Abstract
Abstract In addition to natural selection, sexual selection is another Darwinian force that enables evolution. Sexual selection functions when a member of one sex selects an individual of the other sex as their reproductive partner based on particular traits. The traits do not necessarily have survival value: an arbitrary trait without survival value could evolve by sexual selection, just because one sex prefers that trait in the other sex. The idea of sexual selection was first presented by Darwin (1871),and was advanced by Fisher, Hamilton, and Zahavi, among others (Cronin 1991). Darwin saw the possibility of applying this idea to explain the origin of language, but until recently there have been few attempts to pursue this. Where, in recent years, sexual selection has been invoked, it has focused on functional properties (Dunbar 1996; Miller 2000), not syntactic ones.
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