Preprint
Article

Membership Enforcement as a Driver of the Evolution of Language

This version is not peer-reviewed.

Submitted:

15 May 2020

Posted:

16 May 2020

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Abstract
A novel hypothesis concerning language evolution is advanced. It posits that languages have evolved as a means of binding individuals to a group, as well as for defining those groups. This means that language evolution has to be considered on the level of groups and not only on the level of individuals. This hypothesis helps to explain the huge diversity of human languages, as well as their complexity. Perhaps more importantly, it explains why adults lose the ability to learn languages with the ease that children possess.
Keywords: 
language evolution; evolution of altruism; group evolution
Subject: 
Social Sciences  -   Sociology
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.

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