Languages drift, adapt and evolve much like living species. In this wide-ranging conversation, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and linguist John McWhorter trace the parallels between biology and speech, from random mutations to cultural selection. They show how both genes and words change, survive and connect us — illuminating the deep patterns that shape life and language alike.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Across species, communication shapes literally everything in the world, according to the legendary evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
In this fascinating conversation with linguist and TED guest curator John McWhorter, Richard dissects why communication is the thread that ties us all together and how our genes may be the ones pulling the strings.
So Richard, let's just get right started, as people say at the beginning of interviews like this. I want to explore, and I think you do too, the fact that if linguist me reads the selfish gene, I'm always thinking, oh, this is just like language. And you have an interest in how the evolution of language is similar to the evolution of creatures.
And so just to explore the parallels, the first thing that I've always wanted to ask you is about excess and so. In any language, any language, the language specifies more things than it needs to. If you speak that language, you think of it as normal, but it isn't. And so, for example, if you learn about the future tense in English, you're taught that we say will. I will buy you some socks.
But if you think about it, that's not a sentence. When would you say, I will buy you some socks? That would only be at the culmination of an argument. Really, more likely would be, I'm going to buy you some socks.
Or you could say, I buy you some socks tomorrow, which gives it a sense of event, or I shall buy you some socks, which doesn't really mean anything, but yet it's another way of saying it. Our future tends to overdoze it. I've often thought, so much of language really doesn't need to be there. No language needs to be as picky about the future as English.
Do creatures, do plant, planters, do they overdo it in the same way? And if so, why?
I suppose you could say that poetry is something extravagant and overdone. And if I think about the nearest approach to poetry in Wild Creatures, it might be something like a peacock's tail, where it's far from utilitarian. The idea is that the male is attempting to seduce a female. And there's massive overkill there.
There's too much.
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