Linguists have known from at least the late 18th century [ 21]—about 100 years before Darwin—that languages predominantly evolve by a process of descent with modification from earlier ancestral languages, just as biological species descend from earlier ancestral forms.
Darwin was right on both counts. Linguists have known from at least the late 18th century [ 21]—about 100 years before Darwin—that languages predominantly evolve by a process of descent with modification from earlier ancestral languages, just as biological species descend from earlier ancestral forms. An example is differences observed between the ancient Greek vocabulary in Homer’s Iliad from around 750 BCE and modern Greek vocabulary (Table 1) [ 22]: some words have merely changed their pronunciation while others have been replaced by new unrelated words.