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Linguistic evolution

Linguistic evolution: received pronunciation

The Hubster sent me this link about how languages - and species - evolve. Apparently, evolution happens in steps rather than gradually, both in languages and for species.

Apparently, Mark Pagel of Reading University determined this by counting the number of branches in the family tree, although I’m not sure how that works. Are they distinguishing between dialects as well as languages, and how are they dealing with the political issues?

I looked Pagel up on Reading University’s web site,to find the original press release. This mentions “rapid bursts” rather thanthe “steps” that The Economist reports. It appears it’s more of a series of changes in a short space of time, rather than a huge great step that occurs when a split is made.

This entry was posted on Friday 1st February, 2008 @ 6.59pm GMT Europe/London and is filed under Language and Linguistics, Nature, Science and Technology and is tagged with . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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