http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/
The last one is just common sense to an Historical Linguist like myself - "What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones." Duh!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13049700
And some commentary on this one:
"We
show that each of these language families evolves according to its
own set of rules, not according to a universal set of rules," Dr
Dunn explained.
"That
is inconsistent with the dominant 'universality theories' of grammar;
it suggests rather that language is part of not a specialised module
distinct from the rest of cognition, but more part of broad human
cognitive skills."
-At first I thought this article would
argue against my ideas that the origin of
language lies in the common materials with which humans are endowed - brains with the same potential, environments to observe and interact
with, etc. But this quote indicates that it is concerned with the
process of language evolution,
not the origin of language.
Moreover,
the latter part of it suggests precisely what I want to argue: that
language exists because of the human ability to imagine, to create
(the "broad human cognitive skills").
The
paper asserts instead that "cultural evolution is the primary
factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state
of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states".
- Yes, I would argue, because of the fact that we're all working with the same tools when we create and use language.
