Talk:Evolutionary linguistics

message: Why "fuzzy navel"?  203.12.157.29 18:36, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Why "fuzzy navel"?

message: Removed the references link: "www.answersingenesis.org-Language Evolution is nothing like biological Evolution" for relevance and precision reasons because the link doesn't point to anything specific about evolutionary linguistics.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.134.241.32 (talk) 15:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed link

message: This article is conflating language change with the evolution of the language capacity.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.222.47.203 (talk) 22:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree entirely, and I just deleted the offending section. Cgingold (talk) 13:27, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Conflating two subjects

message: Removed link to Paleolinguistics from "See also" section by IP 201.254.118.109. The "See also" section should include Wikipedia articles of direct or fairly direct relevance to the subject of the article. This is not the case here. Evolutionary linguistics concerns the origins of spoken human language. Paleolinguistics has more than one meaning; the current article Paleolinguistics takes it in just one of these, used by some members of the Moscow school and a few American linguists, such as John Bengtson. In this meaning, paleolinguistics refers to the study of prehistorical languages at a taxonomic depth greater than that of the families generally accepted by linguists at the present time. But these are two entirely different fields with no connection between them. Someday, perhaps, they will meet up, and it will be possible to relate the origins of language to early forms of human language traced back through time by the comparative method. But at the present time these two avenues of research are totally separate and distinct. 
The prevailing view was articulated by the regretted Eugene Helimski (Xelimskij): "It must be stressed in this connection that the problem of language origins (rise of articulatory organs, formation of grammatical means, creation of roots…) belongs, in my opinion, to biology and anthropology rather than to linguistics, and even within this latter (cf. [Décsy 1977–1981]) it has nothing to do with the discipline called comparative and historical linguistics" ("Early Indo-Uralic linguistic relationships", pp. 489-490). Someday, this may change. Personally, I hope so. But we must report accurately the existing situation, which is that there is no connection between "Evolutionary linguistics" and "Paleolinguistics." 
There are also serious quality problems with the article Paleolinguistics which would have to be rectified before it would be worth linking anywhere. VikSol (talk) 23:37, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Paleolinguistics" 

message: This article would be great if it used even a handful of the sources in the references section.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.176.143.40 (talk) 04:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great if

message: '--Kadoru (talk) 00:36, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Student comment

message: The lead section does not say which other disciplines are concerned with origins and development of language and does not go on to say that they stem from physiological changes in human anatomy as well as human cognitive evolution. Adding these would better introduce the topic.
The author provides a lot of information about the FOXP2 gene which doesn't have any direct relevance to this topic. This section is overly long in proportion to its importance. This information could be mentioned in passing.
There is no information regarding formant perception, combinatorial phonology and compositional semantics which are mentioned in the article. Neither is there a link to where one could find information about those terms. These should be added to explain research in the field of evolutionary linguistics.
The word 'phyla' is used but is also not explained. There should be a link explaning that word.
There should be a footnote to Tecumseh Fitch's descended larynx theory. 
There should be a footnote for Derek Bickerton's argument and a reference to who the “others” are who share his opinion on the advent of abstract words providing a mental basis for analyzing higher-order relations.
Footnotes with references should also be added for Chris Knight's work and Luc Steels' research.
Lazmike (talk) 06:08, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Areas for improvement 

message: It seems that some sources seem to be from older dates, such as 2003, 2002, 1994 and 1993. Should these sources be replaced with newer sources, if such sources can be found? - Bookworm1221 (talk) 22:07, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources