Exploring exaptation in language change

Abstract

1. Introduction Since the early 1990s theories of language change have demonstrated a broad increase of interest in evolutionary theory (e.g. Lass 1990, 1997; McMahon 1994; Ritt 1995; Croft 2000; Wilkins 2002). The application of evolutionary thinking in linguistics is of course nothing new. Even before Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, linguists such as A. Schleicher were already using evolutionary ideas to account for language change. Yet as critics have pointed out, borrowed ideas from other sciences often turn out to be nothing more than “sloppy metaphors” (Lass 1990: 33). Others have argued that biological metaphors do not add value to linguistic theory (Van Pottelberge 2001: 73). In their opinion linguistics should therefore abandon such metaphors altogether. The application of evolutionary theory poses other problems as well. Ever since Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in The origins of species by means of natural selection (1859), his ideas have been questioned and refined, and while the overall idea of evolution by means of natural selection is now generally accepted, some recent elaborations are still controversial, which makes the application of biological metaphors in linguistics even more problematic.