CLIC Speaker Abstracts

John Schumann (Applied Linguistics,UCLA),October18, 2002 (Haines 352 - 10AM-12PM).

"The Evolution of Grammar"

Language evolution has increasingly become a topic of interest among language scholars, but very little work in this area has been done within Applied Linguistics. However, research in our field has produced data that may speak to the issue of language evolution. Jackendoff ( 2002) argues that early interlanguage such as that of the Basic Variety (Klien & Perdue, 1997) may represent a stage in the evolution of language. This paper develops a perspective on the evolution of grammar by hypothesizing a group of hominids capable of making particulate sounds from which they have produced as a lexicon of 300-600 words. Arguing from the framework of complexity theory, in which structure is seen to emerge from interaction among agents and items, we suggest that attempts by the hominids to convey meaning with this lexicon would result in the emergence of grammatical structure. The structure would exist as an invisible, nonmaterial cultural artifact in the symbolic semiosphere outside the brains of the language users. The feedback resulting from the interaction would create a grammatical structure that would be efficiently learnable, producible, and comprehensible by hominid brains. But the grammatical structure itself would not be the product of any neurally instantiated grammatical module or UG. This argument will be supported by data from early interlanguage, Nicaraguan sign language, pidginization, and computer simulations of language emergence. Discussion of this data will be within the theoretical framework of complex adaptive systems and emergence.