Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

This book breaks the prevailing taboo and argues instead that linguistic features-speech sounds, grammatical distinctions and syntactic strategies-have followed an evolutionary course. Though variation exists and gratuitious changes can be found, an in-depth study ...

Abstract Though it is increasingly accepted in the behavioral sciences, the evolutionary approach is still meeting resistance in linguistics. Linguists generally cling to the idea that alternative linguistic features are simply gratuitous variants of one another, while the ...

Though some cherish the thought of beholding language in a purely cultural perspective, the more scientifically inclined readily accept the biological underpinning of linguistic features. Sounds, lexical items, and grammatical forms and functions exist because they are ...

Unlike biology, where science was able to prevail upon metaphysics as early as the last century, linguistics still lives in the cozy world where the postulated distinction between body and mind provides a rationale for thinking that evolution must be confined to bones and ...