Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Introduction Historiography’s contribution to theoretical linguistics
- Part I Theoretical considerations
- Part II A developmental systems linguistics
- 4 Evolutionary scenarios I: the standard story and the self-reproductionist script
- 5 Evolutionary scenarios II: the emerging story and the self-realizationist script
- 6 The ontogenic script begins
- 7 The ontogenic script continues
- Part III What to do next
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
4 - Evolutionary scenarios I: the standard story and the self-reproductionist script
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Introduction Historiography’s contribution to theoretical linguistics
- Part I Theoretical considerations
- Part II A developmental systems linguistics
- 4 Evolutionary scenarios I: the standard story and the self-reproductionist script
- 5 Evolutionary scenarios II: the emerging story and the self-realizationist script
- 6 The ontogenic script begins
- 7 The ontogenic script continues
- Part III What to do next
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Linguistics and Evolution foregrounds the twin and intertwined temporal dimensions of phylogeny and ontogeny in order to explain how a living being becomes a languaging living being. Exploring the full extensions of this double dimension of time requires: (i) an examination of a living being in its appropriate setting, which for human beings ever was and always is the social, languaging setting; (ii) an understanding of the mosaic-like development over time of languaging abilities in both the species and the individual so that it has now become a connected trait; and (iii) an appreciation of the psychological depth and complexity of languaging behaviors and effects in the mature languager. This is to say that, in a developmental systems linguistics, languaging is given a kind of cognitive breathing room not found in the last fifty years of formalist theorizing. A developmental systems linguistics is furthermore grounded in the sense that aspiring languagers and mature languagers alike have two feet on the ground (or are on all fours or in some conveyance) as they move around in their world, acting on it and being affected – in their being, knowing and doing – by the consequences of their actions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Linguistics and EvolutionA Developmental Approach, pp. 103 - 131Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013