been significantly different from those observed in the languages we are most familiar with today, not because of a biological difference between them and us, but because the communicative context in which they operated was fundamentally different from that of most modern humans. Languages that are used predominantly for esoteric (intra-group) communication tend to have features that are semantically and grammatically ‘complex’, while those used also (or even exclusively) for exoteric (inter- group) communication become ‘simplified’ towards rule-based regularity and semantic transparency. Drawing on a range of contemporary data, we propose a psycholinguistic explanation for why esotericity would promote such complexity, and argue that this is the natural default setting for human language. This being so, it should be taken into account when modelling the evolution of language, for some of the features that are normally viewed as fundamental – including the notion of fully developed underlying rule-based systematicity – may, in fact, be cultural add-ons.

Note that this will be the last time we're in the Engma room. After the 1st of June, we'll have to find somewhere else to be. We're currently awaiting information from CAP facilities about where we could be instead. Another possibility is to relocate to Baldessin. If anyone in Baldessin can help out with room booking there if it'll be necessary, that'd be great.

The Engma exodus and end of semester might result in change of date or time, keep up to date by subscribing to the separate list.

Feel free to spread this to other lists and places if you want.

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