A Comparative Study of Biological Evolution and Cultural Evolution from the Perspective of Evolution

摘要

Language is the key feature of distinguishing human from other animals. The history of language evolution can be traced back to ancient Egypt. Since Darwin published The Origin of Species for more than a century, the tradition of studying language with the idea of evolution has been very popular. It is found that the research on language evolution is an interdisciplinary study, and its progress involves the latest development of many disciplines. In order to reach a consistent view on language evolution, more assumptions and discussions are needed. This paper reviews the origin of evolutionism language view, focuses on two viewpoints of language origin research under the framework of evolutionism: Gradualism and Mutation Theory. It also makes a simple comparative analysis of biological evolution and cultural evolution, and discusses the concept of language evolution from the theoretical basis and evolution mechanism.