'Selfish sounds': Darwinism in linguistics
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 - 17:14
in Psychology & Sociology
People generally think that they are in full command of what they say. Historical linguist Nikolaus Ritt from the Department of English and American Studies at Universitat Wien (Austria), however, claims that it may actually be language which controls us, the speakers, rather than the other way round. Applying a generalised Darwinian framework to linguistics, he is particularly interested in how words and sounds change over time and how they use humans for the "selfish" purpose of getting themselves replicated.