An Alternate Paradigm for Understanding the Emergence and Growth of Languages

Since it was first recognized that widely separated languages in time and space can share strong similarities in their lexicons, morphology and sound correspondences, it has been widely assumed that such similarities must be due to common descent. On the basis of this a priori assumption, and using the comparative method, comparative linguists have built elaborate phylogenetic trees of ‘genetically-related’ languages, many of which languages are reconstructed (and therefore completely unattested) proto-languages. But given that common origin is not the only possible explanation for the evident similarities between languages, this entire theoretical edifice rests on highly questionable foundations.

Viewed from the perspective of complex systems theory, the tendency of languages to exhibit similar lexical, morphological and sound correspondences is explained not by a common ancestor but by the fact that there is a universality to the way sound and meaning unfold in languages (or Meaning Systems) over time.  In other words, although language systems may start at the same place, and develop along similar lines, they ultimately grow apart and create completely different languages.  Known colloquially in chaos theory as the butterfly effect, this phenomenon was first observed by Edward Lorenz in the context of a computer simulation of the development of two separate weather systems which, although starting from virtually the same point, came to represent completely different weather patterns over the longer term.  

This alternate paradigm based in complex systems theory not only fits the empirical evidence better than the traditional paradigm that languages ‘evolve’ from other languages, but also opens up a path to understanding how languages came into being in the first place, something which the current paradigm has conspicuously failed to do.