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linguistics language evolution

April's Wired Science article announces that the notion of there being a universal way in how languages evolve, affected by place, culture and the common linguistic structures in our brain might be changing. New research states that each language family evolves according to its own set of rules in a much more diverse evolutionary process than expected.

Whether you believe this study (that examines one third of the world's 7000 languages) is about to discover how languages have really evolved or that Noam Chomsky's school of thought had it right all along, Brandom Kleim's view on languages is uplifting and definitely one worth sharing: "How languages have emerged and changed through human history is a subject of ongoing fascination. Language is, after all, the greatest of all social tools: It's what lets people share and cooperate, divide labor, make plans, preserve knowledge, tell stories. In short, it lets humans be sophisticated social creatures." Amen to that.