120145 KO Variation, selection and linguistic evolution (2007W)

The seminar will give the students an opportunity to look at self-generated synchronic variation as an inevitable aspect of the existence of any natural language. The implications of this approach for models of linguistic competence and theories of language change will be explored. It will be argued that a system of communication affected by natural variation cannot remain sustainable without some kind of selection that restricts variability and results, among other things, in the emergence of functionality. Thus, the mechanism of linguistic change has much in common with the Darwinian model of natural evolution.