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Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences pp 825–852Cite as

Phylo-linguistics: Enacting Darwin’s Linguistic Image

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Abstract

Linguistics was the first of the Humanities to respond to Darwin’s theory of evolution, showing how similar principles were at work to create the observed diversity of the world’s languages. In the past 15 years, a methodological shift brought this theoretical analogy to a new life by actually accommodating computational models and methods from (molecular) Phylogenetics to explore and test hypotheses about the evolution of languages and cultures, transforming the initial intuitions into a full-fledged methodological framework with extensive applications in Linguistics and Anthropology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Databases, Corpora & Language Lab (Bases, Corpus, Langage-UMR 7320), CNRS, Nice, France

    Mahé Ben Hamed

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  1. Mahé Ben Hamed
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Correspondence to Mahé Ben Hamed .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Génétique Animale et Biologie Intégrative, INRA, UMR 1313, Jouy-en-Josas, France

    Thomas Heams

  2. Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne/ENS, Paris, France

    Philippe Huneman

  3. Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), Paris, France

    Guillaume Lecointre

  4. Éditions Matériologiques, Paris, France

    Marc Silberstein

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Ben Hamed, M. (2015). Phylo-linguistics: Enacting Darwin’s Linguistic Image. In: Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_39

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