by Nick Atkinson
RESEARCH	Darwin Meets Chomsky Scientists converge in a multidisciplinary approach to understanding human language Email: Nick Atkinson - natkinson@the-scientist.com The Scientist 2004, 18(24):16 Published   20 December 2004

Charles Darwin spotted it. In The Descent of Man, he wrote: "The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have developed through a gradual process are clearly the same." He'd been struck by ideas that William Jones had advanced 50 years earlier, that the similarities between languages as disparate as Sanskrit, Latin, and Old Persian, suggest a common historical ancestry.

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