Aesthetics of Language Evolution

Could a theory of aesthetic sense-making help move domain-general theories of evolution beyond mere Darwinian assumptions? To show how this could work, I apply C. S. Peirce’s approach to analogy as active-inference and his triadic theory of evolution to an original language development case study involving novel paradigm formation over a six-week period by a child aged 1;07–1;09 in the domain of free play focused on a set of blocks. In referring to the blocks, the child produces creative lexical blends involving abstractions drawn from shape, colour, and food-based iconicities. In the process, evidence for three interacting (irreducible but interdependent) modes of language evolution emerge that are arguably domain-general: analogy, automation, and diagrammatization (previously defined in Pelkey 2013, 2015, 2019). The bridging connections in question require a process-oriented semiotic perspective grounded in the experiential, or tonal, relations of iconicity. The argument helps clarify the aesthetic nature of analogy by highlighting distinctions between analogic agency, automated processing, and diagrammatic process in ways that are germane for evolutionary theory in general, to better clarify the relationship between aesthetics as semiotic fitting (Kull 2022) and diagrammatization as semiotic evolution.