From: Q&A: What is human language, when did it evolve and why should we care?
Biological evolution | Language evolution |
---|---|
Discrete heritable units (for example, nucleotides, amino acids and genes) | Discrete heritable units (for example, words, phonemes and syntax) |
DNA copying | Teaching, learning and imitation |
Mutation (for example, many mechanisms yielding genetic alterations) | Innovation (for example, formant variation, mistakes, sound changes, and introduced sounds and words) |
Homology | Cognates |
Natural selection | Social selection and trends |
Drift | Drift |
Speciation | Language or cultural splitting |
Concerted evolution | Regular sound change |
Horizontal gene transfer | Borrowing |
Hybridization (for example, horse with zebra and wheat with strawberry) | Language Creoles (for example, Surinamese) |
Geographic clines | Dialects and dialect chains |
Fossils | Ancient texts |
Extinction | Language death |