Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

The well-established framework of evolutionary dynamics can be applied to the fascinating open problems how human brains are able to acquire and adapt language and how languages change in a population. Schemas for handling grammatical constructions are the replicating unit. They emerge and multiply with variation in the brains of individuals and undergo selection based on their contribution to needed expressive power, communicative success and the reduction of cognitive effort. Adopting this perspective has two major benefits. (i) It makes a bridge to neurobiological models of the brain that have also adopted an evolutionary dynamics point of view, thus opening a new horizon for studying how human brains achieve the remarkably complex competence for language. And (ii) it suggests a new foundation for studying cultural language change as an evolutionary dynamics process. The paper sketches this novel perspective, provides references to empirical data and computational experiments, and points to open problems.

It is supposed that humans are genetically predisposed to be able to recognize sequences of context-free grammars with centre-embedded recursion while other primates are restricted to the recognition of finite state grammars with tail-recursion. Our aim was to construct a minimalist neural network that is able to parse artificial sentences of both grammars in an efficient way without using the biologically unrealistic backpropagation algorithm. The core of this network is a neural stack-like memory where the push and pop operations are regulated by synaptic gating on the connections between the layers of the stack. The network correctly categorizes novel sentences of both grammars after training. We suggest that the introduction of the neural stack memory will turn out to be substantial for any biological 'hierarchical processor' and the minimalist design of the model suggests a quest for similar, realistic neural architectures.

This article explains the evolution of human language and the brain. There are many ways organisms can adapt to moving targets. One of the ways is genetic evolution, when natural selection acts on variation in the population, selecting against those alleles that provide the least fit to the environment. The second way is by utilizing the phenotypic plasticity of a genotype. The third way is by means of systems and organs, which have evolved to cope with fast-changing environments and which have genetic underpinnings also. A set of genes can give rise to different phenotypes depending on the environment in which development takes place. The phenomenon, phenotypic plasticity, may be adaptive in species with variable environments. When natural selection acts to preserve adaptive phenotypes, it can lead to genetic change and to the fixation of specific phenotypes within a population by several evolutionary processes, including the Baldwin effect and genetic assimilation. The human brain is a very specific organ selected for the ability to track fast-changing parts of the relevant environment, which for hominins also included the linguistic environment. The human brain is highly efficient when it comes to language acquisition and production and is more efficient than any other known brain or artificial computing mechanisms.

In this chapter I briefly summarize views on adaptation and language, some relevant neurobiological and genetic facts, the presence or absence of recursion in animals, the possible role of genetic assimilation in language evolution, the prerequisites of language and the nature of the human adaptive suite, and the relative merits of proposed evolutionary scenarios for the origin of natural language. I highlight the special difficulty of this last major transition and a possible integrative modelling approach to the problem. Finally, I give a summary showing that the transition from early hominine societies with protolanguage to modern society with language indeed qualifies as a major transition.

The recent blossoming of evolutionary linguistics has resulted in a variety of theories that attempt to provide a selective scenario for the evolution of early language. However, their overabundance makes many researchers sceptical of such theorising. Here, we suggest that a more rigorous approach is needed towards their construction although, despite justified scepticism, there is no agreement as to the criteria that should be used to determine the validity of the various competing theories. We attempt to fill this gap by providing criteria upon which the various historical narratives can be judged. Although individually none of these criteria are highly constraining, taken together they could provide a useful evolutionary framework for thinking about the evolution of human language.

• First book to be written on the major transitions in evolution
• Interdisciplinary, drawing on fields as diverse as molecular biology, linguistics, embryology, and population genetics
• Accessible to anyone with an undergraduate training in the biological sciences
• Written by leading theoretical biologists

During evolution there have been several major changes in the way genetic information is organized and transmitted from one generation to the next. These transitions include the origin of life itself, the first eukaryotic cells, reproduction by sexual means, the appearance of multicellular plants and animals, the emergence of cooperation and of animal societies. This is the first book to discuss all these major transitions and their implications for our understanding of evolution. Clearly written and illustrated with many original diagrams, this book will be welcomed by students and researchers in the fields of evolutionary biology, ecology, and genetics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction
2 What is Life?
3 Chemical evolution
4 The evolution of templates
5 The chicken and egg problem
6 The origin of translation and the genetic code
7 The origin of protocells
8 The origin of eukaryotes
9 The origin of sex and the nature of species
10 Intragenomic conflict
11 Symbiosis
12 Development in simple organisms
13 Gene regulation and cell heredity
14 The development of spatial patterns
15 Development and evolution
16 The origins of societies
17 The origins of language