Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

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L. Perlovsky
2012
Cognitive function, origin, and evolution of musical emotions
Musicae Scientiae 16(2):185--199, 2012
Abstract Based on recent advancements in cognitive science and mathematical models of the mind, this paper proposes a hypothesis on a fundamental role of music in cognition, and in the evolution of the mind, consciousness, and cultures. The vocalizations of proto- ...
2011
Music. Cognitive Function, Origin, And Evolution Of Musical Emotions
WebmedCentral PSYCHOLOGY 2(2), 2011
Evolutionary musicologists agree that music is an enigma. Existing theories contradict each other, and cannot explain mechanisms or functions of musical emotions in workings of the mind, nor evolutionary reasons for music origins. Based on a synthesis of cognitive science and ...MORE ⇓
Evolutionary musicologists agree that music is an enigma. Existing theories contradict each other, and cannot explain mechanisms or functions of musical emotions in workings of the mind, nor evolutionary reasons for music origins. Based on a synthesis of cognitive science and mathematical models of the mind this paper proposes a hypothesis of a fundamental role of music in cognition, and evolution of the mind, consciousness, and cultures. We consider a split in the vocalizations of proto-humans into two types: one less emotional and more concretely-semantic, evolving into language, and the other preserving emotional connections along with semantic ambiguity, evolving into music. The proposed hypothesis departs from other theories in considering specific mechanisms of the mind-brain, which required the evolution of music parallel with the evolution of cultures and languages. Arguments are presented that the evolution of language toward becoming the semantically powerful tool of today required emancipation from emotional encumbrances. The opposite, no less powerful mechanisms required a compensatory evolution of music toward more differentiated and refined emotionality. Fast differentiation of knowledge due to language created cognitive dissonances among knowledge and instincts. Differentiated emotions were needed for resolving these dissonances. Thus the need for refined music in the process of cultural evolution is grounded in fundamental mechanisms of the mind. This is why today’s human mind and cultures cannot exist without today’s music. The proposed hypothesis gives a basis for future analysis of why different evolutionary paths of languages were paralleled by different evolutionary paths of music. We consider empirical data on parallel evolution of cognition, consciousness, and music during the last three thousand years. Existing data on changes in consciousness and musical styles support the proposed hupothesis. We compare musical emotions to emotions of language prosody, and emotions of cognitive dissonances. Then we propose experimental approaches toward verification of this hypothesis in psychological and neuroimaging research.
2010
Physics of Life Reviews 7(1):2--27, 2010
Theories of music origins and the role of musical emotions in the mind are reviewed. Most existing theories contradict each other, and cannot explain mechanisms or roles of musical emotions in workings of the mind, nor evolutionary reasons for music origins. Music seems ...
The Open Neuroimaging Journal 4:70, 2010
Abstract Neural structures of interaction between thinking and language are unknown. This paper suggests a possible architecture motivated by neural and mathematical considerations. A mathematical requirement of computability imposes significant ...
2009
Neural Networks 22(5):579--585, 2009
The issue of how children learn the meaning of words is fundamental to developmental psychology. The recent attempts to develop or evolve efficient communication protocols among interacting robots or virtual agents have brought that issue to a central place in ...
Neural Networks 22(3):247--257, 2009
What is the role of language in cognition? Do we think with words, or do we use words to communicate made-up decisions? The paper briefly reviews ideas in this area since 1950s. Then we discuss mechanisms of cognition, recent neuroscience experiments, and ...
2008
Theory in Biosciences 127(3):205-214, 2008
Structured meaning-signal mappings, i.e., mappings that preserve neighborhood relationships by associating similar signals with similar meanings, are advantageous in an environment where signals are corrupted by noise and sub-optimal meaning inferences are rewarded as well. The ...MORE ⇓
Structured meaning-signal mappings, i.e., mappings that preserve neighborhood relationships by associating similar signals with similar meanings, are advantageous in an environment where signals are corrupted by noise and sub-optimal meaning inferences are rewarded as well. The evolution of these mappings, however, cannot be explained within a traditional language evolutionary game scenario in which individuals meet randomly because the evolutionary dynamics is trapped in local maxima that do not reflect the structure of the meaning and signal spaces. Here we use a simple game theoretical model to show analytically that when individuals adopting the same communication code meet more frequently than individuals using different codes-a result of the spatial organization of the population-then advantageous linguistic innovations can spread and take over the population. In addition, we report results of simulations in which an individual can communicate only with its K nearest neighbors and show that the probability that the lineage of a mutant that uses a more efficient communication code becomes fixed decreases exponentially with increasing K. These findings support the mother tongue hypothesis that human language evolved as a communication system used among kin, especially between mothers and offspring.
Neural Networks 21(2):250--256, 2008
The relationship between thought and language and, in particular, the issue of whether and how language influences thought is still a matter of fierce debate. Here we consider a discrimination task scenario to study language acquisition in which an agent receives ...
2007
IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 11(6):758-769, 2007
Evolutionary language games have proved a useful tool to study the evolution of communication codes in communities of agents that interact among themselves by transmitting and interpreting a fixed repertoire of signals. Most studies have focused on the emergence of Saussurean ...MORE ⇓
Evolutionary language games have proved a useful tool to study the evolution of communication codes in communities of agents that interact among themselves by transmitting and interpreting a fixed repertoire of signals. Most studies have focused on the emergence of Saussurean codes (i.e., codes characterized by an arbitrary one-to-one correspondence between meanings and signals). In this contribution, we argue that the standard evolutionary language game framework cannot explain the emergence of compositional codes-communication codes that preserve neighborhood relationships by mapping similar signals into similar meanings-even though use of those codes would result in a much higher payoff in the case that signals are noisy. We introduce an alternative evolutionary setting in which the meanings are assimilated sequentially and show that the gradual building of the meaning-signal mapping leads to the emergence of mappings with the desired compositional property.
Neurodynamics of Cognition and Consciousness, pages 73--108, 2007
The chapter discusses evolution of consciousness driven by the knowledge instinct, a fundamental mechanism of the mind which determines its higher cognitive functions and neural dynamics. Although evidence for this drive was discussed by biologists for some ...
2004
Physical Review E 70(4):042901, 2004
Zipf's law asserts that in all natural languages the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank. The significance, if any, of this result for language remains a mystery. Here we examine a null hypothesis for the distribution of word frequencies, a so-called ...MORE ⇓
Zipf's law asserts that in all natural languages the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank. The significance, if any, of this result for language remains a mystery. Here we examine a null hypothesis for the distribution of word frequencies, a so-called discourse-triggered word choice model, which is based on the assumption that the more a word is used, the more likely it is to be used again. We argue that this model is equivalent to the neutral infinite-alleles model of population genetics and so the degeneracy of the different words composing a sample of text is given by the celebrated Ewens sampling formula [
Theor. Pop. Biol. 3, 87 (1972)
], which we show to produce an exponential distribution of word frequencies.