A Darwinian theory of the evolution of language must be incremental: to explain the transition from a hominin baseline with great ape grade communicative capacities to language-equipped hominins as a series of small steps. This paper takes up that project for the special case of words, giving an incremental model of the call to word transition. The model is embedded in a general conception of human social evolution with independent empirical support, but it also depends on some more specific assumptions (...) about language and about the earlier forms of hominin communication. Given these assumptions, the paper can be no more than a working draft of a more complete theory. (shrink)

A number of recent studies have revealed correspondences between song- and language-related neural structures, pathways, and gene expression in humans and songbirds. Analyses of vocal learning, song structure, and the distribution of song elements have similarly revealed a remarkable number of shared characteristics with human speech. This article reviews recent developments in the understanding of these issues with reference to the phonological phenomena observed in human language. This investigation suggests that birds possess a host of abilities necessary for human phonological (...) computation, as evidenced by behavioral, neuroanatomical, and molecular genetic studies. Vocal-learning birds therefore present an excellent model for studying some areas of human phonology, though differences in the primitives of song and language as well as the absence of a human-like morphosyntax make human phonology differ from birdsong phonology in crucial ways. (shrink)

We investigate how short and long-range word length correlations evolve in Chinese narrative texts. The results show that, for short-range word length correlations, no significant linear evolutionary trend was found. But for long-range correlations, there are two opposite tendencies for two different regimes: the Hurst exponent of small-scale word length correlations decreases over time, and the exponent of large-scale shows an increasing tendency. The increase of word length is corroborated as an essential regularity of word evolution in written Chinese. Further (...) analyses show that a significant correlation coefficient is obtained between Hurst exponents from the small-scale correlations and mean word length across time. These indicate that word length correlation evolution possesses different self-adaptive mechanisms in terms of different scales of distances between words. We speculate that the increase of word length and sentence length in written Chinese may account for this phenomenon, in terms of both the social-cultural aspects and the self-adapting properties of language structures. (shrink)

Some contemporary theories about the origin and the nature of language resort to concepts with no bearing on Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis or evo-devo perspective which are both based on the reconstruction of species morphological structure transformation. These theories, which evoke qualitative leap, cultural evolution, structure/function coevolution as esplicative principles for human evolution, in our opinion, result compatible in some points with the most recent Intelligent Design accounts. Attempting to substantiate itself as a scientific theory, the contemporary ID is ready to (...) give up creationist explanation just to impeding Darwin’s fundamental idea according to which it’s possible to explain evolution only through a gradual material modification of structures. For comprehending a complex phenomenon as human language – according to ID – it’s necessary appealing to a second substance, whatever it is. This idea seems to be at the bottom of all those theories which have rejected monistic structural explanation for embracing functional, psychological or cultural accounts. We consider these kinds of explanation real unresolved residuals of ID, residuals nested in the heart of the most accredited scientific theories. (shrink)