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Table 2 Some parallels between biological and linguistic evolution

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