What are windows on language evolution?

Abstract

This chapter offers an elucidation of the idea that certain phenomena provide windows on language evolution. Non-metaphorically, such windows are shown to be conceptual constructs used for making inferences about aspects of language evolution from data or assumptions about properties of phenomena other than language evolution. Putative windows need to meet certain conditions to ensure that the inferences allowed by them are properly grounded, are warranted and are pertinent. Windows are shown, moreover, to vary in the nature of the inferential step for which they provide, in the purposes for which they are used and in the ways in which they are used. From the perspective of these differences, windows are seen to belong to different types: correlate windows, analogue windows and abduction windows. The heuristic potential of the Windows Approach lies not only in its ability to allow the drawing of nonarbitrary inferences about language evolution, but also in its ability to stimulate in-depth empirical work on the phenomena from whose properties those inferences are drawn. Throughout the chapter, general points are illustrated with examples drawn from the respective putative windows based on pidgin languages, on Middle Stone Age shell beads and symbolic behaviour, and on similarities between modern language and music.